Why Decred (DCR) is the new Bitcoin

Of the many similarities Decred (Decentralized Credit) shares with Bitcoin, its steady bullish recent price growth very similar to BTC’s last year is what probably first draws more attention. Take a look at this graph:

Source: https://coinmarketcap.com/

Since its inception, Decred has grown around 11600%, rising to #30 in market cap. Since the beginning of 2018, many big altcoins had huge losses in growth, including Ripple, which lost 34% of their average market cap, and Nano, which lost 64.17%, while Decred grew 23,02%

Also, this is the Rate of Change in relation to Bitcoin for Ripple:

Source: https://coinigy.com/

And this is Decred’s:

Source: https://coinigy.com/

Decred is, financially, in a really good position right now. And when saying that Decred is the new Bitcoin, it’s not as a “silver standard” like Litecoin. Decred is coming to be the Bitcoin 2.0 we need.

Besides having a relatively similar history and being developed by the team which developed the btcsuite, we could also say that DCR is a coin which serves for the same purpose like Satoshi’s does, and shares most of its good qualities, but added with some tweaks a lot of people thought were essential. Decred’s core fundamentals were actually based on an opinion piece published in 2015 outlining Bitcoin’s biggest challenges: governance, funding and powerful miners having too much influence on the blockchain. All of these three problems are solved with Decred’s clever hybrid consensus system.

That said, autonomy can be said to be the core of their mission. There is no central authority for decision making, as stakeholders are the ones who set the rules through voting, in a process which is intricated to their hybrid mining-validation system which is, yes, another main feature of Decred. We’ve seen voting before – some platforms like BitShares and Ark have a dPoS system, but the case is totally different in Decred.

Decred Tickets

Hybrid PoW/PoS system

Decred blockchain both employ miners create blocks and validators to validate them, creating a hybrid PoS/PoW ledger, though the validator staking system doesn’t work quite, in the same manner, it does in any usual PoS blockchain, like Cardano.

Blocks are mined as usual. Then, stakeholders lock some DCR to buy a “ticket” to put on some block created. 5 tickets are randomly chosen to validate each new block mined and if 3 of them are staked for the block, then it’s added to the chain. Tickets are selected to vote with an average time of 28 days. When mined and validated, 30 coins are rewarded, 60% going to miners, 30% to validators (voters) and 10% to Decred development subsidy.

Voting

Tickets can also be used to vote for or against proposed changes on the Blockchain. Votes are direct and not on delegates like on dPoS systems. They happen naturally. When a change is proposed, 95% of the 1000 new blocks created must have the latest block version (consistent with the upgrade) and 75% of the of the votes cast within a 2016 block interval must have the latest vote version. Then there’s the actual voting. After a Rule Change Interval (RCI – when 8064 blocks are created), stakeholders cast a “yes”, “no” vote or abstain. Then, the rules are: if there’s more than 90% abstentions or less than 75% majority of “yes” or “no” non-abstaining votes, the agenda will remain active for the next RCI; if 75% of the votes are positive, the change will be implemented in an RCI period; If 75% are negative, the agenda will never activate, the same happens if it the voting reaches its expiration date without a 75% “yes” or “no” majority.

A hard fork happens when a new consensus change is decided. Decred’s code is built to be prepared for several changes and additions. Implementing features necessary for the Lightning Network is an example of a voting which occurred in Decred’s voting dashboard.

Features of a hybrid Blockchain

This new mining-validation system allows profiting both from mining and staking. While still heavily ASIC-relying, sometimes staking pools or even running solo nodes will be more profitable than mining, leaving both people which can contribute with hashing capability for mining new coins and stakeholders with something to gain.

It’s evident how it solves those three fundamental problems mentioned before: in Decred, miners’ power over decisions is limited both because they share the block rewards with validators and because any changes have to be literally voted by the stakeholders. Leaving some of the block’s subsidy to Decred’s development also solves the funding problem. It’s no wonder why it’s growing so nimbly.

With all essential features which make Bitcoin the #1 coin and a similar recent history and dev team, but with a brilliant system which puts PoS in PoW, Decred is the best of both worlds. Or maybe, if time will tell, it’s the best in the world.

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Disclaimer: This article should not be taken as, and is not intended to provide, investment advice. Global Coin Report and/or its affiliates, employees, writers, and subcontractors are cryptocurrency investors and from time to time may or may not have holdings in some of the coins or tokens they cover. Please conduct your own thorough research before investing in any cryptocurrency and read our full disclaimer.

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