Dash Venezuela uses crowdfunding to help fund the hosting of the 9th Dash Conference and 7th Dash City this past June 16 since the DAO treasury was stretched thin this month and could not fund their continuing project.

Eugenia and Dash Venezuela originally set out to host 12 Dash conferences, 1 each month, with the goal of making Venezuela the first Dash Nation. Their events have typically been funded since they have had great results such as making Venezuela the top Dash accepting country in the world, with 200+ merchants and ranking #2 in the world for most downloaded Dash wallet and visits to Dash.org. However, the DAO treasury has been tight recently with the fiat exchange price decreases and the large Dash Core proposals.

Nevertheless, Eugenia and her team found a way to still host the conference by crowdfunding the event. Edward of DASH.RED told Dash Force News about the importance of alternative sources of funding for historically successful projects.

“When the treasury is low on funds, the masternode owners have expressed an interest in funding certain community projects privately. The types of projects that could get funded this way are those with a proven return on investment by trusted community members.”

The Dash Venezuela conference continued its regular schedule

The day before the event, aside from setting up for the event, Eugenia found time to meet and touch base with her regional community leaders. The next day, the event appeared to be very popular based on photos posted by Dash Venezuela, which included a line out the door and a packed theater. Eugenia opened by sharing “months full of success stories, people, families, businesses, [and] companies” that have adopted Dash and have seen improvements in their financial and monetary situation. The event then had a special presentation by Rodrigo of Dash Brazil about “evolution of money through technology” and “how the realities of our countries have crises that have created spaces for great opportunities”.

The conference also included a chance for all of Dash Venezuela’s local community affiliates time on stage since their involvement is key to even larger Dash growth in Venezuela by connecting with potential new users and merchants at a more local and personal level. To interact even more with consumers and encourage Dash adoption, the event transitioned into a Q&A session, a one-on-one session, and interviews with journalists. These sessions helped to directly answers consumers’ questions about Dash and how Dash can directly benefit them. Afterwards, they transitioned to the Dash City for entrepreneurs to exchange goods and services with consumers for Dash.

Overall, the event was a huge success again, even despite the circumstances, and Eugenia was very grateful.

“… well, it was not so easy, but fortunately we received support from many members of the community, not only with donations, but also with advice, and time dedicated to understand what our work is about and how to improve it. Me and my team are forever grateful with these people who donated and helped us, either anonymously or openly. Edward Stoever made a good donation, also Rodrigo from Dash Brazil donated his fee as a speaker, as well as a lot of help in content generation. Also myself and a few of the team members of Dash Venezuela donated our fee for this month.”

The Dash Venezuela team is attempting a similar crowdfunding process for the 10th Dash Conference and the 8th Dash City in July and has made significant progress so far.

The Dash community truly wants Dash to succeed

The donations by the Dash community demonstrates both the generosity and the incentives of the Dash community. Since Dash Venezuela was unable to get funding due to recent stress on the DAO treasury, they were able to think outside the box and crowdsource community funding. The donations by the Dash community can be viewed as either community altruism or economic incentives. Community altruism since Dash community members know the operators personally and recognize that the project has a strong record of success that they want to be continued. Economic incentives since the event promotes Dash and, historically, has a relatively high conversion rate of getting new Dash users, which benefits the donors by increasing the adoption and thus the value of Dash. Nevertheless, both options benefit the network and all users since they help augment treasury funding to help promote Dash; only the motivations differ.

This occurrence has further demonstrated that Dash has the ability to adapt to changing scenarios such as a temporarily stressed DAO treasury. This adaptability is key to the future growth of Dash since it is impossible to predict the future and thus impossible to build all possible scenarios into the code. All cryptocurrencies suffer from this same problem, but Dash has clearly demonstrated an ability to effectively adapt to, and solve, changing scenarios.