How is Dash promoted in Venezuela?
Foreword: The promotion of Dash in Venezuela is carefully planned. It works with local mobile phone manufacturers and other partners to promote the adoption of Dash among the mainstream people. This is worth learning for all cryptocurrency projects. The author of this article is Bradley Zastrow, translated by the "Blue Fox Notes" community "Cipher".
On August 27, 2018, the Dash core team announced the strategy to the community, and then announced a more detailed business development area on September 6, 2018. One of the core pillars is Latin America with Venezuela at its core.
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why do we do this
As a payment network, Dash focuses on providing near-instant transactions with minimal fees. When a market experiences hyperinflation, the economy is negatively impacted as all means of payment become ineffective - fiat currency loses its usefulness. While inflationary pressures are also beginning to creep into countries like Argentina and Turkey, the most recent example is Venezuela, whose economy has been devastated by hyperinflation. The current forecast for Venezuela's annual inflation rate is: 1,370,000% in 2018 and 10,000,000% in 2019, and the impact of such high inflation is:
· Cash-based transactions require banknotes (i.e., physically printed currency) to be transported to exchanges in large quantities, and there are simply not that many banknotes in the market to meet this demand; or to acquire, store and trade so many banknotes at all is unrealistic.
· Electronic transactions on bank/credit card networks are limited as central banks try to combat hyperinflation. The time difference between transaction and settlement caused by this move further creates foreign exchange risk (FX risk). And as inflation erodes the fixed credit card limit, the functionality of the credit card continues to decline.
With immigration soaring and 3 million people leaving Venezuela to settle in Colombia and other neighboring countries, the effects are now extending beyond the economy.
At the Dash core team, we focus on finding the highest demand and highest fit, and where traditional payment methods fail is exactly where we think the demand is highest. The pain points caused by hyperinflation can be solved by Dash for the following reasons:
· Dash is digital cash, thus removing the need for people to physically move cash;
· Dash is managed by about 5000 supernodes instead of the central bank. This allows Dash's network to grow aggressively without being impacted by compatibility challenges, forks, and latency caused by negative networks;
· While price volatility reduces the incentive for people in developed countries to spend cryptocurrencies, in Venezuela the fiat currency, the bolivar, is more volatile than cryptocurrencies due to its 1,370,000% inflation rate. Merchants need to bear less foreign exchange risk when using Dash.
Instant transfer (InstantSend) allows Dash to conduct transactions at near-instant speed and with minimal fees, empowering the PoS economy both offline and online.
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how do we do
Our approach is simply to make Dash more user friendly. Crowd adoption can only be achieved if it is based on the right payment base and communicates in the right way with target users with different backgrounds and needs. At the end of the day, the core elements of a currency that is widely used by people today are the same as what a cryptocurrency needs to meet. Therefore, the foundations required to build an ecosystem centered on Dash are as follows:
· Easy to get Dash
· Securely store Dash
· Can easily trade Dash
These three elements need to be addressed simultaneously, as this creates a virtuous cycle that furthers the development of Dash; no single element is sufficient on its own. A cryptocurrency might be the easiest to get, but if it's hard to store safely, or there's no place to spend it — then adoption will stall. However, even building this foundation alone, while it is a major element, does not guarantee that user adoption will come - even with clear requirements.
We believe that for an innovation to be adopted by individuals and businesses, regular communication needs to happen on a regular basis. As proposed by Everett Rogers, this communication process can be broken down into five stages:
· Technical knowledge
· Persuasion investigation
· Adopted decision
· Experiment with technology
· Confirmation of continued use
Therefore, the growth of user adoption depends not only on the user's confirmation in the final stage, but also on the speed of the user's progress through the various stages. How the user moves forward in the first few stages depends on regular and regular communication and the user's affirmation of the technology. The conditions required for users to finally make this decision are different in different situations and need to be realized in different ways, because with the step-by-step promotion of technology, the audience will have highly homogeneous values and awareness from the beginning early adopters of , gradually became a mainstream group that was increasingly heterogeneous and did not speak the same language. In this case make adoption as easy as possible - start with what people already know and gradually introduce new concepts in a safe way.
