Dash has funded the continuation of the Dash AeroSports team expansion and promotional efforts.
Originally funded earlier this summer, Dash AeroSports is an aerobatic air racing venture dedicated to promoting Dash. Headed by former commercial pilot Scott Farnsworth, the team uses its position to promote the Dash branding at airshows as well as form business relationships and onboard new merchants.
A multi-angle approach to Dash visibility and adoption
Dash AeroSports aims to bring a multi-stage approach to increasing Dash adoption. According to Farnsworth, this begins with a strengthening of the Dash branding and public awareness:
“We start with brand recognition. If you look at the Bitcoin market currently, this is complete brand recognition related price movement. If anyone looked at the internals of the crypto world, would they drive into Bitcoin!? Slow, fees exceeding traditional banking, community strife, etc, etc. The answer is NO, however the Bitcoin brand is plastered everywhere and becomes familiar in the sea of the crypto market. New adopters want in and they are going to buy in with the brand they know. Dash AeroSports is consumed with becoming the Brand that new adopters recognize and are comfortable in hitting the buy order for Dash.”
Next step is to conduct transaction simulations in order to demonstrate in a tangible way the experience of using Dash as a payment method:
“Wallet downloads happen as a reflection of our efforts at Mass events. We utilize the mock purchase of a Dash T-shirt to teach wallet installation, send and receive transactions without giving away valuable dash… Our transaction teaching process is more time-consuming, however we generate positive leads in contrast to empty leads through our demonstration.”
Finally, Dash AeroSports seeks to build Dash-exclusive merchant relationships, creating a closed ecosystem to demonstrate how an all-Dash economy would work in the real world:
“Merchant adoption is centric to Dash Aero as well. We focus on providing our Dash nation with merchants in which they can utilize their Dash. Transaction volume through these merchant adoptions providing increased value of the Dash market cap. We have often stated, “Utilization increases valuation.” Regarding the Reno National Air Races 2018 event, we have leveraged our racing and my previous business relationships with they association to bring Dash a closed, exclusive Dash crypto payment proof-of-concept ecosystem. Following the implementation at the Reno event, our desire is to bring this new Dash system of payment to our other events throughout the year. Dash Aero always focuses on exclusive relationships in which Dash is provided a moat of protection from competing currencies.”
A vigorous debate in the masternode community
The Dash Aerosports proposal was the subject of a significant debate in the masternode community. While there was normal discussion over the costs vs. merits of the proposal, one masternode in particular, deceptively named “DashCentral” on Dash Central, engaged with a high degree of both energy and hostility. He later admitted to operating under various aliases, and announced his departure from the community while claiming threats against his person: “I have received threats against my safety and will be leaving this community for good.”
Farnsworth stated that the controversy was one-off, and didn’t detract from the core of the proposal:
“Our proposal was dramatic based on the personal attacks, sock-puppet accounts and ridiculous insults. We conducted ourselves as we always do. Professionally and maintained our composer while continuing to engage our proposal communications in a manner Dash MN’s would expect from my team.”
