To be honest, I'm a little ticked that this started out as "Bounty pool for marketing and branding" and now it's just "Darkcoin bounties" including bug reports etc. I'm fine with that for now, if that's what the funds are most needed for at this point.
But at some point, we need a REAL marketing pool, and it shouldn't be just spent on these incremental increases in value. It should be spent on something AWESOME. Marketing is an art, you don't just pay out a couple hundred bucks to make a slightly better website or translate to an additional language. At least, that's not ultimately the best use of funds when you're ready for mass adoption. Right now, this thread has ~171,000 page views. That's great for now. A liberal estimate means maybe 200,000 people have heard of Darkcoin. All it takes is one good marketing play... one single thing that stands out, and you get over 10 million people that have now heard about your coin. Doge has no technical use whatsoever and is far less interesting than DRK, but a brilliant marketing idea like donating $30k to the jamaiican bobsled team generates over 10 million views. We need to find our own crazy marketing idea. I'm not sure what exactly that is, but something that fits DRK and will get 10 million views based just on one single marketing effort. This doesn't have to cost much, but it will take a decent chunk of any marketing pool and be worth way more than the sum of all of these incremental updates. It could be something like a billboard. You can rent out a billboard for a month that displays digital ads in a high traffic area along the freeway for under $1000/month. This probably isn't the best fit for DRK, but someone has to get creative and figure out what that is.
I'd be willing to donate 5 to 10x my previous contribution to a marketing pool with a real marketing idea like this.
+1
I am thinking something to do with Edward Snowden might be interesting. If that story had just broke and we were raising funds for him in DRK it would be perfect. The bit about the DRK fundraising would have piggy backed on all the press about him. It's less topical now though. Maybe getting the Snowden Defense Fund to accept Darkcoin would be some news?
If there is ever an individual whose privacy is violated and it becomes national news, fundraising for them may work.
Evan said (
https://bt.irlbtc.com/view/421615.msg5184431#msg5184431) he would be speaking at the Cryptocurrency Convention on April 9th but don't see him on the speakers list. If there's anything we can do to support him in that or getting similar speaking opportunities I think it is the best use of funds/time in liu of a brilliant marketing idea.
Why try court so much controversy? It will bring negative headlines. The principle that any news, even bad news, is good for publicity? Maybe, but then you spend years trying to shake off the negative image - like bitcoin and silk road.
Why not go after a more positive approach - North Korean people being able to access online payment services thanks to darkcoin - that would be practically impossible, but that sort of thing.
I'll try and see if I can get Satoshi to move his bunch of BTC though DRK. That would make the news
