If the DAO wants to have teams working for them, getting people to use Dash, building more usability options, building relationships for Dash, creating new ways to use Dash in the real world, generating transactions, expanding the merchant network, creating positive and productive experiences around Dash in the real world, generating the next evolution of real-world crypto adoption for Dash first, breaking the Bitcoin fiat on/off ramp monopoly, giving us a chance to expand out of Bitcoin’s shadow, etc, then the DAO needs to pay for it.
Nothing in life is for free.
If the DAO is happy to only have people sitting in offices, removed from the real world, building the latest-greatest software with fingers crossed that someone-somewhere is going to accept it and use it and trumpet how awesome it is on our behalf out of the goodness of their hearts and the sterling integrity of their souls, then the DAO will need to be happy with the results obtained from said “strategy”.
But with Feedbands and DashCrypto and the bazillion integrations, I think it should be clear now that we can’t build a world-changing business that flies in the face of globally-fossilized paradigms and power structures from behind a desk just with Instagram ads, A/B testing and a dozen ways to overpay for gift cards.
We need to do what others will not.
Others in the crypto space are comfortable behind their desks and in their swanky conferences, calling thousand-dollar helicopter tours “mass adoption” and speaking the same trite bullshit to the same jaded ears.We must go beyond.
Dash is a DAO but it remains a business like any other and businesses need clients.
Even with Dash at just USD$110, the treasury is worth more than USD$630,000 every month. I am running effective and transparent adoption efforts albeit on “energy saving mode” in 6 Latin American / 1 European nations for about 7% of that monthly budget.
Not free but definitely cheap.
A “self-sustaining Dash team” is a private business that no longer has any incentive to answer to the DAO, especially one that is as ill-tempered and fickle as this one has been for the last few months.
A “self-sustaining Dash team” is like saying hey, you worked for me for a year and we’re cool, so can you please keep working for me… for free? I’m sure you’ll figure out some way to pay yourself. <waves hand>
A “self-sustaining Dash team” is a team that took DAO funds and diverted them into a business separate from what the DAO paid them to do. Is this behavior you want to encourage?
None of this is sustainable.
But Dash itself is self-sustaining because of the 10% of the block reward that goes to the treasury and because of our governance process. So perhaps the true “self-sustaining Dash team” is the one that is funded via the governance process. Knowing that we have this resource, why is there this attempt by some to get results without paying for them?
In Colombia, we have a saying, “Lo barato sale más caro.” That which is cheap ends up being more expensive. The time lost from trying to nickel-and-dime your frontline/coalface teams, all the uncertainty and stress introduced by degrading our ability to deploy medium- and long-term planning on Dash’s behalf through the constant game of chicken in the budget process is only going to end up being more expensive in the long run for Dash.
After all, time is money. Time lost is a question of opportunity cost.
If a project is doing good work, if you can see it and measure it, then support it. We are working for Dash, after all. Stop trying to have your cake and eat it, too. Extraordinary results for Dash will not be achieved with a scarcity mindset.
