Decred Journal – October 2020

abstract art

Image: Restructuring I by @saender

Decred’s highlights in October:

DCRDEX Initial Release

A little more than a year since the RFP and development proposals have been approved on Politeia, Decred users can now trade between DCR and BTC without risking their funds and personal information with custodial exchanges.

First MVP release was followed by a quick v0.1.1 patch release that is currently the latest.

Visit dex.decred.org to get started, or follow the guide by @richardred, or just see it in action in a video. Latest price and order books can be viewed at dcrdata’s Market dashboard, with more public data to follow.

I want to thank ALL of our earlier testers for your feedback and patience as we get this thing moving. We have taken a lot of the feedback into account, and resolved a number of UI/UX issues, and fixed a couple of bugs that have popped up in match recovery scenarios. (@chappjc)

Congratulations everyone with the release!

v1.6 Release Candidates

Release candidates for dcrd, dcrwallet, Decrediton and dcrlnd are available for testing here. Please bear in mind that while key features are there and working in Decrediton, a number of UI improvements and bug fixes are forthcoming in a third release candidate.

As always, verify the binaries before running them.

Version 1.6 will be one of the biggest releases Decred ever made. If you would like to help with outreach please check that section below.

Development

Unless otherwise noted, the work reported here has the “merged to master” status. It means that the work is completed, reviewed, and integrated into the source code that advanced users can build and run, but is not yet available in release binaries for regular users.

dcrd

v1.6 Release Candidate 1 and 2 have been made for public testing. You can read the RC2 release notes and get the source code here. Bug reports are welcome here.

Work included in v1.6 release:

Continued merged work past the v1.6 branching point:

dcrwallet

Decrediton

In progress:

Politeia

In progress:

Update on tlog backend migration:

We have a testnet instance up and are still in the process of testing everything and fixing bugs. Inclusion proof routes and test coverage are also in the works. (@lukebp)

vspd

dcrpool

dcrlnd

dcrlnd is preparing v0.3.0 to be released together with the big v1.6 release of core software (dcrd, dcrwallet, Decrediton). Release notes are here.

dcrdex

Most of the work merged in October was included in the initial v0.1.0 and follow-up v0.1.1 releases.

A total of 48 PRs from 7 contributors were merged, adding 11K and deleting 5K lines of code.

In progress:

dcrandroid

In progress:

dcrios

godcr

In progress:

dcrdata

dcrros

docs

dcrdevdocs

Other:

People

Welcome to new first time contributors with code merged to master: @nitronick600 (dcrdocs) and @GuzmanPintos (dcrdocs)!

See Media for 4 new interviews with Decred community members.

Community stats as of Nov 1:

Governance

In October the Treasury received 12,388 DCR and spent 14,748 DCR. Using October’s daily average rate of $12.01 per DCR, this is $149K received and $177K spent. At September’s average daily rate of $13.26, the USD figure billed for past work is $196K. As of Nov 4, Treasury balance is 638,044 DCR (7.9 million USD at $12.38).

The candidate proposals for the RFP proposal to change messaging on decred.org (approved in Sep) were voted on, but none of these were approved. Results were as follows:

A content and asset translation proposal by @kozel was submitted in Oct and approved in early Nov with 75% approval and 28% turnout. This proposal will cover the translation of Decred publications and assets into 6-8 languages, with a maximum budget of $33,000 to cover 6 months of work. The proposal is staffed by people who have a record of delivering translations of Decred content.

Politeia Digest issue 37 and issue 38 have more details on the month’s proposals.

A pre-proposal from Paris Smithson for the WhyDecred.com site was announced on Twitter, discussed on Reddit, and finally landed on Politeia in early Nov.

@richardred published a report of Politeia activity for its second year of operation. Some highlights:

Network

Hashrate: October’s hashrate opened at 450 Ph/s and closed 225 Ph/s, bottoming at 185 Ph/s and peaking at 551 Ph/s throughout the month. Pool hashrate distribution as of Nov 1: Poolin 37%, UUPool 37%, Antpool 13%, Huobipool 9%, F2Pool 1.2%, BTC.com 1%, easy2mine 0.9%, Luxor 0.6%, CoinMine 0.02%.

On Oct 25 the hashrate dropped to 260 and continued all the way down to 185 Ph/s on Oct 28. Quick recovery started on the first days of Nov.

Staking: 30-day average ticket price was 151.7 DCR (+3.1). The price varied between 139.2-168.3 DCR. Locked amount was 6.02-6.12 million DCR, which corresponded to 49.58-50.87% of the available supply participating in PoS.

Ticket price hit 168.28 DCR, which is a new high since the change of the price algorithm in 2017.

