This week has been another eventful week in Dash with plenty of new developments, integrations, and general news. Continue reading to get a summary of the week!

Dash Network Developments of the Week:

Discover Dash Merchant Directory iOS App Released Including Critical Review Feature: The popular Dash merchant directory has now been released to iOS by Really Bad Apps and includes an important and user-demanded merchant review feature. The merchant review feature allows app users to leave reviews of listed merchants, including adding user photos and other information, which becomes very important in a decentralized system since any merchant can start or stop accepting Dash without informing the rest of the community.

Dash Integrations of the Week:

NiceHash Exchange Adds Dash, Growing Cryptocurrency Exchange Integrations: NiceHash, which is most commonly known for allowing individuals to buy and sell hashrates to mine cryptocurrency, will now be integrating Dash into its new cryptocurrency exchange. The exchange offers competitive rates and in combination with their hashrate exchange will better enable individuals to move between coins even as each coins’ mining profitability changes. Nicehash was in the news earlier this year when a report detailed that many coins were more vulnerable to a 51% attack than previously thought since the required hashrates could be rented relatively cheaply. Dash already had some protections through its masternode system, but also further improved its protections with the release of ChainLocks a few months later.

BGST Adds Dash, Doubles Dash ATM Count in Netherlands and Belgium: Dash ATM availability in Belgium and the Netherlands has now almost been doubled, in addition to one ATM in Ibiza, thanks to BGST. Their ATMs enable consumers to buy/sell €1000 per wallet per day before having to register, after which they can make purchases up to €10,000 per day. While Netherlands and Belgium have a very high bank inclusion rate, they still have a large immigrant and tourist population, which Dash has the bandwidth to solve. This can be seen with other ATM integrations in Latin America that not only serve the unbanked, but also those wishing to send remittances cheaply and quickly.

Uphold Partners With Cornerstone Enabling Receiving Paycheck in Dash: Cryptocurrency brokerage platform Uphold has partnered with Cornerstone Global Management, LLC to facilitate their CP3 (Crypto Pay and Pension Plan) program so consumers can receive a portion of their paychecks in Dash. This adds to a previous partnership of Bitwage with Uphold to allow consumers to do the same. Both of these partnerships lower the barrier to adoption of cryptocurrency by not requiring consumers to have to go through an exchange and converting fiat to cryptocurrency themselves.

Anker Africa-Based Cryptocurrency Point-of-Sale and Wallet Adds Dash: Anker, the African-based integrated consumer and merchant platform, that includes a cryptocurrency multi-coin wallet solution, in-wallet conversion tools, staking rewards for its native ANK token, and a conversion to fiat currency tool to avoid volatility. Anker also makes ATMs and claims to be able to allow any merchant to function as an over-the-counter cryptocurrency exchange through the native app.

Smart Valor Swiss Cryptocurrency Exchange Offers Staking Rewards for Dash Users: The Swiss cryptocurrency exchange that previously integrated Dash will now be offering staking rewards to customers depositing on the platform, starting with Dash customers whom will receive 85% of their portion of the masternode’s rewards. The Smart Valor integration of Dash and masternode reward sharing is thanks to a previous integration of Dash into Bitgo and will now join a growing list of masternode sharing companies that enable more individuals to participate in Dash’s network rewards and make the network more distributed and robust.

Dash Network Stats of the Week:

Dr. Darren Tapp – “Litecoin ASIC Development Has Stalled” While Dash “Looks Pretty Good”: Arizona State University research professor Dr. Darren Tapp explained why Dash’s hashrate is showing more healthy signs than that of Litecoin. Dr. Tapp started off by highlighting that hashrates cannot be directly compared across different coins with different algorithms, but it is fair to compare the rates-of-change and for that Litecoin increased only 10% vs. Dash increasing 100% since the beginning of the year. Then within the last three months, the divergence becomes more clean since Dash’s hashrate grew by 6.5% and Litecoin’s hashrate fell by over 55%. Check out the main article to get all the important points.

Dash Core Group Project Updates of the Week:

Here’s an update from Liz Robuck, Chief Product Owner, of what’s going on at Dash Core Group this week.

🔑 Made a change to the Provider Update Registrar Transaction (“ProUpRegTx,” used to update information relating to the owner like the operator’s BLS public key, the voting address, and payout address) so that if the MNO leaves the string empty, the system will just reuse the current value (e.g. if a MNO goes to update his voting address, they can specify an empty string both for the operator public key and for the payout address in “protx update_registrar” RPC and the wallet will reuse the existing operator public key and the payout address, which are already known to the network).

💸 Refactoring for Coin Control feature to make the process smoother and more compatible with future Bitcoin backports (no changes to actual behavior).

📩 Made a change so that nodes will receive a single message when a bunch of transactions (more than 9) all come in at the same time, instead of multiple messages. This avoids overloading certain types of systems where messages are sent through DBUS, preventing interruptions to the user experience.

🌉 Updated Platform Machine with the new structure for Dash Platform Protocol (DPP), which describes the rules for state transitions on Dash Platform. Platform Machine validates state transitions (transactions that describe a change in the application’s state) in the Platform Chain and updates the state of data in Dash Platform.

🎨 Completed work on several tasks for the DashWallet UI redesign on iOS, including screens for biometric unlocking, the Tools screens, and dark mode support.

🖌 Completed work on redesigned UI for Sync Status screen, Enter Pin screen, and Show QR Code as well as some design updates for the home screen on DashWallet Android.

General News of the Week:

China Launches Blockchain Push Growing Country’s Worrying Influence Over Cryptocurrency: China is taking actions that looks to be a push to launch their own national cryptocurrency, which includes Chinese President Xi Jinping making a favorable speech, the Standing Committee of the 13th National People’s Congress passing favorable cryptography laws, and even launching “The Heart of the Chain” so party members can official record their pledge to the communist party on the blockchain. Overall, China has a problem with centralization, including cryptocurrency centralization where a report showed that “[a]s of June 2018, over 80% of Bitcoin mining is performed by six mining pools, and five of those six pools are managed by individuals or organizations located in China”. Dash, however, has found itself to be more decentralized.

Volatility, Analysts Question Bitcoin’s Digital Gold Use Case: A recent Bloomberg article interview multiple analysts whom all doubted Bitcoin’s shift towards trying to be called “digital gold” since gold relies on its long historical use cases and relatively low volatility, whereas Bitcoin does not have those historical data points and is not currently widely accepted. Dash, however, has focused on gaining actual adoption for everyday use cases, which lays the foundation for future value.

Dash Media of the Week:

Dash News Recap – Dash Usage Grows 178%, FATF Travel Rule, Plus Utrust Integrates MoreFrom & More!: If you missed last week’s Dash News update, then make sure to listen’s to Heidi’s weekly video recap to get all caught up!

Dash Podcast 128 Feat. Zach Harvey CEO of Lamassu: This week the guys chat with Zach from the cryptocurrency ATM company, Lamassu, to talk about the advantages of ATMs in driving adoption, their security features, and their open-source software. He estimates that there are around 200-300 Lamassu ATMs around the world that offer Dash. Zach also talks about various regulatory concerns, how cryptocurrency ATMs will grow into the future, what sets Lamassu apart from competitors, and more! Make sure to tune in to get this valuable knowledge!

This week turned out to be a loaded week with new integrations, developments, and analysis. Make sure to follow Dash News to stay up-to-date with the latest news and not miss anything!