[This post was censored in the the paidshill Dash pumping sub, where actual discussion beyond "2018 kind of sucked for Dash" is not allowed, and then re-posted here.]
Disappointments
In 2018, Dash failed to be listed on Coinbase while ETC and many other coins were, due to Dash's notorious Instamine, centralized development, and murky Howey Test/SEC Action status.
In 2018, Dash failed be included in the OpenBazaar project, while Monero and several other alts were added.
In 2018, efforts to hype Dash's supposedly impressive 2mb block-based tx/sec rate were crushed and humiliated when DCG's creaky old client hit a crippling software limitation around the same time as BCH and BSV were chewing through 32 and 64 megabyte blocks.
In 2018, Dash's former anti-segwit hero Craig Wright learned new facts about law and concluded Dash is an illegal security, saying so loudly in tweets backed by citations.
In 2018, Wirex and other debit card providers supported Bitcoin and many alts, but not Dash, despite a year of Shrem 2.0 shill talk about integrations 'soon'.
In 2018, Dash Core used Uphold for the "Acquire Dash" part of their Kript mobile plan, but Uphold doesn't work in Venezuela , so that pillar of their strategy was broken.
Boondoggles
In 2018, the FanDuel fiasco wasted a fortune in cash and goodwill, leaving Dash's target market of online gambling to Calvin Ayre's BSV and Roger Ver's BCH blockchains.
In 2018, the DACH Embassy fiasco wasted a fortune in cash and goodwill, as nobody ever really cared about Macrocuck/Simon/Basilpop/Ezra/Fabio running around desperately trying to look busy enough to justify their ridiculous burn rate and poor results.
In 2018, the CoPay fiasco wasted a fortune in cash and goodwill as users and devs suffered an ambush from DCG, leaving the formerly hyped "backbone of Evolution" project instantly retired to abandonware status.
In 2018, the Alt36 train-wreck-in-progress slowly lurched towards its imminent conclusion of causing more toxic FUD and wasting a fortune in cash and goodwill with zero deliverables to show for it.
Scandals
In 2018, fake "Venezuela adoption" news resulted in massive public humiliation as Twitter, r/cc, and Russia Today (ironically, the home of Dash paidshill Max Keiser) debunked hype that only amounted to useless stickers on greasy cash registers.
In 2018, Evan and Amanda were missing in action, despite Evan's previous promises to develop hardware and support the ecosystem with his vast, intentionally insta-mined fortune.
In 2018, Dash paid to hold a Bitcoin networking event at a Miami strip club, offending so many people (it was a 2nd offence for Dash with strippers at TNABC) the scandle was reported worldwide by Bloomberg, Fortue, Business Insider, etc.
In 2018, knowledge of Dash's instamine became widespread throughout the entire crypto universe and the intentional nature of Evan's faked "bug" excuse became a subject of investigation.
In 2018, Dash cargo cultists reduced themselves to shilling the dwindling number of cherry-picked metrics by which Dash was not failing utterly, such as the absurd "FairValue" and fallacious/irrelevant "ATH Masternode Count" hype.
In 2018, the KuvaCash fiasco turned toxic (wasting a fortune in cash and goodwill) resulting in a kDAO splinter group of venture capitalist MNOs and creating massive Howey Test implications.
Disasters
In 2018, a KuvaNation vs. DACH Force News civil war inflicted mass casualties, leaving a permanent split of the "DGBB" community into non-cooperative Team Tao and Team Joel factions fighting over a shrinking Treasury budget like starving rats.
In 2018, malicious MNOs trolled Dash at the protocol level and on DashCentral, causing chaos at the very end of voting cycles, thus showing the entire world Dash is not resistant to Sybil attack after all.
In 2018, Dash Clown Group Inc failed to live up to its own self-imposed "Agile Development" goals so many times they published one sketchy, final "DRAFT" roadmap, and then quietly abandoned entirely the idea of actually trying to meet deadlines (despite the dash.org page still advertising a Q4 2018 Alpha release).
Catastrophes
In 2018, a single mining pool controlled enough hashpower to prevent a timely upgrade, demonstrating that Dash's PoW is not sufficiently decentralized (due to Bitmain's monopoly on Dash ASICs).
