This week has been another awesome week for Dash with new integrations and developments! Continue reading to get a summary of the week!

Dash Growth Stats of the Week:

  • Over 3,000 Merchants Worldwide Now Accept Dash: The Dash accepting merchant count on DiscoverDash recently passed 3,000 businesses world wide with almost half located in Venezuela. This has increased from 2,300 merchants just 15 days ago, which is almost 50 new businesses added daily. Over 1,375 merchants listed on DiscoverDash are located in Venezuela, which is over 45% of Dash’s known global merchant adoption. The rapid and large merchant adoption of Dash is a sign of Dash’s strength as a cryptocurrency and payment method. While other coins suffer adoption losses or transaction declines due to the bear market, Dash adoption and usage continues to grow relentlessly.

Dash Integrations of the Week:

  • iVend Uses Dash to Buy Vending Machine Drink: A video demonstration of the iVend Pay prototype showed the ability to purchase a hot vending machine drink with a number of cryptocurrencies, but used Dash for the actual transaction in the video. The concept of buying a vending machine drink with cryptocurrencies is an excellent use case scenario for Dash’s InstantSend since vending machines are more susceptible to double-spend fraud than in-person transactions. Dash’s InstantSend uniquely allows purchases to be both fast for consumers and secure for merchants.
  • Alt Thirty Six Releases Video Update: The POS platform geared towards the marijuana industry and exclusively partnered with Dash has released their latest project update via video where they highlighted their progress. They touched on their headway into getting money transmitter licenses, which are required for their business and have a notoriously burdensome application process. They also discussed their B2B and B2C go-to-market strategy and once their user interface is fully updated to reflect these strategies they plan to release a demo, which they hope to be in the next few weeks.

Dash Community Outreach of the Week:

  • Dash Youth Educates Future Adopters in Venezuela: Dash Youth is an initiative in Venezuela to teach young individuals about Dash, new technologies, and how it can help improve their lives. During their three months of activities they visited 11 universities and 6 schools to reach 2,200 students. They were able to achieve 1,800 Dash Wallet downloads and get 16 new businesses to accept Dash. Their efforts demonstrate Dash’s ability to reach new individuals through a variety of methods.
  • Dash Venezuela hosts 11th Dash Conference: Dash Venezuela hosted their 11th Dash Conference, 9th Dash City, and 8th Journalist Workshop in Caracas, Venezuela. At the event, Kripto Mobile unveiled their new KRIP phone that comes with a Dash wallet, Uphold app, and Bitrefill pre-installed, along with some Dash on a paper wallet. They had 132 people in attendance with 26 merchants at their Dash City and individuals made 938 transactions at the event. Dash Venezuela continues to reach individuals around the country by hosting these events to demonstrate the advantages of Dash and how Dash can help individuals. Dash adoption has thrived in Venezuela due to the poor economic conditions combined with Dash Venezuela’s community outreach.
  • Dash Force Meetup Winners: August was a great month for the Dash Force meetups since they set up 381 wallets across 9 meetups in California, South America, and Africa. Head over to see who the winners are, how much Dash they earned, and how you can participate!

Dash Technical Updates of the Week:

  • Dash Activates Spork 10 to Incentivize Masternode Upgrades: Dash has activated Spork 10, which will make only Maternodes running the latest v12.3 qualify for the next payment cycle. Because of the activation, the total active Masternode count dropped, but is continuing to recover as MNOs initiate the upgrade. Sporks, a Dash invention, enable Dash to have additional features like InstantSend, which gives Dash a competitive advantage when compared to other coins.
  • Dash Receives Analysis by Decred Community: Decred community member, Richard Red, wrote an in-depth analysis on Dash and its DAO in order to evaluate the pros and cons and to see how to best apply Dash’s attributes to Decred. The analysis highlights the advantages of Dash and what Dash does well, but also drew attention to aspects of Dash that still need improvement. Overall, the analysis highlights how Dash has constructed a thriving Decentralize Autonomous Organization with a very proactive and incentivized community that other cryptocurrencies want to replicate.

General News of the Week:

  • Shapeshift To Introduce Required Registration: Shapeshift is beginning to introduce optional, and soon to be required, membership registration, which includes the collection of ‘basic’ personal information. The move highlights the importance of decentralized exchanges to reduce the risk of a centralized organization being pressured into collecting personal data. The move also highlights the importance of a cryptocurrency like Dash that can simultaneously be used as payments, a store of value, and privacy to mitigate the need to switch between cryptocurrencies.
  • Google and MasterCard Partner to Track Purchases: Google currently tracks online purchases, but a recent partnership with MasterCard would extend that reach to physical world purchases. This signals the importance of cryptocurrencies to allow individuals to maintain their privacy. However, some cryptocurrencies are no longer as private as once thought due to recent developments in chain analysis that can identify users and entire wallet balances. Dash has maintained a committed emphasis to privacy since its inception as Darkcoin, but now offers PrivateSend to give users the option of greater privacy when needed.

Dash Force Media of the Week:

  • Three Amigos Podcast: This week the on the Three Amigos podcast, Joël and Mark interview cryptocurrency star Naomi Brockwell and Dash Core Group Developer Joshua Seigler. Make sure to check this one out since you do not want to miss this fun filled episode!

This has been an awesome week demonstrating the real world successes of Dash! Stay tuned into our site and social media networks to see all the upcoming Dash developments! 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!