It’s a special feeling that you get when you are heavily involved in Dash. I am going to touch on a few reasons why in this article. One of the major ones is the fact that we are a very successful, innovation-rich currency, but our successes are met in the crypto industry either with silence, or a resounding “Meh”.

Major publications such as Coindesk seem to avoid writing anything positive about Dash like the plague, and places with large memberships such as Reddit r/Cryptocurrency have legions of people who downvote any post that has the mention of Dash and its accomplishments.

Now, this is not a recent development, there are a few reasons for Dash’s seemingly pariah-like status in the crypto space.

Dash’s launch problems are partially to blame

The launch of Dash (launched X-Coin) was not without its problems, with a bug in the code that allowed it to be mined at a very fast rate, so much so that over 1 million X-Coin was mined within a short time. Critics pounced on this, and claimed that the lead developer Evan Duffield was a scammer that knowingly released X-Coin with this bug. They also claimed that Evan single-handedly mined all of the coins and shut other miners out.

This story, which has never been proven, grew into something of a cult obsession with Dash’s detractors. They did not waste any opportunity to propagate this story to any newcomers, or anyone who had anything positive to say about Dash. Over time, due to the aggressiveness of the people behind this narrative, and the relative passiveness of the Dash community to debunk it, it became a widely-held belief. Rightly or wrongly, Dash had been labeled a scam coin.

The latest Dash logo.

Funny thing about scams, though. In order to be a scam, you need to have victims. To this day, there have been no victims of this supposed scam by Evan Duffield. Dash community members who did not listen to the prevailing narrative and invested in Dash did very well financially. Those who dare to challenge the scam narrative that prevailed for so long are met with a friendly, respectful, inclusive community that have their hearts set on developing and deploying a decentralized payment system for the world to use.

The dichotomy between the way that the Dash community is portrayed in certain circles in comparison to how we actually are is remarkable. If those who chose to believe the scam narrative would actually spend some time around us they would see that. Then, maybe we would not get sidelined so much in the industry. But, because we know what Dash is about and what its lofty goals are, we stay positive for the future.

Dash’s ambitions don’t earn it many friends either…

Did you know that Evan Duffield once approached the Bitcoin Core developers about adding PrivateSend (then called Darksend) to BTC? They informed him that they were not interested in adding any changes to Satoshi’s protocol, so that’s how Dash was born.

It became apparent to all that Evan truly was a genius from the very early days. His vision and his drive to be successful attracted others of like mind who paid no attention to the prevailing narrative. Over time, a talented development team and community was assembled around Dash. We made it very clear in every interaction with the crypto community that Dash aims to be the dominant world currency, surpassing Bitcoin in time. That’s a bold statement, and one that doesn’t win you many friends in the industry.

It turns out that we have reasons to be so confident.

The list of Dash innovations is long

Dark Gravity Wave, PrivateSend, incentivized masternodes, InstantSend, the Dash budget system, and ChainLocks are all innovations that can be claimed by Dash. These innovations result in a network that is silky smooth, fast, and secure. All of these features make Dash a strong contender to be the everyday payment system of the future.

If you sat down right now and attempted to send a few dollars worth of BTC from one address to another, and did the same with Dash, you would see that the BTC would take you quite a while to be fully confirmed at its destination, while Dash would take seconds to do the same. Yes, seconds. This is made possible by Dash’s second tier: masternodes, a Dash innovation.

Working governance leads to stability

Governance in Bitcoin sometimes seems like kids playing tug-of-war.

Unfortunately for Dash right now, Bitcoin, the market leader in the space, is an unmitigated train wreck. First was the block size debate that raged on for years, leading to a fork and two different Bitcoins created. As if that wasn’t enough, the newly created currency Bitcoin Cash encountered its own governance crisis, ultimately leading to two forks as well.

This happens because Bitcoin has no clear way of knowing what the community consensus is for direction. Other than social media, which can be gamed and is sometimes rampant with censorship, with massive egos claiming superiority, BTC has no governance mechanism to rely on.

Thanks to the invention of incentivized masternodes, Dash does not have this problem. There are some strong personalities in Dash, and there is no shortage of disagreements, just like any other large crypto community. The difference with Dash is, we never dwell on arguments long enough to create irreconcilable differences.

Differing ideas are presented, debated, and voted on by the decentralized group of large stakeholders (masternodes). The result is respected, and the currency moves forward, with nothing but a few bruised egos. The doomsday scenario of a fork does not materialize, due to a clear way to decide on future direction.

Because of this, we stay positive for the future.

I explain how Dash’s governance system works in this video.

Dash concerns itself with development and use, not price

It’s really incredible when you visit a Dash communication forum. There are a few die-hards who like to talk about price, but the majority remain razor-focused on development and adoption. The confidence that comes from Dash’s innovations leads to this attitude. Also the fact that Dash aims to be used as a day-to-day money leads this to be high on our priority list.

We celebrate the usage of Dash in far-off places like Nigeria, Germany, and Venezuela. We help the development team create new versions with even smoother features. We tip each other constantly in Dash, creating new transactions on the blockchain.

We recently performed a stress test where we had over 3 million Dash transactions in a 24-hour period, a record in the industry. This did not get much coverage, of course, but it happened.

For Dash’s usage, we stay positive for the future.

If Dash were the market leader, things would have been different in 2018

Leading by example is something that Dash is great at. Stable, secure, fast operations, and a unified community is the reality here. Compare that to the never-ending drama in Bitcoin, and you can see that Dash really should be given a shot to assume this role one day.

I’m not saying that Dash would have prevented the bear market, because crypto markets are heavily manipulated. I am saying, however, that if Dash’s stability and innovations were put into the spotlight the same way that Bitcoin’s failures were, the bear market may not have been so long. The added infrastructure investment that would befit a digital currency that has its act together may have reversed the bear at some point in 2018 as well.

In short, the network keeps growing despite the price declines and the reduced speculation. Proud to see the strategy working on the metrics that determine long-term success. Heads down… we are getting there! — Ryan Taylor (@RTaylor05) December 6, 2018 Dash Core Group CEO reflects the thinking of Dash Nation.

Watch out for Dash in 2019!

Despite the fact that Dash’s accomplishments get the silent treatment and we feel sometimes like we are yelling into a sound-proof room, the momentum doesn’t stop. Dash’s community continues to grow, innovations keep coming, and adoption is happening globally.

Bitcoin had its chance to lead, and it’s doing a miserable job. It really needs to make way for a project that knows how to lead by example, and could quite possibly help lift the whole industry out of the mess it’s in.

If you are new to Dash and just reading about it for the first time, or you thought that we were a scam coin, I don’t blame you. That’s the way it’s been during Dash’s short history. Share this article, help us get the word out! You are welcome to join us in Dash Nation as we help forge the future financial freedom for many around the world.