This post covers what happened in Decred in April. Let’s get down to business and have About section at the end.
Wallet and node software version 1.2.0 has been released. Decrediton wallet highlights: improved startup experience, redesigned overview page, added basic graphs to visualize statistics and an export to CSV (helpful for tax reporting). dcrd node software highlights: significantly faster startup and compact filters to support light clients. See full release notes and downloads here, for Decrediton use 1.2.1 bugfix release.
The release process has been improved. Instead of announcing a release date and trying to meet it, a Release Candidate 1 (RC1) will now be posted. After it has been tested an bugfixed with the help of the community, a second candidate (RC2) will be released. This is repeated until an RC version with no apparent bugs becomes the final release. The new process removes a ton of pressure from developers and users and gives more time for testing. As our primary consumer-facing product, Decrediton, is growing in features and complexity, more testing will be required for new releases.
Politeia is “Getting close to a public beta of voting” (slack). Decred plugin merged, paywall and voting are in the testing stage. Ticket voting works on testnet via CLI.
Trezor support got closer as Decred patch was merged. Please note this is only firmware support, to be usable it also needs wallet integration.
WooCommerce Decred plugin alpha version is ready for testing.
decred.org received a new sleek exchanges page.
The contributors page has been updated to add 10 new faces. Some of them are new to the project but others have been contributing for a while.
Dev activity stats for April: 152 active PRs, 125 commits, 21,656 added and 10,288 deleted lines spread across 7 repositories done by 2-7 developers per repository. (chart)
Hashrate: April started at 2.0-2.7 PH/s range and seen a general increase with some big fluctuations between lows at 2.2 and new all time high above 5.2 PH/s.
Nodes: there are 200 public listening and 500 normal nodes per dcred.eu as of May 1. 169 nodes already upgraded to version 1.2.0. Some 30 nodes were observed to be testing Release Candidate versions before the final release.
Ticket price 30-day average has seen a steady rise to 87.5 DCR. Stake participation is solid 46.1% with 3.53 million DCR as of May 1.
Updates from Obelisk’s Taek:
We got results back. They are more or less on line with the simulations
I didn’t realize this, but we don’t get the real chips back for 3 more weeks. The ones we’ve been testing are hacked together into a DIP package (they are BGA chips) that really screws up the results
There’s a decent chance that the full bga chips perform better
For the time being though, we’re pretty much on track for the hashrates estimated on the website (slack, Apr 12)
And regarding the June delivery date:
We’re still on track for batch 1. We’ve ordered most of the parts we’ll need, including the chips. We’ve got working chips, we’ve got test boards, test units, test everything. We’ve signed manufacturers to produce everything. Obelisk is going strong. (reddit, Apr 23)
We are thankful for his updates in our #pow-mining channel and hope other ASIC manufacturers will also join.
Fellow Sia miners are discussing the design of Obelisk SC1 case.
Halong: B29 units are shipping. The amount of units in first batch was estimated 450-600 by our community member. Review of DragonMint B29 published, people are discussing shipping and running the miners.
By surprise, Innosilicon announced the sale of D9 DecredMaster ASIC miner with specs identical to Halong B29 while being much cheaper ($6800 Inno vs $10499 Halong). Expected shipping date of the first batch is April 28-30. The company is active on their bitcointalk thread, also see our reddit.
Just 9 days later Innosilicon announced second batch with delivery on May 7-11 and same price of $6800. (reddit)
Decred’s Brazilian community made good progress with integrations this month.
emiliomann: On April 2nd @Rhama will launch the first BR exchange of altcoins with fiat market and totally within the laws of the Brazilian government. Decred will have the two markets DCR/BTC and DCR/BRL. It’s very difficult to fulfill all the legal requirements and get authorization to work with FIAT here.
The exchange turned out to be Profitfy. Profity is innovating by using dcrtime for their blockchain ID login via Original My. Great to see this deeper engagement with the tools that Decred provides, and not a surprise that it comes from @Rhama, who has been a community member since day one.
