Decred Journal – May 2022

abstract art by @saender

Image: Point Integral by @saender

May was quite an epic month for Decred:

Contents:

Four Consensus Changes Activated

All four consensus upgrades added in v1.7 and approved by the stakeholders have activated on May 8, in block 657,280:

This is perhaps the biggest consensus upgrade in Decred’s history.

Core Software v1.7.2 and v1.7.3 Released

dcrd and dcrwallet v1.7.2 were released on May 11 - the latest version as of writing. dcrd got a fix for a rare and hard to hit case when optional indexing is enabled. dcrwallet received a fix for verifymessage, enabled change of public wallet passphrase, and some internal/developer changes. Release notes.

Decrediton v1.7.2 added support for voting on treasury spends, more information in VSP staking, updated DEX module, and several bug fixes. v1.7.3 has followed on May 18 with fixes for macOS 10.15 and setting treasury spending vote choices. Release notes.

Verify the downloads to make sure they have not been modified. The files are signed with Decred Release subkey ending with 6D897EDF518A031D (primary key ends with 6DF634AA7608AF04).

GoDCR v1.7.0 Released

The debut Mainnet release of GoDCR was announced on May 23 after almost 8 months of development since the v0.9.0 Testnet release.

The following features are supported:

Download it here and verify the signature from release@planetdecred.org (key ends with A3C9EB3218CCC3E8).

This is just the start for GoDCR. Up next is DEX trading, coin selection, treasury spend voting, and the ambitious goal of building desktop and mobile apps from one unified codebase. Check the proposal seeking to fund this work in 2022-2023.

Image: GoDCR overview showing the summary of each subsystem.

Android and iOS Wallets v1.7.0 Released

Android and iOS wallets v1.7.0 were released on May 11.

Changes since v1.6.1 include:

Mainnet iOS app is available on the App Store and the testnet version on TestFlight.

Android app is available on Google Play Store. For advanced users there is a new APK download signed by Planet Decred Release key.

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.

The general direction in May was to further leverage the consensus changes that activated recently, by adding optimizations and removing unneeded code.

dcrwallet

Released with the v1.7.2 patch:

Merged in master:

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).

Merged and released with May’s v1.7.2 and v1.7.3 patches:

Image: Decrediton showing additional VSP info for each ticket.

Politeia

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

Backend changes:

GUI changes:

Changes in the pi-ui library (common UI elements for Politeia and Decrediton):

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.

dcrlnlpd

dcrlnlpd stands for “DCR LN Liquidity Provider Daemon”.

Meet the the newest project in Decred’s LN ecosystem:

This service allows running a Lightning Network Liquidity Provider in the Decred network.

This LP allows remote clients to request the node associated to the LP to open an LN channel back to the requesting client. This allows the requesting client to have some inbound bandwidth to receive LN payments.

To create the channel, the LP charges some amount, specified as a percentage of the desired channel size. [README file]

DCRDEX

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

User-facing changes:

Internal and developer changes:

While working on DCRDEX the developers have made various contributions to upstream projects: btcd, btcwallet, go-ethereum, neutrino, zcash, and others.

Dev team has started a discussion on renaming DCRDEX and are accepting name and logo ideas.

Probably found a vendor to perform an audit of our Solidity atomic swap contracts. Notably, our contracts are so simple, we’re under their minimum order size. That’s what happens when you’re not trying to extract trading fees and there’s no admin functionality. [@blockchainbuck]

Image: DCRDEX allows to accelerate swaps when the network is busy but you want that trade ASAP.

Decred Wallet (iOS)

GoDCR

GoDCR is a lightweight desktop GUI wallet with integrated staking, privacy, Politeia voting, consensus voting, and more.

Android and iOS builds of GoDCR already function in some capacity, although there remains a lot of work to polish the mobile/touch UX.

Image: First look of GoDCR running on an emulated mobile OS.

dcrdata

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

decred.org

dcrweb is the source code for the decred.org website.

Other

People

Welcome to new first-time contributors with code merged to master in January-March:

We had no Decred Journal for these months but it’s never too late to greet new contributors. Welcome onboard guys!

Community stats as of Jun 1 (compared to May 2):

See June 2022 report on Decred SM performance for a more in-depth look at Feb vs Jun numbers.

Governance

In May the new treasury received 9,407 DCR worth $390K at this month’s average rate of $41.46. 2,950 DCR was spent from the legacy treasury to pay contractors, worth $122K at May’s rate, or $179K at April’s billing rate of $60.62. These payments were to cover both March and April’s contractor invoices.

As of Jun 12, combined balance of legacy and new treasury is 795,673 DCR ($23.9 million USD at $30.09).

A new proposal was submitted by Raedah Group to fund GoDCR, the desktop GUI wallet built in pure Go which will also replace existing mobile wallets as development continues. This proposal requests $250K for 12 months of funding, a greater amount than the previous proposal which was narrowly rejected in October 2021. The extra budget is due to larger number of workers, a longer duration and covering the maintenance of existing Android/iOS wallets. The budget was reduced from the initial $300K in response to some comments.

Four proposals were published on Politeia in May:

See Politeia Digest issue 51 to catch up on proposal activity between January and May.

Network

Hashrate: May’s hashrate opened at ~345 Ph/s and closed ~115 Ph/s, bottoming at 74 Ph/s and peaking at 381 Ph/s throughout the month.

Image: Anticipated hashrate drop after the mining reward reduction.

Distribution of hashrate reported by the pools on Jun 1: Poolin 55%, ViaBTC 21%, F2Pool 7%, AntPool 7%, Luxor 5%, BTC.com 4%, CoinMine 0.3%.

Distribution of 1,000 blocks actually mined before Jun 1: Poolin 55%, ViaBTC 20%, F2Pool 8%, DsV1GF7 6.5%, BTC.com 6%, Luxor 4%, CoinMin2 0.2%, DsmLNFC 0.1%.

Staking: Ticket price varied between 217-231 DCR, with 30-day average at 223.6 DCR (+9.4).

The locked amount was 8.78-9.07 million DCR, meaning that 62.6-63.9% of the circulating supply participated in Proof of Stake. Both DCR and percentage values are the new ATHs for Decred.

All missed and expired tickets have been revoked, unlocking a total 175,957 DCR from 1,719 tickets (average price 103 DCR per ticket). ~45K of that DCR have moved already, while the remaining ~131K DCR are likely lost due to lost seeds and other reasons. One of the revoked tickets was from an old block 767, around the time when first complaints about the high ticket price appeared.

All new missed votes are revoked automatically, the first one revoked in block 657295.

VSP: On Jun 1, ~6,900 (+120) live tickets were managed by 16 listed vspd servers, or 16.8% of the ticket pool (+0.2%).

Legacy (dcrstakepool) tickets can no longer be voted since May 8 when the chain forked to the new rules. Unlike all other shutdown/stalled legacy VSPs, on Jun 1 coinmine.pl and decredbrasil.com reported that they’re on a current block height and collectively hold 19 live tickets. We are not sure how this is possible and these tickets are not included in the above stats.

Nodes: Throughout May there were around ~185 reachable nodes according to PD Analytics.

Node versions as of Jun 1 snapshot (160 total, dcrd only): v1.7.1 - 41%, v1.7.2 - 20%, v1.7.0 - 12%, v1.7.0 dev builds - 9%, v1.8.0 dev builds - 4%, v1.6.x - 6%, v1.5.x - 4%.

Image: Mixed and unspent % crawling up.

Ecosystem

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

Monde PR’s achievements:

Secured the following news articles:

Events

Attended:

Upcoming:

Image: Edson Neto presenting at Bitconf.

Media

Decred Magazine has been launched by @phoenixgreen to collect all Decred content in one place, give new writers a platform, and archive great past content (Decred Journal included). The latter is valuable since websites and blogs commonly “evaporate” their content over time and it becomes hard or impossible to recover. As of writing, around 300 posts have been imported and 8 authors have explicitly agreed to add their content. Decred Magazine is intended as a replacement for decredsociety.com launched earlier as a pilot project.

Selected articles:

Videos:

Audio:

Discussions

Selected Reddit posts:

Selected Twitter discussions:

Markets

In May DCR was trading between USD 30.00-58.68 / BTC 0.00103-0.00190. The average daily rate was $41.46.

@Applesaucesome is posting technical analysis of DCR, crypto, and the broader market on the new Decred Magazine website, about once a week.

In May, DCRDEX has facilitated the trading of ~74K DCR, equivalent of ~3M USD.

Relevant External

Insider trading in the crypto space is increasingly in the spotlight. The Wall Street Journal featured an article about suspected insider trading around exchange listings on Binance, Coinbase and FTX. The analysis was conducted by Argus Inc based on public blockchain records.

The former OpenSea product manager Nathaniel Chastain, who lost their job over profiting from the listing of NFTs on the OpenSea front page in September, has now been arrested and charged with insider trading by prosecutors in New York’s Southern District. Although the NFTs in question are not the usual securities which insider trading laws apply to, the DA is alleging that Chastain injured his employer (OpenSea) by misappropriating information.

Actor Seth Green lost his Bored Ape NFT in a phishing incident, made even more consequential by the fact that the ape had been set to star in a new show he was developing, White Horse Tavern. In June Green paid a $260,000 ransom to secure the return of the ape, so that the show could go on (without raising a lot of copyright questions over whether the stolen ape’s image could be used).

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

About

This is issue 47 of Decred Journal. Index of all issues, mirrors, and translations is available here.

Most information from third parties is relayed directly from the source after a minimal sanity check. The authors of the Decred Journal cannot verify all claims. Please beware of scams and do your own research.

Credits (alphabetical order):