In choosing the right medium to communicate the benefits of Dash to the public, mobile phones were the obvious choice because:
· Network availability: Mobile phones are rapidly becoming the main terminal for surfing the Internet, and network availability is the main prerequisite for being able to use cryptocurrencies.
· Payment device: Mobile phones are fast becoming the main payment device, and Dash is a payment network that solves problems in the context of existing payments.
· Existing/Growing Adoption: Mobile phones have approximately 41% usage within Venezuela, meaning it is a device that people are already very familiar with and already has a high market penetration.
Existing infrastructure: In addition to the current adoption of mobile phones, the cryptocurrency industry itself is very suitable for the mobile phone experience. Due to the existing infrastructure, the future opportunity lies not in optimizing the adoption of those existing parts, but in finding new ways to communicate the advantages of Dash to people, and more precisely the three elements required to build the Dash ecosystem mentioned earlier. element.
And we did it on August 27, 2018: we entered into an exclusive partnership with Kriptomobile. Kriptomobile is an Android phone maker focused on providing cheap phones to Latin America. At the launch of our partnership, we introduced several Krip phone models that come pre-installed with the min-Dash ecosystem:
· Earn Dash: Uphold is a pre-installed app that allows Krip mobile users to earn Dash by signing up or using an existing account.
Store Dash: Dash Android wallet, providing users with a standard Dash mobile wallet. On October 23, it also directly integrated Uphold through an upgrade, further improving the user experience.
Opportunities to trade with Dash: Bitrefill is a pre-installed program that sends users a Dash landing page. This gives users the opportunity to use Dash to buy gift cards or top up their mobile phone credit.
Then we immediately introduce what is Dash to users, and provide technical support to users in the following ways:
Dash experience package: There is a paper wallet in the box, a small amount of Dash in the wallet, and a QR code revealed in it. Not only does this give users the Dash they needed in the first place, but it is also a primary way to introduce users to cryptocurrency transfers. And doing so also allows the Dash core team to recover unclaimed funds.
In-place customer support: In order to replicate the user experience of traditional financial institutions, we partnered with Dash Help Me (a Venezuela-specific organization funded by the Dash network). By working together, we made sure the team was able to answer detailed questions from users in parallel with the Kriptomobile launch.
From the moment they get their phones, Krip users have all the prerequisites to become a Dash family. They have the three elements needed to create a Dash ecosystem. More importantly, they have Krip, a platform that is central to cryptocurrency but familiar to ordinary people, and a safe path to this platform.
Ordinary users are free to download mobile apps from Google Play, however, this does not dilute the value proposition as the value is driven by the integrity of the offering, and the persistence of the user experience and value proposition can be applied to different customer segments:
Users: We cut out all the noise of the cryptocurrency industry to provide an easy way for users to get all the elements of the Dash ecosystem, including a small amount of Dash money and customer service. New users are often confused about how to use their wallets and access their initial funds when they are new to cryptocurrencies, and further avenues of information acquisition (such as Twitter) often bring more confusion, and vague factional struggles and related interests.
Merchants/Enterprises: Initially released together with Uphold and Bitrefill, both can gain first-mover advantages in customer acquisition and user stickiness through pre-installation.
To effectively communicate our new partnership to the public, we support our launch with direct advertising and on-site publicity. Coordinated with local advertiser Otiuma, the campaign consisted of:
· Billboards: Increase the visibility of the event to local commuters through the strategic placement of billboards in two high-traffic areas. The strategy has been live for three and a half months, and there is still one billboard left.
· Social networking campaigns with partners: We launched a series of @DashPay campaigns on Twitter with our partners Uphold, Bitrefill and Kriptomobile. The social network accounts that participate through Twitter probably have a combined total of 350,000 subscribers.
· Local and global PR campaign: In addition to the Dash Venezuela branch, relevant media also participated in the press conference, as well as a larger global PR campaign with Wachsman PR.