Nodes: Throughout October there was an average of 104 public listening nodes and 150 total nodes per dcr.farm. Average version distribution for October: 30% dcrd v1.5.2, 23% dcrd v1.5.1, 8% dcrd v1.6 dev builds, 6% dcrd v1.5.0, 3% dcrd v1.5 dev and RC builds, 2.7% dcrd v1.7 dev builds, 0.7% dcrd v1.4, 12% dcrwallet v1.5.1, 1.4% dcrwallet v1.5, 0.8% dcrwallet v1.4, 12% others.

@PermabullNino contributed his recent on-chain findings (Mining Pulse, ticket flows, Treasury flows) to Our Network issue 41.

Integrations

stakey.net is the first mainnet VSP running the new vspd software. It has voted 13 tickets and 40 are live as of Nov 11.

Our first private ticket purchase using a VSP just verified on chain. It was purchased without an account, using funds mixed by CoinShuffle++ via the Tor onion service. Stick that in your pipe and smoke it, Surveillance Daddy! (@stakeynet on Twitter)

Warning: the authors of the Decred Journal have no idea about the trustworthiness of any of the services above. Please do your own research before trusting your personal information or assets to any entity.

Outreach

@Checkmate is calling all Decred stakeholders to prepare for the release of the Hidden Hydra aka Decred v1.6. Discussions in Forward Thinking Fridays Oct 16 and Oct 23, and one other call to organize have collected dozens of ideas what can be done to get the word out about Decred v1.6 and DCRDEX. A cheat sheet with everything a Decred advocate might need is being assembled here (help is welcome).

Decred Latam published 4th report of their second proposal that lists all notable events, media presence, business development and finances. A notable strategy being explored is developer outreach and onboarding in Spanish:

A long-running Blockchain Learning and Development Challenge by Decred Latam was opened for registration in October and will run until December 9. In Phase 1 participants will attend workshops to learn about Bitcoin and blockchain, DAOs, governance, dcrdata API etc. In Phase 2 they will need to build an original project using Decred public blockchain data, release it with ISC license and present in a 3-minute video pitch. All comms, mentoring and support will take place in @decredES_devs Telegram. 3 winners will get $1,500, $700 and $300 in DCR. 90+ people from 8+ Latam countries have registered so far.

@michae2xl published a report of his October activities for the Brazil Marketing proposal.

@pavel announced that a new withDecred.org giveaway campaign is live. It uses a smart combination of QR codes and Twitter to maximize engagement and spreading of the message at the same time.

New website WhyDecred.com by Paris Smithson has a draft version up for discussion and feedback. This project takes the big picture approach by first explaining all the problems with money we have today, and then explaining how Decred solves them. Quality artwork will be used to communicate. A formal proposal to fund the completion of the website is now being discussed.

A new project winatoms.com by @buck54321 is up for testing. Users can create and solve each other’s puzzles, winning DCR if the submitted solution is correct. Currently it only works with testnet DCR and project status is “prototype for discussion”. Follow @winatoms on Twitter for updates.

Monde PR’s achievements for October:

News coverage secured by Monde PR:

Events

Attended:

Note that Spanish Decred events are often announced by Cointelegraph in Spanish.

Upcoming:

Media

Decred Journal, Politeia Digest and Block Commons are now on Publish0x.

Selected articles:

Videos:

Audio:

Art/Fun:

Translations:

Other non-English content:

Community Discussions

Selected Reddit posts:

Selected Twitter discussions:

Markets

In October DCR was trading between USD 11.17-13.84 / BTC 0.00085-0.00124. The average daily rate was $12.01.

dcrdex was reported to have traded a total of 4 BTC on Oct 26 and 25 BTC on Oct 28.

Bitcoin fees have skyrocketed to values unseen for a long time at the end of Oct, which made dcrdex transactions more expensive. The mempool was cleared during the first week of November and fees went back to normal.

dcrdex order books can be viewed at dcrdata’s Market dashboard. Volume data will follow.

Relevant External

Mario Laul of Placeholder identified ten theses on decentralized network governance. This high level decomposition of core principles driving the networks gives another way to look at Decred.

good network governance aligns the interests of all stakeholders through a sufficiently flexible system of checks and balances. Imbalanced governance or inability to resolve conflicts between key stakeholders creates instability, which is particularly problematic for networks positioned to become systemically important administrative infrastructure with a very large user base.

IOHK has distributed $250K worth of ADA to Project Catalyst, which will fund projects proposed by the community. According to Cointelegraph, “Charles Hoskinson is a big proponent of decentralized treasuries, which he believes to be one of the greatest innovations of our time”.

A paper on atomic swaps between Bitcoin and Monero was published in September and a corresponding proposal was funded on Monero’s Community Crowdfunding System, raising 2.7K XMR ($340K) in just 4 days. Another group iterated further on the protocol to use 2-of-2 multisig scripts that are common in Bitcoin.

