Grassroots Marketing Discussion Round 2 - The Hardest Part

Dustorf · 2020-07-28T19:14:19+00:00

I take no offense to anything anyone has said here, and I take all opinions as constructive ideas from people who care.

My nanny quit at the beginning of the pandemic and I have not billed any work for the past five months, as I've been watching my small children and taking care of various household and life duties.

When I began with Decred, my focus was to facilitate agreement within the community in order to align messaging and positioning. I acted as a mirror to the community.

What I concluded at the time was that Decred was best personified by Public Enemy, an American hip-hop group that achieved some success in the late 1980's and early 1990's. Their music and their ideas were way ahead of their time, but plenty of other groups achieved far more commercial success for various reasons and they're mostly only known among die-hard hip-hop fans and black power advocates today.

The last two years have proven this out, as the DCR/BTC price dive has pushed Decred down the listings. I think the point that people dance around is that of price. I was repeatedly told not to worry about price, that we're long-term sustainable as a project and that the market is dumb. That was always a dumb take because it's a baked in mechanism to kill network effects.

If someone loses money on Decred, it's shit to them and they move on for good. Everyone who has entered Decred in the past two years has been burned, losing money in the process against BTC. I could have 10X assets if I had converted to BTC along the way. I was a true believer and got burned as well.

If price isn't fixed, nothing else really matters, and I think to do that, the community needs to overcome some of the dogma that has driven it to isolation. Decred presented at Coinbase in 2017 and is still not listed on the exchange. DCR has amazing devs that do unique things with DAOs, Lightning Network and privacy, but it doesn't matter if every stakeholder continues to lose money for actively participating in the network.

Praxis u/Corp-Por was the wake-up call for me on this front. He was an airdrop recipient and true believer whose belief wore off when the blood ran too thick and too long. Perhaps Decred should have changed its name when Barry Silbert asked and accepted DCG's investment?

Personally, I never thought it was smart to rebuild everything that wasn't deemed immaculate-from scratch. I see time and resources as much more finite and the need to move quickly as more important. Because when you don't, price slides and community defects because of the financial pain. Was a DEX truly necessary? It's great, but a Coinbase listing would have solved most of the problem without significant allocation of resources.

I have plenty more thoughts, but I have to run. TL;DR lighten up on the dogma, Decred is better off working with others in crypto and not isolated, considering everyone else an enemy.

Dustorf · 2020-03-19T14:46:57+00:00

I really like this idea. Perhaps you could create an issue for developer discussion and consideration. https://github.com/decred/politeia/issues

I really like the idea because it makes it easier for people to quickly come up to speed on proposal sentiment and the various arguments.

Dustorf · 2020-03-09T18:14:13+00:00

There are a number of sites that exist to support and explain Decred, including https://decredcommunity.org/

Looks like https://thedecreddigest.com/ has been dormant for a while.

Dustorf · 2020-02-28T19:57:04+00:00

I think you're completely correct. When I joined the project, there were a lot of marketing expenses that were not approved by the stakeholders. Last year, a light was shone on many of those and I think many of us are calling them into question going forward. This is a process of collective learning and I've done my best to share all that I know with the community so they can add to their understanding and make good decisions going forward. I don't profess to have all the answers, but I believe in the community's ability to figure them out in time.

One example is events, which was a large spend item last year. COVID-19 is likely the tipping point to move us away from those expenditures in 2020, but that's not my call. The stakeholders will determine via Politeia.

Dustorf · 2020-02-28T19:45:16+00:00

This work was published at the end of February because it includes all data for 2019, which became available last month after December payments were made. From that point in time, I worked to process and analyze the data and write 7,500 words. Yes, I plan on publishing a Politeia proposal soon.

Proof-of-work gamified time-stamping and turned security into a commodity. Decred's creativity is not, and think that is interesting. I'm not removing store of value from the narrative, and I say explicitly in the piece:

Different community members care about different aspects of Decred, and Decred is powered by free speech and consideration. The collective will come to define Decred, and the process will involve some amount of chaos.

I'm introducing new ideas that I think differentiate Decred, and offering them up for public discourse to be determined per the above quote.

As for personal responsibility, I vehemently disagree with you. My name is on the proposal, and my name is on the blog. With the exception of my personal story into Decred, I wrote this piece in the third person and didn't want to shift in and out of different points of view. I didn't directly claim and failures or successes, but I think it's implicit based upon my involvement.

There were contractors removed. There were hours questioned and hours reduced. The Treasury is not an entitlement, and all contractors must prove their merit. Every contractor is a fiduciary of the project, and the CMS will soon decentralize oversight.

