Re: [ANN][DRK] DarkCoin | First Anonymous Coin | First X11 | First DGW

Just putting this out there in light of Limlims stepping back:

My background is in psychological operations with the US Army, which is um. ..well marketing, in a certain sense.

If it would be useful, I'm willing to take over (or at least contribute to) what he was doing in the interim until we find a pro marketing firm/individual.

Just PM me if I can be of any assistance.

Chuck out some suggestions and proposals mate so we can mull them over. Don't worry about getting anything wrong, you can't hope to compete with me on that! Wink

Seriously the more ideas the better, preferably with some actual plan to implement them.

Off the top of my head:

Have this thread locked to all but eduffield and internetape, because it's basically a goatfuck at this point.
Move all conversation to darkcointalk forums.
Stop putting every little thing to a community vote. Consider community input carefully, but lead.
Recruit "inner circle" to float ideas past before they're presented to the community. Off the cuff comments or ideas from devs or anyone even loosely associated with the devs MUST be carefully vetted before going public from here on out.
Contain official discussion pertaining "marketing and branding" either to a closed or heavily moderated thread on darkcointalk. Stop discussing these things in public until they're better refined and thought out. Too many cooks in the kitchen - good intentions all, but very few who know what they're talking about.
Contain official discussion pertaining to major changes to the coin or anything tertiary (eg foundation, bounties) to a closed thread on darkcointalk. Present ideas to the community only after thorough vetting. Stop discussing these things in public until they're better refined and thought out.
Designate specific individuals for specific tasks - stop crowd sourcing. Nice idea in principle, chaos in practice.
Three different types of information campaigning: white (we claim responsibility), gray (responsibility is ambiguous), black (make it appear as though someone else is responsible). Each of these can be put to extensive use for this coin. Leave it to your imagination, but this is one reason marketing must be a closed discussion.
Identify target audiences, tailor marketing for each, create products, vet, disseminate.
Stop kidding yourselves about how this coin will be used. Without condoning or condemning, engage ALL potential target audiences. Tailor marketing accordingly.
STOP entertaining new ideas in regards to logos and branding. The decision has been made. Own it. Get it off the goddamn table as the foremost discussion topic of discussion.

A military state ...

Basic corporate PR man.

As long as Darkcoin is not more widely known I don't see the benefit to "exile" ourselves on the dedicated forum. There are far worst threads here in term of content for other coins, and nobody is complaining.

First, it's plenty widely known. Look at almost any thread on this forum related to "most promising alt-coins" questions and you'll see Darkcoin in every other response.

Second, if bitcointalk.org is meant to be the primary means of raising awareness of this coin, then it is doomed to death by myopia.

Everyday there are people (investors, miners) who don't know a thing about Darkcoin, but learn more and become interested in it by seeing that active thread on bitcointalk.org yes.

So continue using it for announcements to keep it bumped and funnel traffic to darkcointalk.

I agree with the sentiment, the more structured approach which I too have been thinking about, and the attitude to professionalism.

But because you didn't announce all this on darkcointalk first, that sort of says the full locking down and moving over is not on the cards just yet - yet, is the key word.

The marketing stuff, logo confirmation etc, that should shift over to darkcointalk, with cross links on posts.

IMO.

EDIT: I thought I read something along similar lines

Quote from: eduffield on April 20, 2014, 03:51:38 PM

Quote from: chompyZ on April 20, 2014, 03:20:27 PM

Quote from: eduffield on April 20, 2014, 02:55:54 PM

Quote from: Simcom on April 20, 2014, 02:38:20 PM

Ok, I have an alternate idea. Let's start a Darkcoin foundation. The goal of the foundation would be to further darkcoin in all aspects (marketing, legal, charity, bounties etc.).

To further the foundation's goals, let's try to persuade the major pools to voluntarily donate 0.1% of mining output to the foundation (this can come directly out of the fee they charge miners - if they charge a 1% fee, they can either tack on .1% or keep their fee at 1% and pocket 10% less than they do currently). This would of course be COMPLETELY VOLUNTARY. In exchange the pool will be given special status on the main darkcoin website/subreddit/forum post etc. Something simple like "Darkcoin Foundation donor" and a special little icon next to the pool name. If we could get the major pools to agree we could generate some significant bounties for important causes, and most importantly it would be voluntary. Discuss.

That's fine by me, that's actually the same amount of money I proposed above but via donations. That would allow for us to pay for marketing costs, building the foundation, etc. Sounds great.

I'm also fine with that bcs it means a steady stream of coins with which we can do things properly.

As for creating the foundation, I'm also in favor, and have another proposal in terms of its functioning:

I propose to set the foundation, and have its annual and important 'voting' decisions performed in a proof-of-stake manner.
that means that bagholders will send a 0.000001DRK to wallet A or B or C based on their vote.
Each vote can represent a single hand, or a wallet (the amount of DRK it contains).
The script should obviously check that the coins in the wallet are not newly transferred so as to avoid double counting.

That's a neat idea. I think we could implement that for all Darkcoin decisions (why not into the client itself, it could just sign the inputs to prove the stake and post them to a website).