Disclaimer! The findings in this analysis are based on readily available data, which is limited to what can be acquired from a few key merchant solutions. Additionally, Dash is a decentralized network that anyone can use without restriction, meaning there is no barrier to economic activity outside of payment facilitators. As such, the data presented below is by its nature incomplete.
With centralized institutions such as payment processors and banks, relatively perfect data on usage statistics can be easily obtainable. With decentralized payments systems such as Dash, however, publicly available transaction data can be highly misleading, as anyone can send any amount to anyone, anywhere, and at any time, for whatever reason, and incur only trivial costs of a fraction of a cent per transaction. Additionally, since many cryptocurrency transactions are speculative, a high degree of traffic may be simply moving funds on and off, or across, exchanges, or shuffling personal funds into various storage options. Finally, because barriers to sending transactions are so low, writing a script to simply broadcast various transactions across the network is fairly easy and extremely inexpensive, further complicating the validity of transaction data when estimating real-world purchases.
However, several Dash-enabled payment processors have begun collecting and releasing transaction data across their platforms, allowing a clearer picture of Dash merchant activity to be pieced together. While this is a very small portion of Dash’s regular economic activity, analyzing merchant data in a few key areas where available can help us to understand its use regionally as well as globally. Additionally, we can draw from Discover Dash for merchant total numbers where other data is missing.
Country Breakdown
New Hampshire (US)
A historical stronghold of cryptocurrency adoption, New Hampshire is a small, semi-rural US state in the northeast of the country. However, it is the home to the Anypay point-of-sale app company, which is one of Dash’s more widely-used, and provides both an active merchant map and a transaction statistics page. While Anypay supports several top cryptocurrencies, to date Dash represents 81% of its transaction volume. New Hampshire was chosen as more statistically-relevant, since about 95.5% of active Anypay merchants in the US over the last month were located in the state. As such, we can apply this percentage to the 205 Dash payments denominated in USD processed by Anypay during April to reach transaction totals. Outside of Anypay transactions, many small merchants, such as farmers and local market participants, prefer to use Dash through their personal wallets.
Dash has no funded adoption-focused teams in the area at the present time.
Estimated merchants:
- Total: 74
- Active: ~21+
- Population per merchant: 18,330
- Population per active merchant: ~64,593
Estimated transactions:
- Monthly: ~195.7
- Daily: ~6.5
- Average value: $28.60
- Monthly per merchant: ~9.31
- Weekly per merchant: ~2.33
- Average monthly sales per merchant: ~$264.6
- Total monthly sales: ~$5,556.60
Colombia
Update: Following the publication of this article, the Dash Latam tracker was revealed to not be accurate or up-to-date, and did not include estimates from paper QR codes which are used alongside merchant POS systems. The team has since provided updated estimates for April to include these transactions, which are presented in bold alongside the outdated figures
A key player in Latin America, Colombia claims one of the higher merchant adoption numbers in the world for Dash. The vast majority of merchants use the Dash Retail system, and as such current numbers and metrics are available publicly via the Dash Latam tracker page. Merchants are spread across the country, with heavy concentrations in Medellín.
Dash has one key funded adoption-focused team in the area at the present time, Dash Colombia, which receives about $14,000 monthly from the Dash treasury.
Estimated merchants:
- Total: 547
- Active: 286 314
- Population per merchant: 91,401
- Population per active merchant: 174,813
Estimated transactions:
- Monthly: ~170 291
- Daily: 6.07 9.7
- Average value: $2.30 $4.06
- Monthly per merchant: ~0.594 0.927
- Weekly per merchant: ~0.148 0.231
- Average monthly sales per merchant: $1.36 $3.76
- Total monthly sales: $390.79 $1,180
Nigeria
The only African country with a known and concentrated Dash presence, Nigeria has a significant clandestine economy, with many merchants using simpler methods such as wallets or printed QR codes to accept payments due to technological and infrastructural limitations. Additionally, adoption teams have indicated that many merchants do not wish to be publicly listed on a merchant site due to fears from government or other parties. As such, Discover Dash lists over 100 merchants in the country, yet Anypay only shows one active merchant on the merchant map, with transaction volume that would indicate more merchants. Number of active merchants is therefore impossible to estimate, and transaction data is highly incomplete as well. In addition to merchant data, we have also obtained data from mobile top-up app Bitrefill, which estimates that 353 purchases took place on the platform from Nigeria so far this year.
Dash has one key funded team in the area, partially adoption-focused and partially business development-focused, at the present time, Dash Nigeria, which receives about $12,000 monthly from the Dash treasury.
Estimated merchants:
- Total: ~102
- Active: ??? (1+)
- Population per merchant: ~1,961,185
- Population per active merchant: N/A
Estimated transactions:
- Monthly: 120
- Daily: 4
- Average value: $2.20
- Monthly per merchant: N/A
- Weekly per merchant: N/A
- Average monthly sales per merchant: N/A
- Total monthly sales: ~$240
Venezuela
Due to the hyperinflation affecting the country, Venezuela has been a historic target for Dash adoption, with local teams onboarding thousands of merchants in the country alone. However, due to tremendous upheaval in the country including armed uprisings, protests, nationwide blackouts, and more, in addition to major adoption teams losing funding for several months, Dash transaction statistics remain lower than otherwise hoped. Most Dash businesses use a point-of-sale program based on QR.CR, and limited transaction data is available from the platform, with a public merchant transaction tracker coming soon.