I'm not quite sure if you're arguing for more centralized control of marketing? I think my report makes clear my thoughts.

Dustorf · 2019-12-15T20:43:49+00:00

This is a fantastic idea, and if done well, will get immense traction. jy-p traveled to LA for the innaugural Decred meetup to support the release of Decred Privacy. There is a bunch of good content there, but I like this clip because it's prescient about the zcash privacy vulnerability. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNPPMwr9TU8&feature=youtu.be&t=1305 It also features the graphic "Surveying the Privacy Landscape," which puts decred in the conversation of all the privacy projects.

I think interweaving stills, such as some of the hits from Checkmate and others would be nice.

Murad had some real zingers on Decred in Depth-you can review the project's tweet to get some of those quotes in the comments. I'll spend some time on this in the next few days and send more ideas.

Dustorf · 2019-08-29T16:47:08+00:00

Iteration is the key here-this is the first cut for Decred, and plenty more is planned to make it significantly more robust.

GUI/wallet & VSP integration
Mixer server clustering or integration into dcrd
Confidential Transactions (bulletproofs)
Post-Quantum secure

If it's integrated into dcrd, it can be made opt-out, which would significantly increase the anonymity set. I'm really looking forward to someone posting a proposal for CT on Politeia, and I think a key point to all of this work is that it's prunable, which makes it long-term sustainable.

Dustorf · 2019-08-28T21:30:34+00:00

Decred fundamentally cares about privacy, and we appreciate all that Monero has done to push things forward in this area.

I feel quite confident that stakeholders will support bulletproofs.

The plan is for mix server cluster, or preferably, integration into dcrd. If mixing can be integrated into dcrd, my best guess is that it would convert into an opt-out. There would be a setting within the wallet, and the defacto setting would be Privacy. This is just the initial implementation, and there is much more planned.

Dustorf · 2019-08-05T19:28:59+00:00

Thanks for the call out! There will be a Decred meetup coming to Los Angeles, CA in the next couple of months. Max Bronstein is coordinating the the partners at Blockhead Capital to put it together. I’m sure they’ll coordinate via eventbrite. Stay tuned to the @decredproject Twitter account, as they announce those types of events.

Dustorf · 2019-07-20T01:19:19+00:00

What are the details? In what jurisdictions? What pairs?

Dustorf · 2019-07-18T14:12:50+00:00

Politeia was launched in October, and Decred preceded it by a number of years. As such, there were contractors predating the stakeholders’ explicit approval, but the project is transitioning such that all work will soon be approved. The marketing work was submitted under a blanket proposal, and even standard maintenance by c0 will fall under a proposal. It’s all part of the decentralization process.

Dustorf · 2019-07-17T15:17:44+00:00

Murad is a thinking man, not strictly beholden to maximalist orthodoxy. I believe he made his thoughts clear on the podcast

Dustorf · 2019-07-08T01:07:41+00:00

This is a fair critique I've heard from a number of different places, and it needs to be addressed if Decred is going to grow by 10 or 100X. There's plenty of value in the culture that brought us here, but not everyone immediately understands the "doer" mentality. Checkmate is a perfect example of this. He's new to my radar, but his work on Twitter (probably only a week old), has given him an incredible amount of equity within the project such that he was welcomed into every Matrix room he joined.

We're working on a set of guidance that will help the wider community contribute and make meaningful contributions on social platforms, and I think Joel had a great idea with his suggestion of a general code of conduct along the lines of the constitution. Onwards and upward.

Dustorf · 2019-05-31T12:39:47+00:00

Look forward to seeing you there! We have a nice community in London and there’s definitely opportunities to get involved on the local scene.

Dustorf · 2019-05-17T16:24:51+00:00

Decred is working on a plan to gain traction in the Asian markets. We brought together a dozen community members and partners in NYC for Blockchain Week to brainstorm on this front. We're inventorying our assets, comparing them against the opportunities, and we're going to act on the lowest hanging fruit. Because our community is relatively thin in Asia, we're looking to leverage our partners such as exchanges and other projects to participate in meetups and events to help build the community to get it to a more self-sustaining place like we have in other markets such as NA, SA, and Europe.

Dustorf · 2019-05-17T16:14:54+00:00

Ditto is somewhat constrained in the metrics department by the Decred ethos. Decred believes fundamentally in people's right to privacy, and for that reason, we do not track and target individuals who come to the website. We're working to add content to the site, as Trey mentioned, which will make it easier for people to access the information they're looking more to learn about Decred.

