What is Decred (DCR)?
Decred (DCR) is the native cryptocurrency for the blockchain of the same name. Short for “Decentralized Credit”, Decred stands to be a fully decentralized and autonomous digital currency. It prioritizes community input and uses an open, decentralized governance model. The most accurate Decred price information can be viewed in the chart above.
Who Founded Decred?
Decred is an open-source project under Company 0, a cryptocurrency software development firm. The company is spearheaded by Jake Yocom-Piatt. He’s a blockchain developer who has been involved with numerous Bitcoin-related projects, including the development of the Daemon Lightning Network and the btcsuite software.
Decred officially launched in February 2016. At the time, the DCR price was around $1.5. The Decred coin’s volatility was relatively low during its first year in the market, with the value generally balancing within the $0.50-$2.5 range.
The goal of Decred is to provide a fully decentralized and autonomous cryptocurrency, as the team behind it found that Bitcoin was straying further away from its decentralization. Some of the concerns that Yocom-Piatt had regarding Bitcoin were the technical difficulties and the amount of control that Proof-of-Work (PoW) miners have.
Since 2016, Decred has shown some significant volatility, with frequent fluctuations upwards and downwards. It marked the beginning of 2018 with the DCR price hitting $100 for the first time, with a short-lived decline in the spring before the value hiked back up in May.
What Are the Features of Decred?
Decred was developed as Bitcoin’s spiritual successor set to improve the decentralization of the older asset. As such, the overall supply of decred has a hard cap of 21 million. The coin is deflationary. As the supply becomes more scarce, the Decred price is expected to steadily increase.
The Decred system aims to reduce the chances of a monopoly forming to a minimum. This is done by ensuring all Decred token holders have an equal amount of power and influence. This is reinforced by the key utilities of Decred – governance and node operations.
Compared to Bitcoin, Decred is a smaller-scale asset. It has been somewhat susceptible to the market trends set by Bitcoin, although there are some notable differences. For example, when Bitcoin reached its, at the time, record-high in November 2021, the Decred price was actually on the decline, having fallen from its 2021 peak of $250 to roughly $100.
Decred uses a hybrid consensus mechanism that combines Proof-of-Work (PoW) with Proof-of-Stake (PoS). This was done as a direct solution to the concerns of PoW miners having too much decision-making power that Yocom-Piatt voiced.
The hybrid PoW/PoS mechanism prevents any one miner from taking over the large majority of the network transactions. Both stakeholders and PoW miners are eligible to block rewards. However, miners receive 60% of the awards, stakeholders receive 30%, and the remaining 10% is held in the Decred Treasure for future project expenses.
The PoW technology works following the same principle as in other blockchains. Miners validate transaction data and add new blocks to the chain. However, the PoS side of the algorithm introduces a new mechanic of voting using tickets.
Users can obtain voting tickets by staking their Decred coins. Then, the tickets are called to participate in a vote randomly. The voting occurs on-chain and is used to make decisions on protocol changes and updates. The proposals can be submitted by any member of the Decred crypto community.
The Decred price for the ticket is adjusted algorithmically for every 144 blocks or every 12 hours. Each user can vote using no more than a single ticket within a server. Tickets are stored in digital wallets. The wallet must be online to cast the vote, otherwise, the ticket is marked as “missed”.
Decentralized governance is one of the key functions that keep the Decred network running. The team emphasizes the importance and power of the Decred community – all transactions are confirmed by the token holders, and changes to the system cannot be made without a governance vote.
