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Dash has partnered with augmented reality (AR) app Aircoins to distribute Dash in select cities around the world.

In an announcement today, Aircoins, an AR app leveraging geolocation to deploy treasure hunts for various crypto tokens, has partnered with Dash to distribute Dash coins around the world for new users to collect, transfer to a wallet, and spend. According to Emal Safi, Aircoins CEO, the partnership makes perfect sense to engage users and drive customers to local Dash-accepting businesses around the world:

“Aircoins is excited to integrate Dash digital cash and work strategically with the Dash Core Group. The Dash protocol is a perfect fit for retailers and cryptocurrency users because of its low transaction fees and InstantSend feature. Aircoins layers geolocation, gaming and augmented reality to make rewards and using Dash fun and convenient while providing an interactive experience. These innovations in technology create new payment and advertising opportunities as we drive foot traffic to retailers and merchants. Aircoins has created a vast network of users and blockchain assets that motivates to grow the decentralized economies and push for mass adoption.”

When users download the Aircoins app a collection of various tokens, including Dash, is disbursed for the user to find. Additionally, disbursements of one whole unit of Dash (valued at about $143 at time of writing) will be sent to 10 major cities around the world including Bangkok, Medellín, New York City, and Amsterdam.

Using innovative engagement methods to attempt to pin down elusive commercial adoption

Distributing Dash via Aircoins tests a new vector for reaching consumers for wide adoption of the coin as a currency. Dash Core Group’s business development manager LatAm Ernesto Contreras sees the Aircoins partnership as a new vector for engaging users to take that first step in acquiring and using Dash, and hopefully building commercial habits:

“As interest and adoption around AR and cryptocurrency continues to increase, merging the two through a fun game is an exciting step for both technologies. This partnership will allow Dash to reach new markets by allowing users to collect coins as they move around cities, and because they can now use that currency, this will open up a new engagement model and user experience. AR is poised for exceptional growth and together Dash and Aircoins are primed to engage users along that journey.”

While a decade-old technology valued at nearly a quarter-billion dollars, cryptocurrency has nonetheless historically lagged in adoption for retail payments. Data from blockchain research company Chainalysis suggests that only 1.3% of economic Bitcoin transactions in 2019 were merchant-related, with the vast majority registering as speculation. Mass adoption remains elusive, with custodial workarounds such as Flexa still dominating the cryptocurrency-spending landscape and narrative.

The hard, slow, steady path to mass adoption for Dash

While the road to mass adoption has proven difficult for the largest and most entrenched cryptocurrency, with an even greater challenge presented to newer and less-established projects, Dash has nonetheless made promising progress in adoption as a currency. Transaction value data pulled from major payments-focused cryptocurrencies suggests that Dash is most likely to be used for regular small payments, and Dash ranks significantly lower in percentage of non-monetary outputs than key competitors, suggesting lighter use for data-driven rather than value-driven purposes. Dash also claims the fastest growing number of active addresses of all major cryptocurrencies, and has significant accepting merchant concentrations in areas including Venezuela, Colombia, New Hampshire, and Thailand.

Also key to solving the mass adoption puzzle is creating a network that is both usable by average consumers and trustworthy by major economic players. Dash recently implemented InstantSend by default, instantly settling nearly every single transaction, improving usability for payments. The next major release, version 1.0 dubbed Evolution, will introduce blockchain usernames and contact lists, further facilitating the usage of Dash as money by regular non-technical users. From a security standpoint, recently-released version 0.14 includes ChainLocks, which protect the Dash network against 51% mining attacks, solidifying the security of the network. Finally, according to several key statistics, Dash ranks as one of the most decentralized and secure cryptocurrencies.