DCR in a Nutshell

Decred (DCR) was released on February 1, 2016 with a maximum supply of 21,000,000 DCR tokens. Decred is an open and progressive cryptocurrency that incorporates a system of community-based governance integrated into its blockchain, similar to Bitcoin. It innovatively integrates governance mechanisms in the blockchain and solves the main governance problems of Bitcoin through a hybrid PoW/PoS consensus mechanism. It aims to become the best globalpayment-based digital currency after Bitcoin.

DCR’s Inception

In 2010, Jake Yocum-Piatt founded Conformal Systems, which has been funding Bitcoin development efforts. In 2013, Jake and several other Bitcoin developers created the btcsuite wallet, a full-node wallet that was different from the one from Bitcoin Core. Prior to that, Bitcoin Core was the only full-node wallet in existence, so the Bitcoin Core team naturally rejected and attacked btcsuite. In 2014, the development team led by Jake left the Bitcoin community. Jake had previously been working on Bitcoin development. On the one hand, he could not stand the fact that Bitcoin Core had a monopoly over the Bitcoin network's software implementation. On the other hand, he believed that Bitcoin development was being hindered by big miners and that developers contributing a lot of quality code weren’t getting paid and had to rely on donations. On November 30, 2015, Jake published an article titled "Bitcoin's Biggest Challenges" and hinted at the imminent release of a new cryptocurrency that would resolve these dilemmas.

On December 15, 2015, Decred was officially crated, claiming to be a truly decentralized and fully autonomous digital currency.

In February 2016, Decred's mainnet was launched.

Principles of DCR

The hybrid Proof of Work (PoW) and Proof of Stake (PoS) consensus mechanism at the core of Decred keeps the distributed network of computers running its blockchain in sync.

Decred, similar to other PoW cryptocurrencies, itsminers expend energy to solve computational puzzles to validate transactions and add blocks to the blockchain. With Bitdeer’s DCRmining plans, you can effortlessly start mining .

Decred's PoS then allows those who hold DCR to validate and confirm those transactions and to also participate in the network's governance process. Stakers are given ‘tickets’,a non-transferable asset specific to the Decred network, with a maximum of 20 ticketsavailable for each block. Five of these tickets are then randomly chosen, and their owners then validate the correctness of blocks proposed by miners. Once blocks are finally settled and added to the blockchain, the block reward is distributedas follows: 60% to miners, 30% to stakers, and 10% to software developers.

Politeia is a proposal system implemented by Decred that connects all stakeholders to vote on project funding, new plans, and various protocol code changes. Decred's network effectively addresses the issue of computing power monopoly and provides an idealgovernance solution for decentralized projects.

DCR Value

Decred solves the community governance problem that has troubled the PoW projects by using a hybrid PoW and Pos consensus mechanism, , and it incentivizes users to exercise power through PoS voting to ensure that PoW miners remain compliant. PoS empowers Decred stakeholders. It enables true decentralization, as the block rewards are distributed as follows: 60% to miners, 30% to stakers, and 10% to software developers.

Decred transactions do not require centralized exchanges. Decred implements effective smart contracts through cross-chain atomic swaps between different digital currencies, ensuringreliable over-the-counter (OTC) transactions without the need for a third party. Through the Lightning Network, Decred can also directly compete with existing payment processors for fiat transactions.

Milestones

December 15, 2015: Decred was officially created. 

September 2017: Decred announced the support for atomic swaps.

October 2017: Decred added the first intelligent proposal system to advance blockchain governance.

May 2018: Decred proposed a decentralized exchange (DEX).

October 2020: Decred announced the launch of decentralized trading platform DCRDEX.

January 2021: Decred released v1.6 containing updates such as Lightning Network integration.

May 2022: Decred consensus was upgraded to increase DCR rewards for PoS verifiers from 30% to 80%.

September 2022: DCRDEX v0.5 was released, making permissionless self-custody trading more accessible.

Answer the following questions to test your DCR knowledge: 
1. What is the consensus mechanism of Decred?
2. What is the max supply of Decred?
3. When did Decred mainnet go live?