This week has been another fabulous week for Dash with some awesome news developments! Continue reading to get a summary of the week!

Dash Developments of the Week:

  • Dash Plans Major Privacy Overall for v12.4: Over the next few weeks, Dash v12.4 is expected to be released and will include updates to PrivateSend, which should increase the speed of the mixing process and reliability of protecting user privacy. New features will including increasing the default and maximum mixing rounds, lowering Dash denominations to lower fees, and deterministic masternode lists to allow PrivateSend on mobile clients. There was also hints that Dash could explore encryption-based privacy solutions.
  • Dash Labs Details their Data Collection Protocol: Creator of Dash, Evan Duffield, founded Dash Labs a couple years ago and kept news tightly under wraps until they recently broke their silence with an exclusive interview with Dash Force News. In the interview, Tito Rios, Senior Data Structures Developer and Analyst for Dash Labs, discussed their decentralized platform for academic research, peer review, and marketplace for research information. They plan to do a beta release at the end of Q1 2019.
  • Medicinal Genomics Releases Pre-Print Paper: The Dash funded research initiative to map the cannabis genome better than ever before and store it on the Dash blockchain has released their pre-print paper in just 5 months. This is much faster than what can typically take a couple years and is a testimony to how Dash can help create a peer-review marketplace to improve academic research. This aligns nicely with the recent developments of Dash Labs and they reinforce each other’s validity and market need. Their research was also quickly picked up by a Canadian cannabis coalition to be used to help fight patent trolls.

Dash Community Outreach of the Week:

  • Dash Help Adds Marketing Campaign to Comprehensive Merchant Support: Dash Help released a new video detailing their recent accomplishments over the past couple months. This includes an 80% rise in requests, numerous “How-To” videos, help desk expansion to English with a US call-in number, support via WhatsApp and a planned launch on Telegram, support partnership with Kripto Mobile, and the filming of many merchant purchases with Dash. They also announced a social media influencers campaign on Instagram that will have a reach of 3+ million people. This is significant since Instagram is a top way to advertise in Venezuela.
  • Dash Increasingly Seen As Top Payments Competitor to Bitcoin Cash: A post on /r/BTC subreddit addresses Litecoin and Dash as Bitcoin Cash’s top competitors as they focus on payments. Most of the comments were in agreement, while some disagreed and said Ethereum and Ripple are bigger threats for taking market share. Other users also recognized that Dash had a significant head start while the Bitcoin scaling debate occurred. The two coins do share similarities in utilizing PoW mining, focusing on payments, merchant adoption, and instant transactions. However, Dash differentiates itself with its DAO governance system, instant transaction locking, PrivateSend, over 3,700 merchants globally, and other features.

General News of the Week:

  • Fidelity Launches Separate Custodial Service: Fidelity, the large investment firm, has launched Fidelity Digital Asset Services to be a custodial account and execute institutional investors’ cryptocurrency trades. Fidelity has long been in the cryptocurrency sector all the way back to mining cryptocurrency in 2014. It was also recently revealed that they hold a 15% stake in Neptune Dash, the publicly traded fractional Dash Masternode company allowing investors to gain exposure to Dash through traditional methods.
  • BitGo Gets New Series B Funding: The institutional-grade custodial account and multi-signature wallet company has closed on a new round of funding that includes Goldman Sachs and Mike Novogratz as investors. The bullish moves are not homogeneous, though, since Coinbase recently announced they would be shutting down their Cypto Index Fund due to a lack of demand. Despite the bear market and mixed investor actions, Dash not only allows more individuals to invest in Dash through Masternode pooling (Neptune Dash and CrowdNode), but has also seen growth in its Masternode count and merchant adoption.
  • Venmo Increases Rates for Instant Transfers: The PayPal-owned payment service recently announced that they will be increasing their fees for instant transfers from a Venmo account to a bank account from $0.25 USD to 1%, while regular transfers will still be free, but will take 2-3 days. This is in stark contrast to Dash, which offers InstantSend to confirm payments in 1.3 seconds for $0.01-$0.02 USD and plans on decreasing that fee even further.
  • Max Keiser and Nouriel Roubini Differ in Cryptocurrency Outlook: Nouriel Roubini recently came out with a scathing criticism of cryptocurrency decrying alleged inequalities and calling decentralization a myth. However, Max Keiser has long been bullish on Bitcoin since it was around $3 USD and even after it has had 60%+ exchange price drops. Then recently, Max Keiser has been namedropping Dash for the progress it has been making in technological development and merchant and user adoption, especially in Venezuela.
  • Payment Coins Losing Market Share to Other Cryptoassets: A new and extensive report by CrpytoCompare attempts to categorize cryptoassets into taxonomy groupings to make the ecosystem more clear. Interestingly, of all cryptoassets, 55% are centralized, 30% are semi-decentralized, and only 16% are decentralized. The exact numbers vary based on the metrics used, but overall, decentralized and permissionless coins are losing market share. Nevertheless, Dash continues to focus on developing a payment cryptocurrency for everyday usability, which has contributed to a significant increase in merchant and user adoption over the past year.

Dash Media of the Week:

  • Three Amigos Chat with Elizabeth Robuck: Elizabeth, the Chief Product Owner for Dash Core Group, chatted with the guys about how she got into Dash, what she does, and how agile development and a focus on most valuable products will help Dash succeed in making a great product and service for consumers and merchants.
  • CrowdNode Interview: Founder/CEO Andreas Rud and Founder/Board Member Peter Vesborg of the newly launched Dash Masternode pooling service did an interview with Dash Force News. They discussed, extensively, the creation and operation of CrowdNode, how they are providing valuable and safe services for consumers, and more. Masternode pooling services enable greater accessibility to the returns of Dash Masternodes for consumers that cannot afford the 1,000 Dash for a full Masternode, and thus, further strengthens the Dash network.
  • Joël On Free Talk Live: Joël recently attended The Free State Blockchain Digital Assets Conference in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, USA and appeared on the nationally-syndicated radio show, Free Talk Live. Joel touched on the growing Dash merchant adoption around the world, Dash back incentives, and how cryptocurrencies just makes sense for businesses even if they do not agree ideologically.

It has been a fantastic week for Dash with awesome news developments! Stay tuned into our site and social media networks to see all the upcoming Dash News! We hope that our content and coverage was very informative and enjoyable this week and we cannot wait to see what awesome Dash News awaits us next week!