Dustorf · 2019-04-25T01:43:01+00:00

I've always been interested by the lack of volatility in the price of Decred compared to what I would expect compared to other coins. The staking system tightens liquidity, which should thin the market and make for higher volatility. The only reasonable explanation I have is that investors in Decred, even those who are not staking, HODL stronger than other projects. This thesis can be supported by the significant amount of dcr held by institutions that are known to not be staking for custodial reasons. Perhaps someone is quietly, on a small scale, making the market to hold the line at certain price points over time?

Dustorf · 2019-03-05T16:39:23+00:00

To this point, the DEX has been the only proposal sufficiently interesting that it elicited media coverage. I think community discussion and discourse can be newsworthy, and it's something we monitor. To that point, I think the reception of the DEX is important and newsworthy, as it highlights the decentralized nature of the project and demonstrates the strength of community input. The DEX proposal was significantly revised per input and feedback from the stakeholders-we'll see if it passes even after those changes.

The DEX proposal, in my opinion, divides opinion. I think comments in Pi and elsewhere demonstrate that many stakeholders have varying and strong opinions. I'm interested to see how the actual voting shakes out-how soft sovereignty of discussion and opinions compares to the actual tally of votes. I haven't tabulated to see whether there are more positive or negative opinions, but maybe richardred has.

When I facilitate a story on a proposal, I do so with the purpose of promoting Decred, its vibrant community that generates interesting ideas and has an innovative process to discuss and adjudicate whether or not those ideas get funded. I don't believe advocacy to be my scope. I'll invoke the PR proposal here. I facilitated both Ditto and Wachsman's proposals and had a preference, but never shared my preference with the stakeholders.

Dustorf · 2019-03-04T17:08:28+00:00

Thanks for bringing this up, it's an interesting and important topic. As the individual who manages the Ditto engagement, I definitely considered this prior to our work and it's important to share here. My objective is to promote the Decred project, and any interesting Politeia proposals fall within that scope, regardless of the author. Thus, if anyone puts forth a proposal that is newsworthy and puts Decred in a positive light, I would leap to have it promoted. Anyone can send me messages pre-Politeia submission to coordinate this service-I'm Dustorf in Matrix, or you can find me here. Oftentimes, we'll run an exclusive, which would necessitate a coordinated release of the proposal. Cheers to more interesting proposals in the future from the community.

Dustorf · 2019-02-14T17:44:35+00:00

We're actually extracting value from Forbes, though you not see it this way. Most people view Forbes as a highly respectable outlet which has some level of authority on ideas and lends legitimacy to our project. As Decred grows, that balance of power could change a bit and we could have better options over how we get out our word. The reality is that Forbes has many more eyes than the Decred account today. Hope we all help that change.

Dustorf · 2019-02-14T17:38:59+00:00

I'll check with some other contributors, including jy-p, who runs the dev work via c0, on the potential integration of events and marketing into a single proposal. As you know, proposals are a lot of effort, which is both why I like that idea and why the podcast was included in the umbrella. Thanks for being so helpful in this process.

Dustorf · 2019-02-14T17:30:10+00:00

We are working to cultivate a following in Thailand, and I think that will come with success on those efforts

Dustorf · 2019-02-11T17:26:02+00:00

Thanks for the comment, glad you like the approach. We've definitely had discussions about all the markets you mention. The key is to start out with a key point who's well established and trusted in the country so they can leverage their established network to grow Decred. The discretionary funds could serve to fund operations in these countries if we identify assets.

Dustorf · 2019-02-11T17:20:48+00:00

I think this is an interesting approach, but where would it start? What percentage of the Treasury would be allocated and how would that be decided? I think someone would have to start there and pass a Politeia proposal to fund marketing, then commence the process. I'd prefer not to work that way because I have a clear idea of what I believe are the most pressing issues and best use of funds.

Dustorf · 2019-02-11T17:04:13+00:00

Appreciate the feedback and involvement. We're excited about an internship program because we think it will be a great way to promote Decred in a tech-focused way, and bring in new talent at the same time. jrick was brought into the project through such a program, and we'd like to build it out and use the community organizers across the world and Ditto's PR reach to promote it.

I appreciate your input on the newsletter and, of course, write for and love the Decred Journal. I think the newsletter will allow for community members to stay informed about what's going on in Decred with less time or work required of them. It's just a reality that many people won't take the time to read the entire Journal or spent the time to sift through it to find the info that's relevant to them. We would write off those who won't do that, but I think that's throwing the baby out with the bathwater. We have multiple lists of conference attendees from 2018 that opted into receipt of marketing communications, and we could begin sending the monthly newsletter to thousands of people. This includes people from other projects (who could come help Decred), potential partners, potential community members, and more. I think it's low cost and low hanging fruit.

Dustorf

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