The OKEx cryptocurrency exchange, based in Malta, has suspended all cryptocurrency withdrawals because a key-holder is indisposed, because they are “currently cooperating with a public security bureau in investigations”. The suspension was still in place a week later, despite a whale alert and social media furore about a large transfer to Binance, but this turned out to be mislabelled.

US Department of Justice released Cryptocurrency Enforcement Framework that provides an overview of the crypto space and its illicit uses, existing laws, and current challenges and strategies to address them. Similar to FinCEN guidance from May 2019, the document is most relevant to custodial services.

Komodo announced that they will be implementing KYC/AML procedures on the AtomicDEX liquidity network that is officially supported by the developers, even though the exchange is non-custodial. The announcement mentions another thing to worry about besides the recent regulatory action: “there is a buyback and token swap concerning security-like tokens that underpin AtomicDEX operations, including assets like DEX token, SuperNET assets, and any revenue-sharing token”.

CFTC charged BitMEX owners for operating an unregistered trading platform and violating CFTC regulations, including failing to implement AML procedures.

FinCEN issued a $60M fine to the owner of a Bitcoin mixer who was arrested in February. The service was custodial.

Coinbase released its first transparency report with a breakdown of law enforcement requests received in the first half of 2020.

PayPal announced that it will allow users to buy BTC, ETH, BCH, and LTC with its app. The initial version will not allow deposits, withdrawals, or sending crypto to other PayPal accounts. The company has a history of arbitrarily frozen accounts and associated lawsuits.

Dustin Dreifuerst of Did You Know Podcast warns of a scenario where an influx of institutional investment will lead to a conflict with principles crypto was founded on.

Tether reversed a $1 million transaction in September by a user who erroneously sent the funds to the smart contract for the DeFi platform Swerve.

The DeFi protocol harvest.finance was hacked for $24 million with a flash loan that manipulated the price of a stablecoin on Curve’s Y pool.

Missed last month, Andre Cronje (of YFI) deployed contracts for a new “Eminence” gaming platform, within a few hours $15 million had been deposited, and it was then all taken by a hacker. The attacker then returned $8 million to a YFI smart contract controlled by Cronje, and this was distributed to victims of the hack.

Popular DeFi character Blue Kirby is not popular anymore, after a rollercoaster 3 months in which they went from 0 to 20,000 followers on Twitter, got a job with Yearn earning $7K/month, sold 500 ETH worth of Kirby NFTs, and received 25 YFI from Andre Cronje himself. Things started going wrong for Kirby when they encouraged people to pile into the beta Eminence contracts which got hacked, got a little worse when they cashed in all their YFI and were called out, then there was an episode with some new “Off-Blue” tokens that Kirby was promoting which people found to be suspicious. Someone apparently threatened to doxx Blue Kirby, and they disappeared, deleting their accounts and leaving with an estimated $1 million.

Uniswap held the first and second votes of its new UNI-based governance system, both failing with 97-98% approval but only Yes votes from 3.75%-3.96%, while the minimum quorum to pass is Yes votes from 4% of the UNI tokens. The first proposal sought to lower the requirement for submitting a proposal, at present the proposer must have or be delegated at least 1% of all UNI, and for passing the quorum requirement (from 4% to 3%). The first two proposals were created by the same actors, including Dharma protocol and Gauntlet. The second proposal sought to extend the initial airdrop to Uniswap users who interacted with proxy contracts, with ~20% of the addresses to receive these tokens being Dharma users. This led some participants to frame the proposals as a kind of takeover attempt.

GitHub has taken down the repository of the popular youtube-dl project that allows to download video files from YouTube without dealing with its browser UI. This is a reminder of what may happen to all GitHub data not sored in Git repositories, which is especially relevant when design discussions and decisions are stored in issues and pull requests outside of Git.

Samsung is integrating AML checks into their phones to make everyone safer.

UK Government published an international statement on end-to-end encryption, co-signed by representatives from the US, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, India, and Japan (mirrored on the DoJ website). The statement calls for tech companies to inject backdoors, for public safety. Matrix team posted a response explaining why compromising everyone’s security and privacy to combat abuse by the minority of bad actors is fundamentally flawed and proposed alternative measures.

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If you want something mentioned please comment here. The story can be about development, research, outreach, merchants and services, new content and pretty much anything you normally see in DJ.

About This Issue

This is issue 31 of Decred Journal. Index of all issues, mirrors, and translations is available here.

Most information from third parties is relayed directly from source after a minimal sanity check. The authors of the Decred Journal have no ability to verify all claims. Please beware of scams and do your own research.

Feedback and contributions are always welcome.

Credits (alphabetical order):