Long time lurker and hodler here - bought the first DRK in early March 2014. Also am a happy owner of several masternodes that are running without any issues for weeks now.
This is my first post and might get a bit long - so please bare with me and be nice
Overall, I'm quite happy with the idea of the rebranding finally going to be implemented - after reading about it for almost a year.
Now, I'm not a native speaker and I can only speak for myself: DASH sounds just fine to me.
It has always been difficult for me talking to friends about cryptocurrencies in general. Bitcoin is still just some kind of weird internet money for most of them, used by geeks to buy illegal stuff. So I never even actually tried to talk about or explain Darkcoin - mostly because of the name and the implications associated with it.
But that's a whole different story with a new name like DASH. DASH doesn't sound bland at all to me - it sounds simple (in a good way), quick (literally), rolls off the tongue easily and there is a lot of room for a brand to be build around it - and that's the important part!
I can also only second the post made by Minotaur26 a couple of pages back regarding Apple: Just imagine yourself speaking to Steve J. or Steve W. back in 1976 and hearing of about a computer company named "Apple" for the very first time - a computer company! Didn't make much sense back then to regular folks, probably doesn't make much sense today. But it just works. Why? Because they build one of the strongest, valuable and respected brands around that name. The Same (on a different level) applies to Uber, Circle, Square, Stripe, Slack, ... - all of them built or are in the middle of building a name and a brand for themselves. But it's not about the name - it's what you make of it!
And just to speak from my own experience after having worked in the design, development and startup area myself for the last 10 years - it just takes time getting used to a new name or design at first. Sometimes it's love at first sight - but that's very, very rare. Now, it's not love at first sight with DASH for me - but it continues to grow on me.
Dash (the detergent) is also available where I live - we luckily don't have any Kardashain stores over here - but there are also a lot of stores selling apples
Now there are a couple of down sides with the name though. The first thing that comes to mind is the searchability and distinguishability. The other thing that really needs to be taken care of is the name of the brand itself and if there are any similarly named brands competing in the
same or a
similar space - and I'm also speaking from experience here. I really do hope the foundation is on top of this, because we definitely can't afford to be forced to do another rebranding in a couple months just because something has been overlooked in that area.
I'm sad to see valuable community member like vertoe leave because of (apparently) bad communication between Evan, the foundation boad and the dev team. Now I don't know what went on behind the scenes exactly and I also didn't quite like the way the foundation and Evan handled the rebranding anouncement and especially not informing some (or all?) of the developers (just assuming that's the way it happened, based on Evan's update) beforehand. And just as a side note: This hasn't been the first time, that some announcement has been kind of screwed up - so this is definitely something that needs to be looked into and worked on!
But we will never be able to get everyone on the same boat regarding the selection of a new name - so some hard choices will have to be made and someone (or some group) will have to take them. Some people will like the changes and continue to support the coin and community around it, new users will come aboard and some long-standing members will leave.
In the end, we should all be aware that this rebranding will not be an easy undertaking - but it's necessary to take that step. It'll take time, a lot of effort and also a lot of discussion/coordination. So the proposal made by Evan to hire a company that will be taking care of establishing a new brand is a great (although probably quite expensive) idea - if it's done the right way. However, there still needs to be defined what that company will be taking care of exactly (design/wording/PR/etc) and who's going to select the company and who will pay for that.
One thing that I still don't see a suitable solution or proposal for yet is on which level certain types of discussions will have to take place and who exactly will be able to take part and have a say in them - or to put it in another way: What kind of issues and topics will be discussed on which level (devs, foundation board, foundation members, dev, masternode owners, community members, etc...). But that's probably something that should be talked about and defined on a foundation board level first.
Just also wanted to add a small remark regarding the "morse code" idea:
Now first of all, thanks for getting involved and coming up with the idea, f2000. However, I'm really not sure, if we want DASH (or whatever the name will be) to be associated with a technology that's more than 180 years old, slow (lots of "beeps" for every single character) and complicated (one needs to know what to make of all those beeps in order to understand the message or how it works).
I know that these are only the first small steps and ideas towards establishing a new brand and identity for Darkcoin - and we haven't even really settled on a new name yet. But there are a lot of facts and pitfalls that need to be considered if we want to get it right. And we really have to!
Now there is just one more thing I wanted to point out and close my first post with: The technology behind the name is still the same and it will stay that way. But in the last couple of months, DRK has evolved to something more than just being "dark" (in the sense of being anonymous) and it will continue to evolve and grow stronger.
First it became anonymous (or another term that I prefer "private") with Darksend and the Masternode network. Next it became instantaneous (or at least very fast) with InstantX. The next steps in its evolution will make transactions even more private with Mastermore Blinding and Masternode IP obfuscation, more secure for regular users with 2FA and more scalable - if the ideas Evan announced in his post (and no one is sadly really talking about at the moment) will indeed work out. But I'm just gonna trust him on this.
All of these innovations and efforts could be summed up in just one simple value proposition: Make it more
usable!
And in that case, "Darkcoin" simply isn't appropriate and doesn't appeal to a wider audience or userbase.
IMHO, it simply isn't the right name anymore to capture the spirit, believes and ideas of what Evan, all other devs, the foundation and community members are working on and trying to achieve.
Just my two duffs, though
For not a native English speaker, you put this incredibly well.