This seems to have spurred another exchange, Braziliex, to bring forward their launch of DCR/BRL and DCR/BTC pairs, coming just 2 hours after Profitfy launched.
Not stopping there,
emiliomann: Hey guys, this is a poll of the biggest Bitcoin exchange in Brazil that is planning to open altcoins markets. Please, help the Brazilian community by voting for Decred! Just one click. Thank you! https://twitter.com/mercadobitcoin/status/981602483268194307
Finally,
viniciusfrias: We’re excited to announce PagueCripto.com, a Brazilian crypto-to-fiat payment gateway which accepts Decred among other cryptocurrencies for Brazilians to pay daily bills, such as credit cards, energy, rent, etc, and also to make local bank transfers. Our service is both a web platform and an Android app, and as our community is relevant in Brazil, we are offering a discount coupon (50%) in service fees using DCR until May 14, 2018. Check it out at paguecripto.com and in Google Play Store. (slack)
Moving to other countries, good news from Canada:
michae2xl: Decred is now available on @ezBtcCanada, an exchange with DCR/CAD trading pair. From Toronto – ezbtc.ca
i2Rav announced i2trading.com, a new trading desk that will be offering DCR/EUR pair:
Eventually we hope to offer the pair in GBP and YEN as well
changenow.io, a non-custodian exchange for fast conversions, added DCR.
You can see all exchanges known to support Decred in a spreadsheet maintained by snr01. Many of them are missing from coinmarketcap.
The Crypto Lawyers, LLP, a crypto exclusive U.S. law firm began accepting Decred (reddit):
RAurelius: I think that a law firm accepting Decred is a worthy distinction from other previously publicized companies that accept Decred for typical consumer products. Legal services are severely lacking in the Crypto-sphere, so the publicity is good for everyone in this arena.
Great to see business owners reaching us directly in chat.
VotoLegal is migrating from Ethereum to Decred blockchain:
emiliomann: VotoLegal, a Brazilian project that uses blockchain technology to allow election campaign funding to be transparent and that all transactions conducted are tracked and made available to the citizens, now uses dcrtime and Decred blockchain.
https://twitter.com/decred_br/status/986610826051276800 (slack)
YBF Ventures and Decred announced partnership in building a blockchain-focused development and business hub in Australia.
With the YBF Ventures partnership, Decred hopes to grow their Australian contractor network and scale their operations throughout the Asia-Pacific region. (btcmanager.com)
We specifically chose Decred for a more robust corporate partnership, and it is the first time that a decentralised autonomous organisation is partnering with a ‘traditional’ organisation in such a capacity. (ybfventures.com)
Dustorf joined on the marketing front and is conducting a brand discovery analysis:
Decred is soliciting the input of our user community. In order to better understand you, what you think of Decred, and where you would like it to focus its efforts, we’ve come up with a short (4 minute) survey. Your input of all varieties is most appreciated https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/2LHK3FV
April targeted advertising report released (previous March report here). Reach @timhebel for full version.
The iconic “Not Overly Scammy” t-shirt by cryptograffiti is available for purchase. For those wondering, the meme originates from @fluffypony.
Some hilarious promos by @jackliv3r: one two three.
Community event at YBF Ventures in Australia.
Meetup in Wroclaw, Poland.
BBQ with @scalarcapital team in Austin, USA.