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how we did so far
The second phase of cooperation was launched on December 18, 2018 and consists of three parts:
1. Report on Kriptomobile launches to date
2. Expand our partnership with Kriptomobile for Dash Text and K1 model Krip phones
3. Strengthen the Dash ecosystem pre-installed on Kriptomobile by partnering with Discoverdash.com
We are extremely satisfied with the results so far. As of early December, Kriptomobile had shipped more than 60,000 phones to the Latin American market, with Venezuela accounting for 53,000 units, an average of 26,500 units per month. In terms of the overall environment, compare it to a blockchain phone that crowdfunded $157 million, they planned to reach 100,000 mobile phone users in 12 months, we reached them in just 2.5 months two-thirds of. Kriptomobile's data is wholesale data, because Kriptomobile only sells to 2000 stores through B2B in the whole market. However, market demand from resellers continued, indicating that the handsets were well received by the public.
Part of Kriptomobile's value proposition is by combining paper wallets with small amounts of Dash so people can participate instantly. Our goal is to facilitate transactions through our existing business network of 2,400 people in Venezuela and our partner Bitrefill.
For those users who claimed Dash from paper wallets, we were able to determine if people used the funds further. So far, the data we track is almost 22% Dash payout rate. Initially, this was lower than we expected due to the stated goal of driving deals. However, when looking a little deeper, there are several reasons that could explain this figure and provide opportunities for resolution:
· The amount of Dash offered (0.002-0.1515) is very small in USD equivalent terms. This by itself is not enough to make a purchase, so users are required to either already own Dash, or acquire some before trading.
The idea of using Dash as a store of value may still be strong, especially given the extreme volatility of the bolivar. This will put a damper on consumption.
· Master the information on where to spend Dash. Especially for new users of the ecosystem, this may affect their initial payout rate, as they first have to understand those opportunities to transact with Dash.
We also noticed some other positive effects in the period after launching Kriptomobile. This fulfills another goal of the partnership, which is to return value to our partners.
Increase in first-time downloads of Dash wallets: During September and October, average downloads in Venezuela exceeded July & August by 23%.
· Increase in net retention after 15 days: When compared to the previous same time period, there was a net increase of 14% in users who retained wallets. This means our retention rate drops slightly after 15 days.
Increased transaction volume driven by Bitrefill: After the Kriptomobile launch on August 27, transaction and payment volume more than doubled within Venezuela; peaked in October and was maintained through November. We would like to thank Bitrefill for allowing us to publicly share the specifics of their success.
Increase in transaction volume driven by Uphold: Payment volume in Venezuela also saw small double-digit growth in the period following the Kriptomobile launch. We thank Uveld for allowing us to share more details of their success publicly.
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Kriptomobile For Sale, Attention"We accept Dash"secondary title
What are we doing to expand & improve
We are excited to announce that we are also expanding our partnership with Kriptomobile. As mentioned earlier, the Internet is a major prerequisite for cryptocurrency usage. The market penetration rate of smartphones in the country is about 41%, which gives us the opportunity to solve the problems of those who can only use mobile phones without Internet. On September 24th, Dash text launched, a network-funded, locally driven campaign that enables non-smartphone users to earn, store, and transact with Dash. We announced the promotion of Kriptomobile K1 mobile phone and Dash Text, which will provide the first 1,500 buyers of k1 in Venezuela with an additional paper wallet, receive a small amount of Dash immediately, and welcome them to the Dash family.
This is done with a piece of code that can be used when the user activates the K1 phone. The K1 is Kriptomobile's lowest-cost basic phone. This phone will also get Dash Help Me to ensure that any questions of new users in the ecosystem can be answered by the service front desk. This will further deepen the Dash/Kriptomobile brand alliance and join Dash text. Taken together, this will help bring Dash to the 59% of Venezuelans who do not own a smartphone, and invite them to participate in this real-world solution.
As previously observed, the current spending rate for paper wallets using Kriptomobile smartphones is 21%. One of the drivers of the lower-than-expected ratio could be the lack of clarity about where Dash can be spent. To improve this situation, we are strengthening our Dash ecosystem on Krip by partnering with Discoverdash.com. This website provides Dash users with a directory of merchants accepting Dash (offline + online), which can be said to be the most comprehensive location list to help them discover Dash merchants around the world.
