Frame 48, a “creative collective that specializes in film and commercial production”, has released a film entitled Starting From Scratch that explores how Dash is uniquely positioned to help solve the economic problems that individuals are facing in Zimbabwe.

Frame 48 mentions in their press release that Zimbabwe suffered its most recent hyperinflation attack in 2008 and has had to have its currency re-denominated three times before 2008. During each economic crises, Zimbabweans lost significant personal savings, despite their government’s attempts to save their currency’s value by pegging it to the USD. Frame 48 also discussed that currently EcoCash, provided by telecom company EcoNet, has become the primary daily transaction method with significant premiums paid for USD or other fiat currencies on the black market to purchase international goods.

The documentary focused specifically on Kuvacash, a Dash DAO funded project that aims to allow peer-to-peer digital currency transactions with Dash to anyone with a mobile phone number. Kuvacash would mitigate the need for constant high speed mobile data connections required for regular use of most cryptocurrency wallets, which is important in developing countries suffering from economic crises.

Motivation behind the documentary

Seth Josephson, Creative Producer at Frame 48, described how they were intrigued by the structure of Dash and decided to submit a proposal to cover the innovating things Dash is capable of doing.

“The unique governance model has funded conferences, sports sponsorships, and university research programs, so when we learned about the ongoing political crisis and resulting economic instability in Zimbabwe, we decided to submit a proposal to the Dash Community to create a documentary that would help educate the broader public about what was happening there, and how organizations like Kuvacash and Dash are working to fix it.”

Josephson was able to take that interest and turn it into a documentary that covered the unique features of Dash that allows it to be used in everyday transactions and make a significant difference in people’s lives.

“We were particularly interested in true use-case scenarios for digital currency as a means for day-to-day exchanges. The majority of investment in digital currency has been speculative in nature, but there are many organizations around the globe that are working with blockchain technology to improve people’s lives in tangible ways. With Starting From Scratch, we are hoping to shed some light on the potential that blockchain technology has to accelerate the affluence of people who have not had a way to properly store value in over a decade. The Dash DAO has been particularly interesting to me, as they are consistently voting to invest in developing nations”.

Ryan Taylor, the CEO of Dash Core, mentioned how he was “excited to see a documentary educating the public on the benefits of this very nascent and sometimes misunderstood industry”

“With the debut of Starting From Scratch, we have the ability to show the world how digital currencies can dramatically improve the lives of people within struggling economies by reducing the friction of commerce and offering a secure and accessible means to store assets. The progress that Kuvacash has achieved in Zimbabwe – creating a service that directly addresses local challenges – demonstrates the enormous potential of this technology. We hope this will be used as a prime example for other organizations looking to implement similar projects to combat volatile economic conditions”.

Andreiko Kerdemelidis, Co-founder of Kuvacash, further added how they intend to solve the problems that Zimbabweans are facing by using methods Zimbabweans already know.

“Kuvacash is a set of services that make it easy for individuals to transact Dash in similar ways to the e-money systems currently available in Zimbabwe. Everyone from the street trader through to the expat sending funds back to their family should find Kuvacash a convenient way to make or receive their day-to-day payments. With our agent network, we also provide the ability for people to easily switch in and out of USD cash at any time, without having to wait in queues or use a bank.”

Each comment above highlights how Dash offers unique features that can be built upon to expose new individuals to Dash and the benefits it offers them.

Dash is designed to help individuals

The Frame 48 documentary and the initiative by Kuvacash highlights the advantages that Dash brings to individuals of all socio-economic groups. Since Dash has maintained consistently low transaction fees, fast confirmation times, and security it enables projects to focus on expanding cryptocurrency access to some of the most economically and politically worst off individuals. This task is harder for cryptocurrencies that have higher fees, higher transaction times, and a harder time to reach consensus. Dash is able to function as a currency for everyday purchases and transactions no matter how small, as well as be innovated and built upon by third parties to increase accessibility to more individuals.

The Dash DAO not only enables funding of projects to help people in countries suffering from government manipulation of their money, but also the funding of a documentary to tell their story. Cryptocurrencies were created to allow individuals to break free of centralized governments and banks that manipulated their money and wealth to benefit the few. The Dash community, with its incentivized DAO structure, is encouraged to remain loyal to that initial goal of decentralized ways to help individuals around the world and provide those individuals with the necessary tools to help themselves break free from the old financial and monetary system.