Blockchain Expo in London, UK. Decred was well represented at this large-scale industry event. Project Lead Jake took part in several interview and the Decred stand manned by community members was flooded with inquisitive visitors. (video, photo 1 2 3)
First Decred meetup in Hangzhou, China. (slack)
Business of Blockchain at MIT Media Lab in Cambridge, USA. Presentation: Blockchain Sovereignty and Blockchain Integration for Businesses by Jake Yocom-Piatt. (event, reddit, photo 1 2 3)
Cambridge Blockchain Meetup in Cambridge, USA. Talk: Cutting the Head off the Snake by Jake Yocom-Piatt. (event, photo 1 2 3)
Upcoming events:
Second episode of Lightning Network educational series is out, exploring topics such as payment channels, onion routing, centralization risk, and challenges that still lie ahead. (youtube)
A user’s perspective and introduction to blockchain governance (Richard Red)
The Importance of Governance: Analyzing the Aftermath of the Monero Hard Fork by Noah Pierau (btcmanager.com)
The Crypto Show w/ Marco from Decred (youtube)
Interview with Jake at @Blockchain_Expo by Crypto Coin Growth (youtube)
Interview with Jake at @Blockchain_Expo by Cryptocurrency Academy (youtube)
Alternative Blockchain Governance Systems With Jake & Kyle From Decred at @Blockchain_Expo by Crypto Disrupt (youtube)
Decred Looks Ahead: An Interview with Project Lead Jake Yocom-Piatt (Exclusive) (sludgefeed.com)
How Complex Bitcoin Politics Led to the Creation of Decred (btcmanager.com)
Interview with Decred’s Project Lead Jake Yocom-Piatt on Crypto Ad Bans and Market Volatility (cryptoslate.com)
Decred’s Jonathan Zeppettini: The Industry Is Going To Be Displacing Wall Street (blocktribune.com)
On Chain VS. Off Chain Governance: The Ins And Outs (coinjournal.net)
Decred: On true decentralisation, Bitcoin communities, and avoiding the ICO route [Video] (blockchaintechnology-news.com)
Marco in shitcoin talk episode 54 (youtube)
Reddit highlights: A debate on Decred protocol security and attack cost, a comparison of expected and actual block production times, a write-up on distribution of powers and how Monero could benefit from a PoS governance layer, two other threads on ASIC resistance, and one discussing different types of decentralization.
Very thoughtful discussion on whether it is appropriate to use half naked photos in marketing, followed by meta-discussion how to handle very polarizing issues and unwanted contributions to the marketing efforts of a decentralized project. (slack, continued)
A new #governance channel was created to discuss governance in Decred and other projects.
r/politeia subreddit was recovered for Decred community. Thanks to Tivra for filing the request. Politeia can bring a lot of value outside Decred so it well deserves its own sub.
A new Slack invite page has been setup and onboarded 40 people in 48 hours.
Decred StackExchange site proposal was closed due to inactivity in a 7 day period, according to Area 51 rules.
In April Decred showed a confident recovery after previous months. DCR/USD moved from below $40 to nearly $90 and the more liquid DCR/BTC from 0.0058 to 0.0093.
OOOBTC showed unexpectedly huge DCR trading volume of $19 m on April 10 (reddit), it went back to normal 2 weeks later.
On April 25 a wild rush took the price from 0.00777 to 0.0177 BTC in under 30 minutes on Poloniex, setting a new USD all time high of ~$165 ($141 world average). Prices on other exchanges followed to a lesser degree. Possible causes were discussed on reddit. Talking about all time highs, an indicator tracking difference between ATH and current price shows Decred is competitive at retaining USD value.
Bittrex finally opened registrations again.
ASIC debates are raging after Bitmain stealth-launched ASICs for Sia, Monero and Ethereum. Most opinions reflect on whether and how to resist ASICs, but some are recognizing the Decred way, like this excellent piece.
The importance of governance is gaining recognition as well. One notable example is Mike Hearn’s AMA where it was a hot topic.
This project was motivated by the desire to expose just how much is happening in Decred and save the time for people unable to actively follow our channels. It aims to cover all relevant developments with a short description and links to read further. It shows the depth of the project and the involvement of the community. We also plan to launch a newsletter and consider a shorter version if there is such a demand.
This is the first issue and feedback is welcome to discover what is best for our readers. Please join our Slack and write us on #writers_room or comment directly on GitHub. Any help is welcome too.
Credits (Slack names, alphabetical order): bee, jazzah, Richard-Red, snr01 and vj.