Decred (DCR) – Everything Beginners Need to Know

Written by Adolph Obasogie - Reviewed by Coin Review Team

Published: Jun 19, 2018 | Last Updated: Mar 14, 2019

2025-01-22T11:47:22+00:00

What is Decred?

Decred is a digital currency that started as a fork from Bitcoin. It has the same use-case as BTC, digital money, but Decred has developed an alternative governance mechanism.

This mechanism is a hybrid between Proof-of-Work and Proof-of-Stake, where 60% of newly minted tokens are generated through PoW, 30% through PoS and 10% as a reward to development subsidy.

Decred aims to achieve better governance to their digital currency by rewarding people who bring improvement proposals to the table (if they are accepted).

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Stakeholders lock up their token to participate in a lottery, if they are chosen they get the right to validate a block and collect a block reward as compensation.

Decred has an internal voting system, uses Schnorr signatures for improved privacy and has the option to make transactions “expire” after a certain time. If a certain block height is reached and the transaction is not validated, it will be automatically canceled. This helps the network to stay usable in times of network clogging. The underlying asset is called DCR.

History

Decred was founded by Company 0 and was officially launched on 08. February 2018.

No ICO was held, Company 0 paid the development costs. 8% of the maximum supply was pre-mined, 4% was kept by Company 0 for development costs and for future funding, and 4% was airdropped to the community.

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Can Decred be mined?

Yes, it can be mined through Proof-of-Work as well as staked through PoS.

What differs Decred from other Cryptocurrencies?

Decred has a unique governance system that is a hybrid of PoW and PoS and incentivizes active participation in the network. And Decred was among the first that successfully accomplished an atomic swap; it occurred in September 2017 between Decred and Litecoin.

How much is Decred worth today?

What is the total and the circulating supply?

The total supply of DCR is 7,565,743, and the maximum supply is 2,000,000 DCR. The circulating supply at the time of writing is 7,145,743 DCR.

Where can you buy DCR?

You can buy DCR on several cryptocurrency exchanges, most notably Bittrex, Poloniex, and Upbit.

Can DCR be sold for cash?

You can sell DCR for cash on several cryptocurrency exchanges that have fiat-pairings, most notably Upbit.

Future Development

Decred is working on implementing the Lightning Network, provide further privacy options and a decentralized exchange, among Marketing Growth and improved scalability.

Verdict and Rating

5.5/10
Interesting project. What is fascinating is the decentralized governance and decision making mechanisms. Another aspect I like is that active participation is rewarded.

Overall a good project, but it is a fact that Bitcoin will likely inhabit these features or is already working on it, for example, Schnorr signatures. What is often overseen when these projects are quicker in development than Bitcoin is, that Bitcoin has 100x more on a stake on them. Bitcoin Core has its priorities on security and stability above anything else. If they implement something, then you can be sure that it is extensively tested and well understood.

New projects can move faster by bypassing extensive testing but at the end that does not mean that they are better or more technically advanced than Bitcoin. The danger for Decred is that it very well could be rendered useless by Bitcoin in the near future.

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0 / 10.0

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Disclaimer

The writer’s views are expressed as a personal opinion and are for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.