The feature team in Dash Core Business Development created an Android app for Discoverdash.com, which is currently being rolled out to all 66,000 current and future Kriptomobile smartphones. With 2,400 Venezuelan Dash merchants currently onboarded to the site, its relevance is clear. By integrating where to spend your Dash into our Acquire, Store, Use approach, we will increase user awareness of the utility of Dash in general. This increased awareness will further drive transactions, providing value to our users as well as merchandise/business partners.
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the way of the future
Our partnership with Kriptomobile and the initial ecosystem we built is just one single use case in our approach to delivering viable solutions to problems that people in Venezuela experience on a daily basis. We think communication and making things easier are the key elements to getting more people on board, and we're doing that with the mobile phone: it's a universal device that's already in people's everyday lives. Initial results after 2.5 months have proven to be extremely successful, delivering value not only to the Dash network, but also to our partners and users.
Phase 2 is the first step we have to do - based on our expansion and enhancement. The first is a partnership with Venezuelan Dash Text and Kriptomobile/dash for non-smartphone users. Additionally, we have made it easier for all Kriptomobilele/dash users to spend Dash by developing and deploying the Discoverdash.com mobile app. This value extends further beyond Venezuela, as all Android users can download the app for free on the Google Play Store.
Our goal is to build a Dash ecosystem similar to iTunes or Google Play on the Kriptomobile platform. As Discoverdash.com demonstrates, we have the ability to push Android apps directly to Kriptomobile handsets, whether or not they are sold to end consumers (available via updates).
Through the cooperation with Kriptomobile, we will further expand the Kriptomobilele/dash ecosystem. We will continue to focus on developing the ecosystem by acquiring, storing, and transacting knowledge and opportunities with Dash. However, instead of flooding the platform with unselected (shoddy) Dash mobile apps, we will invite and form partnerships with Kriptomobile that are curated to focus on real world solutions. Overall, the aim is to expand the platform and user base by:
Enhanced Platform: Increase the value proposition by creating new ways for all customer segments to interact with Dash, our business partners and developers.
· Extend the platform: Increase the value proposition by identifying and building new use cases for dash/kriptomobile. While our initial launch focus is on Venezuela, we could also consider expansion in other Latin American markets.
This value proposition will be driven across Dash's three distinct customer segments:
· Users: In addition to pre-installing the Dash payment solution on their new Kriptomobile phones - the Kriptomobilele/dash execution curation will cut through the noise and hidden agendas that often exist in the cryptocurrency industry. This makes it easier for more mainstream adopters who do not have the same depth of experience to become familiar with Dash. In addition, we will also provide users with more reasons to participate in the ecosystem - whether through new use cases or directly from our merchandise / partner network to obtain value.
· Business: Dash accepts Venezuelan merchants to first gain value through Discoverdash.com. This provides additional customer exposure, as its web application is being deployed on 66,000 Kriptomobile handsets. This also extends to non-Venezuelan merchants, as the Discoverdash.com web app is available for free on the Google Play Store worldwide. Enterprises who partner with us to deploy directly to the Dash/Kriptomobile ecosystem benefit from instant distribution across the growing Kripmobile/dash user base. This dramatically reduces customer acquisition costs for our partners, as evidenced by the initial performance of Uphold and Bitrefill.
Developers: Similar to how the Capabilities BD team built Discoverdash.com’s web application, it is possible for developers to further contribute to the development of the application, a platform that not only provides instant distribution, but also a real solution to payments in the Venezuelan market question. We will work with developers where appropriate to advance the ecosystem.
The initial results of our partnership with Kriptomobile and the value being realized are very promising. Our partnerships are an example of the real-world solutions we're building, and strong handset sales numbers and related metrics show the success we're getting and the opportunity we're creating. Once again we thank our partners Kriptomobile, Bitrefill and Uphold for allowing us to share information.
