Cryptocurrency Dash has announced three new business partnerships with GoCoin, Strike Social and Piiko to enable Dash holders to pay for good and services at additional partnering companies. Dash has also unveiled a new US$300,000 initiative with the Arizona State University to accelerate research, development and education in the blockchain field.

The integration of Dash with GoCoin, an e-commerce digital currency payments processor, will allow people to use Dash to pay for products and services on popular mainstream websites like Cheapair.com, RE/MAX.com, Movietickets.com and Lionsgate.com.

“We are honored to be working with these three great companies, each with their own increasingly important use case,” said Ryan Taylor, the CEO of Dash Core. He said the partnership with GoCoin in particular will help spread merchant adopting of Dash.

GoGoin CEO Margot Ritcher said:

“We are working with Dash because we have a high degree of confidence in the Dash team and are fans of the mining reward formula to support not just the miners, but also the healthy ecosystem of service providers. We look at Dash as one of the best and upcoming transactional coins.”

Dash’s partnership with Chicago-based Strike Social, a social media advertising optimization firm, will enable clients looking to optimize their advertising spend on YouTube and other social media platforms to pay for the service in Dash. Strike Social serves clients such as XBox, Coca-Cola, and Netflix.

Taylor said the integration of Dash will help enhance the reach of the cryptocurrency as an alternative form of payment, particularly for big brands during social media advertising campaigns.

Piiko, a prepaid phone company based in Dubai which works with over 600 mobile operators across 137 countries, will allow users to top-up their mobile phones using Dash.

The new business partnerships follow the announcement earlier this week of a new R&D initiative with the Arizona State University (ASU).

The US$350,000 Dash-ASU agreement include the creation of the Dash Scholars Program, which will provide US$100,000 in scholarships for undergraduate and graduate research fellowships, an additional US$100,000 in funding for ASU’s Blockchain Research Lab (BRL) and US$50,000 in new funding for the Luminosity Lab to finance open source projects, and a blockchain course development, with US$100,000 for creating an online graduate course expected to be offered at ASU this fall.

Dash and ASU announced the creation of the BRL at ASU in August 2017. The BRL focuses on making blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies accessible.

According to Dragan Boscovic, the director of the BRL and a research professor in ASU’s School of Computing, Informatics and Decision Systems Engineering, the lab is investigating practical business applications for banking transactions, property exchanges and contract-based dealings that benefit from bypassing third-party brokers.

It is currently working with a Phoenix-area company to formulate a blockchain for eco-energy applications, such as exchanging stored solar power within neighborhoods.