After a lull since the beginning of September Dash has been enjoying significant growth. Starting November 12 the price of Dash has grown from $ 310 to $ 800. At the time of writing the currency is being traded for $750.

It was an outstanding year for cryptocurrencies and it is quite easy to attribute the rapid rise of Dash to speculative insanity which has captured the entire market. However, there are signs that the price of Dash is controlled by by something else. Perhaps we are seeing the first steps towards acceptance?

New integration

Today Dash and Uphold made a joint press release to announce currency integration in the uphold platform which will enable users to buy, send and sell digital currencies using the Internet or a mobile phone. According to a statement the new integration will allow 94% of the world's population to use Dash.

The integration has already taken place and Uphold plans to add support for Dash's InstantSend feature soon. InstantSend is an optional feature that is native to the Dash protocol. For users who send Dash using InstantSend transactions are fully confirmed in just a few seconds, not in minutes or hours.

Dash Core CEO Ryan Taylor wrote:


Uphold Business Development Manager, Colin Luce, said:

Early integrations

Dash announced a number of integrations and partnerships this year and each of it pushes the currency one step closer to acceptance in the real world. Some examples:

Alt36 is a company that integrates Dash into a retail POS system. The target market for Alt36 is the legal cannabis industry which is completely cut off from the banking system due to federal regulations. Currently, the marijuana industry is a cash business and the costs of guarding and transporting large amounts of cash are enormous. Since InstantSend Dash enables you to fully confirm transactions in seconds, users can make a purchase and exit the store immediately without waiting for a few confirmations.

Integration with exchanges - this year Dash was added to Bitfinex, Bitthumb, Huobi, Binance, Kraken and others. The integration with Kraken was particularly noteworthy since the Dash budget system paid Kraken $50,000 to do a security check on the currency and the InstantSend function before integrating it. Dash passed a security check and was added to the exchange in April.

BlockCypher - in February the Dash budget system funded integration with BlockCypher for the development of a hot wallet API. The API was launched some time later enabling providers to easily add Dash payment options. BlockCypher also participated in several conferences with Dash and collaborates with the Dash network to issue grants for startups in the blockchain industry.

ASU - This summer, Dash and Arizona State University announced the development of a blockchain research laboratory at the university. The lab was funded by a $50,000 Dash budget system. Fortune reports that the lab “will focus on blockchain scalability, network architecture, environmentally friendly mining, delay and bandwidth.” Later, the university may begin offering lectures with Dash Core executives.

Debit Cards - Dash is now available on several cryptocurrency debit cards enabling users to spend their Dash in any retail stores where Visa is accepted. Currently, there are about 40 million such enterprises.

At the Dash 2017 conference held in London in September of this year, Dash Core CEO Ryan Taylor announced that in the future there will be a number of integration including:
- Global brokerage service with free bank transfers;
- New integration with exchanges;
- Dash will have access to 20 new fiat currencies;
- Additional manufacturer of ATMs;
- Integration with several large retailers;
- Integrating healthcare.

2 MB blocks

The developers knew Dash will never reach mass acceptance if the currency network will not scale. Although Bitcoin and Ethereum have begun work on off-scale scaling solutions Dash announced that it is committed to online scaling solutions using larger blocks that will be processed by the stimulated network of Dash Masternotes.

Last month developers released version 12.2 of the Dash Core software and, when enough miners and masternods were updated, an increase in the size of the 2 MB block was blocked. Today larger blocks have officially become active and Dash is now capable of processing twice as many transactions per second. In the near future Dash will increase the block size to 5 MB again.

All or nothing

Last summer Dash founder Evan Duffield announced that developers are planning to scale the currency through very large blocks. According to the plan Dash block size will gradually increase to 45 MB or more which will allow the network to handle up to 50 million users. This will require masternodes to run user's equipment capable of handling such large blocks. Masternodes owners could afford this expensive equipment because their nodes get 45% of the block reward — about $65,000 a year, at today's prices.

Budgeting for success

Dash budget system was an important part of currency growth. Each month 10% of the remuneration per unit for the entire month is reserved for budget proposals. Masternodes owners, each of whom controls 1,000 DASH, votes for these proposals and that what are approved are paid directly by the DASH blockchain. Currently, the Dash budget system is able to invest $5 million monthly in projects. This money is paid to the Dash development team, community projects, conference attendance, business integration and more.

Increase of acceptance

Some argue that Dash cannot hope to compete with such well-established “titans” as Bitcoin and Etherium. However, some, like Max Keyser, believe that several cryptocurrencies can survive. Keizer notes:



Meanwhile, Taylor comments on: