Decred Journal – September 2021

abstract art by @saender

Image: Fourier’s Square by @saender

September’s highlights:

Contents:

Development

The work reported below has the “merged to master” status unless noted otherwise. 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

dcrd is a full node implementation that powers Decred’s peer-to-peer network around the world.

Explicit Version Upgrades consensus change (DCP-8):

Automatic Ticket Revocations consensus change (DCP-9):

Other merged work:

Huge dcrd release brewing… including 3 consensus votes, ~30% faster syncing, and much more. (@rstaudt2)

dcrwallet

dcrwallet is a wallet server used by command-line and graphical wallet applications.

Decrediton

Decrediton is a full-featured desktop wallet app with integrated voting, StakeShuffle mixing, Lightning Network, DEX trading, and more. It runs with or without a full blockchain (SPV mode).

Decrediton LN Channels page

Decrediton LN Channels page

Politeia

Politeia is Decred’s proposal system. It is used to request funding from the Decred treasury.

Another feature and bugfix release has landed on Politeia website! Highlights of v1.2.0:

For more details check the release notes in politeia and politeiagui repositories.

User-facing changes merged in September:

Backend, internal, and command-line changes:

Politeia dark mode icon

Politeia dark mode icon. Shoutout to our designers @MariaPleshkova and @linnutee!

vspd

vspd is server software for running a Voting Service Provider. A VSP votes on behalf of its users 24/7 and cannot steal funds.

dcrpool

dcrpool is server software for running a mining pool.

dcrlnd

dcrlnd is Decred’s Lightning Network node software. LN enables instant and low-cost transactions.

DCRDEX

DCRDEX is a non-custodial exchange for trustless trading, powered by atomic swaps.

User-facing:

DCRDEX candlestick chart

DCRDEX candlestick chart. Not investment advice.

Backend and internal changes:

Work towards internationalization:

DCRDEX Chinese translation preview

DCRDEX Chinese translation preview

Internal changes towards Ethereum support:

Decred Wallet (Android)

Decred Wallet v1.6.1 has been released on Google Play Store!

Privacy-minded users can now also get the signed APK directly from the GitHub release.

Merged in September:

Merged in dcrlibwallet library (shared by Android/iOS wallets and GoDCR):

See the new mobile wallets proposal to learn about the development roadmap for 2021-2022.

Decred Wallet (iOS)

Decred Wallet v1.6.1 has been released on App Store!

Merged in September:

Decred iOS Wallet Overview

Decred Wallet (iOS) Dark Overview

GoDCR

GoDCR is a lightweight desktop wallet app with integrated staking, privacy, and Politeia browsing.

First testnet build is available for preview! Download it from the GitHub release and verify the signatures. If you plan to hunt for bugs, it is recommended to build from the latest source to have all recent bug fixes.

User-facing changes merged:

Internal and developer changes:

GoDCR seed education

GoDCR seed education

In progress:

Check the second GoDCR proposal for a status update and 2021-2022 roadmap.

dcrdata

dcrdata is an explorer for Decred blockchain and off-chain data like Politeia proposals, markets, and more.

User-facing changes:

Internal changes:

Tip: bleeding-edge development version of dcrdata can be accessed at tip.dcrdata.org.

dcrdevdocs

dcrdevdocs is a source code for Decred developer documentation.

Other:

People

Welcome to new first-time contributors with code merged to master: @naveensrinivasan (dcrd)!

Community stats as of Oct 2:

Governance

In September the new treasury received 10,274 DCR worth $1.4M at September’s average rate of $139.56. 590 DCR was spent to pay contractors, worth $82K at September’s rate, or $95K at August’s billing rate of $161.24. As of Oct 2, combined balance of legacy and new treasury is 723,528 DCR (83.5 million USD at $115.45).

Two new proposals were submitted, both by @raedah, requesting renewed funding for GoDCR and Mobile Wallets.

Voter participation reached new heights, with both of the votes this month seeing turnout above the previous record level.

The long-awaited proposal author updates feature is now live on Politeia and has already been used by two development proposals to report progress.

See Politeia Digest issue 46 and issue 47 for more details on the month’s proposals.

Network

Hashrate: September’s hashrate opened at ~355 Ph/s and closed ~228 Ph/s, bottoming at 190 Ph/s and peaking at 449 Ph/s throughout the month.

Distribution of hashrate reported by the pools on Oct 1: Poolin 36%, F2Pool 25%, AntPool 22%, BTC.com 5%, ViaBTC 5%, Luxor 3%, HuobiPool 1%, CoinMine 0.15%, OKEx 0.13%. Distribution of 1,000 blocks actually mined before Oct 1 confirmed the reported hashrate.

Staking: Ticket price varied between 192.8-210.8 DCR, with 30-day average at 199.4 DCR (+5.6).

The locked amount was 7.69-8.16 million DCR, meaning that 57.7-61.1% of the circulating supply participated in proof-of-stake.

Ticket prices seem to have hit a relative plateau between two extremes.

VSP: On Oct 1, ~7,600 (-500) live tickets were managed by listed vspd servers and ~220 (-30) by listed legacy dcrstakepool servers. Collectively the 8 legacy and 15 new VSPs managed 19% (-2%) of the ticket pool. Unlisted but still active legacy VSPs managed 29 (-11) live tickets.

Nodes: Throughout September there were around 204 reachable nodes according to dcrextdata.

Node versions as of Oct 1 snapshot (257 dcrd nodes): v1.6.2 - 55%, v1.6.0 - 13%, v1.6.1 - 12%, v1.7 dev builds - 14%, v1.6 dev builds - 2.7%, v1.5.2 - 2%, v1.5.1 - 1.2%.

The share of mixed coins varied between 50.3-52.2% and set a new all-time high while the sum of mixed unspent coins broke the 7 million mark.

Daily mixed amount varied between 240-550K DCR.

Ecosystem

Matrix users are advised to upgrade their clients (most notably Element) to patch security vulnerability disclosed on Sep 13. If a user’s account is compromised (by either a direct compromise of account credentials or by a compromised homeserver), in certain circumstances it may be possible to read encrypted messages sent to such account from its vulnerable contacts. The disclosure noted, “The greatest risk is to users who are in encrypted rooms containing malicious servers. Admins of malicious servers could attempt to impersonate their users’ devices in order to spy on messages sent by vulnerable clients in that room.”. As an extra safety measure, you can review active sessions and remove any obsolete or suspicious ones.

Legacy decredvoting.com has been removed from the VSP list to facilitate user migration to the new vspd system. Voting wallets are still online to vote the remaining tickets (9 tickets as of Oct 1). Decred Voting has served since 2018 and is known for developing advanced features like email notifications on voted tickets and custom ticket analytics dashboard, and for supporting small holders with education on ticket splitting and features to make it easier to use.

For anyone still using legacy VSP, it is recommended to switch to vspd providers to avoid the risk of missed tickets, e.g. in case the legacy VSP shuts down or stops working with the coming consensus upgrades. As of Oct 1, all legacy VSPs managed less than 250 tickets or 0.6% of the ticket pool.

u/daryledesilva shared a dollar-cost averaging calculator for Decred.

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.

Join our #services chat to follow Decred ecosystem updates.

Outreach

r/decred’s pinned post for newcomers has been updated: Welcome to Decred: Money Evolved.

@davecgh armed us with a new fantastic Decred pitch answering how Decred is valuable long term. Twitter version here.

Monde PR’s achievements for September:

Secured the following news articles:

Media

Selected articles:

Videos:

Audio:

Translations:

Share your translations in our #translations chat room.

Pool Bison doing research

If this is what chain analysis looks like, I want to change my job (@bee)

Markets

In September DCR was trading between USD 96.14-185.79 / BTC 0.0023-0.0038. The average daily rate was $139.56.

DCRDEX September trading volume

DCRDEX September trading volume

Relevant External

Sushi’s Miso app was exploited to steal the proceeds of an NFT drop ($3M for Kia Sedonas from Jay Pegs Auto Mart). The attacker was identified (through their use of ENS domain) as a Sushi developer, who had inserted code into the front end which would send funds to their own address. The funds were subsequently returned.

The Compound DeFi app deployed new smart contracts which gave away $80M worth of COMP tokens in unintended ways. Founder Robert Leshner asked recipients to send the tokens back, and described it as a moral dilemma, after initially intimating that people who don’t give the tokens back could have their details passed to tax collection authorities. One interesting aspect of the story is that the problem was identified quite quickly, but because changing the contracts requires a governance process there was no way to deploy a quick fix and all of the vulnerable funds were drained.

Coinbase users have been exploited, it seems that around 6,000 users whose login details had been compromised elsewhere then suffered losses from their Coinbase accounts after the attackers exploited a flaw in Coinbase’s SMS two-factor recovery process to bypass this safeguard and withdraw their victims’ funds. In a notification letter to customers, Coinbase said the flaw has been fixed and that all affected customers will be reimbursed. This follows on from more general discontent with Coinbase customer service in the summer.

The Digital Asset Market Structure and Investor Protection Act, which was introduced in July, continues to see coverage and discussion, indicating that it will receive serious consideration from lawmakers. The proposed Act is one of the broadest pieces of legislation to address digital assets and would clarify how different types of assets would fall under the purview of different enforcement agencies. The proposed definition of a security would focus on equity or voting rights in the issuing (corporate) entity, excluding voting on blockchain matters like block creation. There is also an aspect whereby selling tokens for an unfinished product whose production will be funded by the token sale (i.e. the ICO model) would be considered securities. Stablecoins could not be created or used without being approved by the Secretary of the Treasury, and the Federal Reserve would receive the authority to issue a US central bank digital currency.

That’s all for September. Share your updates for the next issue in our #journal chat room.

About

This is issue 42 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.

Credits (alphabetical order):