About Decred (DCR)

Decred (DCR) is a cryptocurrency that is focused squarely on decentralization. All changes on its blockchain are subject to a user vote, which include miners and currency holders.  

The project was born out of a community of Bitcoin enthusiasts who wanted to improve  BTC’s protocols. One of the main issues was centralization. Miners are too powerful on Bitcoin. Decred wanted to create a currency where miners and users had a more equal say over developments. Disagreements over Bitcoin centralization have led to splits and forks already, such as Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin Gold. 

Decred runs its voting protocol using a hybrid model employing both proof of work and proof of stake. The principle is that each block must be mined with the correct nonce and ratified by at least three verifiers. The system addresses the weaknesses of both the proof of work and proof of stake models. Miners still receive block rewards while the staking verifiers get smaller rewards.

What are the Decred’s goals?

Decred wants to eliminate the risk of hard forks, especially ones that divide the community philosophy. While a hard fork is technically possible - in fact, the project just navigated its first user-driven hard fork - Decred's voting protocol ensures users get to vote on changes first. When a vote passes, the changes go live. Decred’s goal is to fix what they see as the biggest flaw of Bitcoin and become the ‘Bitcoin of governance’. 

So far, Decred has delivered what they set out to do - itself is pretty rare in crypto. After implementing the lightning network, they increased privacy and converted Decred into a decentralized autonomous agency (DAO). There’s more to come in the coming months.

How much DCR is on the open market?

DCR has a capped supply of 21 million tokens, giving it similar economics to Bitcoin, which means it should achieve higher unit prices than ecosystems with billions of tokens.

There are 11,915,800 DCR in circulating supply. Total is 21,000,000 DCR.

What the bears are saying about Decred (DCR)

• Is it different enough? The idea of creating a better version of Bitcoin is a good one. But many cryptos are trying to do that and many have died. 
• Some people like centralization: Centralized projects have more chance of becoming regulated and adopted by financial institutions. Decentralization tends to alienate investors and partners. No surprise that some of the most successful cryptos are centralized -  NEO, XRP, and BNB to name just a few.

What the bulls are saying about Decred (DCR)

• Top team: The team has been in the business for a long time and knows what it’s doing. Decred started with Jake Yocom-Piatt, the co-founder of Conformal Systems (now known as Company 0), an open-source software company focused on privacy and security. He got involved in crypto after hearing about Bitcoin in 2011 and created a tool for Bitcoin developers called btcsuite. Decred was announced in 2015 and went live in 2016.
• Community: Decred has been around for a long time compared with the newer kids on the block. With this comes a loyal following and the community have given Decred the success it has enjoyed so far. This is one of the big advantages of a decentralized project.