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Dash NEXT has won the “DAO Building of the Year” award over Maker DAO and DAO Casino at the A.I. & Blockchain Summit in Malta for its innovations and ability to drive further cryptocurrency adoption.

Congratulations Dash NEXT on winning the DAO Building of the year 2019 Award, sponsored by AmaZix. Dash NEXT aims to scale, grow and accelerate Dash merchant adoption and consumer activation to the next level. #AIBCsummit #AIBCNov19 #blockchainisland pic.twitter.com/ikzf6Aewtp — AIBCsummit (@AIBCsummit) November 7, 2019

Felix Mago of Dash NEXT, which received the award on Dash’s behalf, explained that while he “cannot tell for sure why the judges voted for [Dash NEXT]”, he does believe it is because of the organization “driving mass adoption and enabling people to do stuff with cryptocurrencies beyond trading”. Mago further explained that the Dash DAO empowers groups to function as a real-world businesses by being able to pay workers, and this has been a major reason why Dash Thailand and Dash NEXT have been able to see success in growing Dash’s merchant and partner network in numerous industries:

“One major reason why we are achieving this and why Dash is different from other projects in the crypto space is simple, yet very important: our governance model allows us to pay people doing a great job. We have teams all over the world that are able to leverage local networks and create great partnerships. People outside of Dash start to see that more and more, at least this is the feedback I receive at all conferences and it is also the story I always tell when speaking at those events.”

Leveraging Dash’s unique features to drive more adoption

The Dash NEXT team also took advantage of being in the spotlight to talk with others at the event about using Dash in their systems and the overall reception of Dash was positive:

“We had a great feedback and are currently in the process of following up the massive amount of new contacts and possible partnerships with exchanges, payment, CBD/Cannabis, gambling and other companies.”

Mago also expanded that the reason that these companies found the Dash ecosystem appealing was due to the fact that “they see value [because] they understand that we provide more than just cryptocurrency payments”. Dash NEXT and the Dash community can provide “a great network with high marketing value” and “allow individual end-to-end solutions, e.g. fiat settlement in a number of different currencies” through the numerous partnerships that Dash DAO organizations have forged. Mago also used the award to highlight what he believes will continue to drive more Dash adoption going into the future.

“It is important to always think from a user perspective: give users as many options as possible to buy great stuff with Dash and give them an incentive to use Dash over other options. I hope a combination of extending our merchant network and pushing on the marketing and PR side will drive Dash adoption and usage in 2020.”

Dash leveraging local knowledge to drive adoption

The Dash DAO allocates a max of 10% of each month’s block rewards to various projects that the masternode network votes on and believes will drive additional adoption and usage, which will then create added value for the Dash network. This method enables local groups to receive funding from a decentralized source, and provides incentives to continuously show results to renew funding without being beholden to an outside investment group. Additionally, on-the-ground groups can leverage their local knowledge to ensure that the best strategy is taken and relay any pertinent consumer demands to the development team. The structure of Dash allows for a decentralized organization that many arms, but can still communicate with each other.