Decred Targeting Decentralization This Year
Bitcoin Magazine reported yesterday that Decred wants to totally decentralize the control of its development treasury funds.
What is Decred?
Decred is an autonomous digital currency, with a hybrid consensus system. It was built to be decentralized, self-ruling and sustainable. It was created by Bitcoin developers Jake Yacom-Piatt and David Collins in 2015. The two techies were disillusioned by the increasing centralization of the Bitcoin system, where a select group of developers were getting more and more control over the protocol.
Thus, the two, in a bid to create a structure with more open governance, launched Decred on February 8, 2016. “Decred” is short for “Decentralized Credit”.
Like Bitcoin, Decred has a 21 million token limit. However, unlike Bitcoin, 8% of that – 1.68 million – were pre-mined. Half of that sum was used to pay developers who helped with the project and the other part was airdropped to increase the network’s distribution.
How it Works
Decred is based on btcd, which is an alternate implementation of BTC and is written in Google’s programming language called “Go”. In this crypto’s system, proof of work and proof of stake work side by side, which gives the cryptocurrency holders a greater say within the system. People who own Decred can buy tickets which allows them to participate in the crypto’s protocol.
Tickets’ prices are variable depending on demand. However, at any given point in time, there need to be 41,000 tickets alive in the network. Once a new block is created, 5 tickets are randomly chosen to verify the block as well as vote on any outstanding items. Voters are awarded 6% of the block reward as an incentive.
The Future
The protocol’s most significant project so far has been its treasury system. And now the developers are planning to completely decentralize the handling of treasury funds.
Currently, the control of cash flow for the project is in the hands of Decred Holdings Group LLC. These funds are currently valued at $28 million. The intention is that control of these funds should be passed on to the entire community through a DAO – a decentralized autonomous organization. This type of smart contract requires that all spending be approved by all stakeholders.
Now, anyone in the community can submit a development idea for a small fee. Those who own tickets then vote on the ideas they want to fund. Once approved, voters can then control the release of those funds through the creation of decentralized autonomous entities.
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