This Week in Dash: February 11th – February 16th

This week has been another fantastic week for Dash with numerous new announcements, developments, and integrations! Continue reading below for a summary of the week!

Dash Announcements of the Week:

• Dash Core Group Adjusts Version 0.13 Release Strategy, Evolution Wallet Development Sees Progress: So far 80%+ masternodes and 95%+ hashrate is on version 0.13 and Dash Core Group was able to speed up the adoption process by releasing v0.13.1 to allow miners to signal DIP3 earlier than previously allowed. This will allow Spork 15, which will activate Deterministic Masternode Lists and reset the Treasury votes, to activate sooner and minimize disruptions to Treasure proposals without causing additional adoption delays. This is in addition to the numerous other improvements that v0.13 has released and will release soon.

Dash Integrations of the Week:

• Crypto-Only Retailer, Crypto Emporium, Integrates Dash: The e-commernce store that focuses on luxury items, such as luxury watches, drones, luxury cars, and properties, recently integrated Dash due to community requests. They cite the very extensive, friendly, and helpful Dash community as a major factor in their decision. While their key segment is luxury items, they aim to use the bear market to diversify into a more broad category and use the cost savings of cryptocurrency to offer better prices than other high-end merchants.
• NodeSwap and NODE40 Enter Strategic Alliance to Enhance Dash Equability: NodeSwap, the Staking as a Service company, is partnering with NODE40, the cryptocurrency financial tax services company, to provide their customers with a more robust portfolio offering. NodeSwap offers tokenization fractions of masternode coins, and now Dash, which will help increase the equability and robustness of the Dash network.
• Dash Usability Expands with Integration into Spend App and VISA Card: Spend is a cryptocurrency ATM card and digital wallet that just integrated Dash, which will allow Dash users to make purchases at the over 40 million merchants that accept the VISA ATM card. Spend will be offering three different levels of cards and allow users to convert into over 16 different cryptocurrencies and USD, CAD, and EUR. Spend is the latest in a string of other crypto ATM cards that have historically struggled, such as Charlie Shrem’s Dash Pay card, TenX, Wirex, Payza, Paycent, and FuzeX. However, the reoccurring creation signals consumer demand, which can also be satisfied as more direct merchant adoption occurs making crypto ATM cards unnecessary.
• Dash Adoption by Lighting Company, Supermarket Demonstrate Real World Usability: ADEG Breitfuss is an Austrian supermarket that will now allow consumers to purchase their daily groceries with Dash thanks to an integration with the Salamantex POS device that was previously accomplished by Dash Embassy D-A-CH. Then H&M Distributors is a lighting company in the United States that will also accept Dash through Chimpion coin processor. The two integrations bring attention to the number of daily Dash transactions, which outpaced Bitcoin Cash, Monero, and Bitcoin SV over the past few months and had a lower median transaction value indicating Dash is being used for everyday items.

General News of the Week:

• Bitcoin Backlog Fills Again As Developers Consider Block Size Reduction: Bitcoin’s transaction volume somewhat recovered to around 350,000 earlier in the week after falling from a high of 490,000 in November 2017 to a low of 134,000 in April 2018. Even though it did not fully recover, the mempool already had a backlog of around 40,000 transaction displaying the reason for the scaling debate. This occurred as some within the Bitcoin community debate about decreasing the block size even further to push more individuals onto the Lightning Network. Bitcoin’s failures highlight the necessity of the coins that forked off of Bitcoin to pursue its true vision with additional features, such as Dash and Bitcoin Cash.
• Bitcoin’s “Lightning Torch” Obscures Importance of Usability: Some in the Bitcoin community are spreading the Lightning Torch, a.k.a. “LN Trust Chain” by sending LN payments to each other and adding 10,000 satoshis each time. However, one recipient stopped the chain to protest that Bitcoin should not be centralized where one user has too much power to stop transactions. Rather than addressing the complaint, other participants simply complained and restarted the chain. Dash has, instead, been focusing on making peer-to-peer transactions inexpensive, quick, and secure so they can actually be used in everyday transactions while also being censorship-resistant.
• Growth of Non-Cryptocurrencies Provide a Teachable Moment: J.P. Morgan recently released their “cryptocurrency” and while many in the mainstream thinks this means doom for other cryptocurrencies, most within the crypto space recognize that JPM Coin is not really a cryptocurrency. Thus, this provides a teaching opportunity so mainstream individuals can learn what truly comprises a cryptocurrency and how it can benefit their lives. This is why Dash has funded so many community outreach groups to help individuals understand why they should use crypto and how it can help them achieve fiscal and monetary freedom.
• Unresolved Litecoin Bug Highlights Necessity of Self-Funded Development: Twitter user, @oasace, pointed out that he discovered a bug in the Litecoin litecore implementation (insight-lite-api) about a year ago and it still has not been resolved. While it is a minor bug, the lack of attention for nearly a year highlights the benefits of a self-funded development team, like Dash, that can dedicate more time to maintenance and improvement.

Dash Media of the Week:

• Living Entirely Off Of Crypto – Joël Valenzuela Bloxlive Appearance: Joël appeared on BloxLive.tv, a new crypto and blockchain 24-hour streaming network, to discuss how crypto became so prevalent in New Hampshire and his ability to live entirely off Dash. They also discussed how he started to live off Bitcoin, but switched to Dash once Bitcoin stopped working when it refused to scale and its network became clogged with transactions.
• Dash Podcast Episode 91 featuring Jan Heinrich Meyer & Sinay Demirel from Dash Embassy: This week, the three amigos are joined by Jan and Sinay from Dash Embassy D-A-CH to discuss Dash adoption in Europe, how Dash adoption strategies vary by region, and how to replicate their success. Make sure to tune in to get all of this knowledge and a hint at a possible Dashtoberfest trip!

Dash continues to see success in 2019 with plenty of new integrations and developments. Additionally, the Dash upgrade process is preceding nicely with Evolution on the horizon. This trend appears likely to continue so make sure to follow Dash News on all our social media accounts to get the latest breaking news!