In 2018, www.crypto51.app showed the world Dash is >90% NiceHash-able and thus may be 51% attacked easily and cheaply (<1 BTC per hour), causing Poloniex and other exchanges to require 50 confirmations (rather than using InsantSend).
In 2018, the failures of Dash's X11-based PoW security model and resulting threat of attacks caused Dash to abandon Nakamoto Consensus for a wonky, untested, homespun version of checkpoints (conceding defeat and offering an unconditional "pre-consensus" surrender before an attack even happened).
In 2018, Evolution was not here by NYE (not even an alpha version of a testnet).
In 2018, no amount of brave ThisIsFine talk about buying dips could change the fact that Dash Core Group Inc had to radically downsize due to their customary $935k/month funding being completely unsupportable.
Analysis
Never mind the price drop, even though Dash suffered worse than most of its Top 20 peers and fell in rank from #3 all the way down to #16.
Let's ignore the fact Dash is marketed to investors with the 'Masternode' feature advertised as supposedly stabilizing the price.
Let's also ignore the fact that in 2018 Dash's supposed Sybil-resistance was shown to be inadequate, as blockchain analysis revealed dozens of Masternodes trolling at the protocol level by voting no on all but the infamous DEMOTE RYAN TAYLOR proposal.
Evolution was, after years of delays, complete from-scratch reboots, and blown goals, given one final self-imposed deadline to meet.
Dash's Queen, Amanda of the Used Car Lot, declared she was going have to rethink her position regarding Duff's Instamined Masternode tokens if that deadline wasn't met.
That deadline was midnight Dec 31, 2018.
Now it's the first morning of 2019 and Evolution is nowhere to be seen.
Even worse, Dash Clown Inc is once again making negative progress towards their goals of shipping a test-net version of v13 worth of the term "Release Candidate."
Dash Clown Inc burned through ten (10) un-releasable (because broken) so-called Release Candidates.
Finally the clueless clowns (running around like headless chickens since Andy Freer was fired or rage-quit) gave up on the entire v13 RC branch and went back to tinkering with v12.
No updates to the crucial LLMQ repo have been made since November, when the price drop crushed DCG's budget and Andy suddenly left Evolution to die on the operating table.
Dash in 2018 through the eyes of Reddit's most popular crypto sub
January 2018
Congratulations: Dash out of top 10
https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/7oq515/congratulations_dash_out_of_top_10/
One of the most prolific scam coins has been beaten out of the top 10 once and for all. For this we can all be grateful.
Evidence for all your downvoters:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBxbiH_Mg44
https://medium.com/@omiros23/evans-and-dash-s-scam-story-add1f16528ae
https://steemit.com/cryptocurrency/@thedashguy/the-reason-i-call-dash-a-scam-and-echo-chamber-proof-of-the-crazed-cult-like-thinking-of-dash-community-inside
Today is a good day.
Best comment: "replaced by Tron... oh the irony".
December 2018
KFC Venezuela denies accepting dash as a form of payment
https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/a56a4e/kfc_venezuela_denies_accepting_dash_as_a_form_of/
Hi guys, check this news
https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=es&sl=es&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.criptonoticias.com%2Fsucesos%2Fkfc-venezuela-desmiente-acepte-dash-como-forma-pago%2F
https://www.forbes.com/sites/rebeccacampbell1/2018/12/07/discussions-in-place-for-dash-to-be-accepted-at-kfc-venezuela/#18baf92c5d38
https://twitter.com/dashmerchant/status/1072327769068052481
Top comment: "Yeah, more bullshit from Dash."
December 24
Dash doesn't actually look like it is being utilised by Venezuelans. Have a look.
https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/a96i3y/dash_doesnt_actually_look_like_it_is_being/
https://youtu.be/4tKvqj3U3O0
Most controversial comment: "I dont see how people dont get it. If you cant pay for food, you would invest what little you have into something as risky as crypto ? It is easy to judge from our POV but In reality, most would rather feed their familiy then look for ways to invest in some startup."
Conclusion
The Top Three Dash-related posts at r/cryptocurrency are a microcosm of Dash's start-to-finish miserable, horrible, terrible year of self-inflicted blunders, money pits, and epoch-ending cataclysms cumulating in the resolution of the Dash experiment and disproving Evan's "Dash is Digital Cash" hypothesis.