Dash has no funded adoption-focused teams in the area at the present time.
Estimated merchants:
- Total: 2,052
- Active: N/A
- Population per merchant: 15,384
- Population per active merchant: N/A
Estimated transactions:
- Monthly: ~180
- Daily: ~6
- Average value: N/A
- Monthly per merchant: N/A
- Weekly per merchant: N/A
- Average monthly sales per merchant: N/A
- Total monthly sales: N/A
Thailand
A relatively new entrant into the space, Thailand is home to a community of Dash fans focusing on business development but with a mix of merchant adoption focus as well. Many merchants have used the Anypay system, which logged 93 transactions in the country in March, however local activists estimated that this represented under half of total merchant activity due to merchants using a variety of services. April transactions on Anypay specifically were down to 19, but according to Sascha Jochum this was due to merchants using other apps to receive payments temporarily, and estimates numbers to be similar to the previous month’s:
“Many merchants using now multiple systems at the same time and that impact obviously the Anypay statistics. Really no perfect solution out there yet and It’s really a constant improvement process on the system side, but we are getting there. From merchants feedback and our impression should be similar like in the month before. April is Songkran (Thai New Year) so it could be a bit less as many shops are closed for 1 week, but that is really the only reason I can imagine that it could be less than in the month before.”
Dash has one key funded team in the area, partially adoption-focused and partially business development-focused, at the present time, Dash Thailand, which receives about $19,300 monthly from the Dash treasury.
Estimated merchants:
- Total: 46
- Active: ~22
- Population per merchant: 1,497,033
- Population per active merchant: ~3,130,160
Estimated transactions:
- Monthly: ~200?
- Daily: ~6.66?
- Average value: N/A
- Monthly per merchant: ~9.09?
- Weekly per merchant: ~2.27?
- Average monthly sales per merchant: N/A
- Total monthly sales: N/A
Global Trends
Based on available merchant data, we are able to see relatively consistent daily transaction activity, regardless of funded teams or staffing sizes. It would appear that the presence of local communities of Dash fans eager to spend it is either irrespective of concentrated adoption efforts, or that such efforts simply take time to build up said communities. Adoption teams have, however, shown to be very effective in onboarding large numbers of merchants, with significant countrywide numbers for areas which have historically had merchant adoption teams, and lower numbers for areas either without said teams or with relative newcomers. Additionally, valuations of average and total transactions seems to vary widely based on country, likely reflective of local pricing and per capita income.
Further, merchant data is currently the best that it has ever been, with several sources of data providing increasingly comprehensive and accurate information. Of particular note is Anypay’s merchant map, which can clearly show the frequency of Dash transactions at all merchants, showing weekly and monthly activity, and additionally providing an easy target map for activists to use to keep as many merchants “fresh” and engaged as possible. This data will greatly assist the Dash community in evaluating the efficacy of adoption initiatives and making necessary adjustments.
Global Dash network data
While highly useful, the data included here represents only a small fraction of Dash’s daily and monthly transactions. As stated at the beginning of this analysis, transaction data can be unreliable due to Dash’s decentralized and frictionless nature where anyone can make any kind of a transaction for any purpose, complicating conclusions drawn from analyzing transaction counts. However, from comparing some of the trends in the above analysis, we can see that the Dash network’s activity, overall, resembles regular merchant activity to a significant degree. The average Dash transaction value is much higher due to the inclusion of large-scale transfers, including trading activity and masternode creation, but the median value highly resembles merchant transaction values, falling almost exactly at the average of the highest and lowest merchant transaction averages (New Hampshire at $28.60 and Nigeria at $2.20). It can therefore be inferred that a large chunk of Dash’s activity may be related to regular payments.
Transactions:
- Monthly: 442,464
- Daily: 14,748.8
- Average value: $2,762
- Median value: $14.32
Conclusions
The above data and analysis leads to the conclusion of significant use of the Dash network for its intended purpose: payments. This conclusion is particularly strengthened when Dash is compared to its major consistent competitors, in this instance, Bitcoin Cash and Litecoin. Using data pulled from BitInfoCharts, we charted the average and median transaction value for all three coins. What we found was that Litecoin had a relative close grouping between median and average values, indicating a consistent range of activity, yet of relatively high values for both, generally out of the range of what could be expected for regular purchases. Bitcoin Cash, meanwhile, had a significant average transaction value, much higher than that of either two competitors, yet an extremely low median value of a fraction of a cent. This leads to a conclusion that Bitcoin Cash’s activity is largely composed of large-scale transfers combined with micropayments, either spam/script transactions or powering services such as apps or tipping. Dash’s activity was much more consistent to what we would expect from high merchant activity, and its transactions resemble known merchant transactions collected from around the world.
We encourage readers to click the below link, experiment with different currencies over different time periods, and draw their own conclusions.
