Decred Journal – October 2022

Image: Untitled by @Exitus

Highlights of October:

Contents:

Core Software v1.7.5 Released

Highlights of the v1.7.5 release:

Visit the GitHub release for the full list of changes and downloads. As always, we recommend to verify the files before running.

Users of the standalone DCRDEX app should upgrade to the latest release here, specifically to avoid issues with certain Taproot transactions on Bitcoin, which were fixed in v0.5.4 and v0.5.5.

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.

dcrwallet

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

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).

Politeia

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

politeiavoter command-line app:

GUI remake on the new plugin architecture:

pi-ui library (shared by Politeia and Decrediton):

Lightning Network

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

DCRDEX

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

v0.5.4 release:

User-facing changes merged in master:

Internal and developer changes:

Ethereum support:

Fidelity bonds:

Image: Restyled market page on DCRDEX, desktop layout. Data shown is not real (just in case).

Documentation

dcrdocs is the source code for Decred user documentation.

decred.org

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

Image: News page at decred.org.

Other

dcrseeder - node crawler that builds a list of reliable Decred nodes and is used by new nodes to bootstrap their connectivity:

release - automation tool for making reproducible builds of Decred software:

People

We have two new interviews with Decred community members.

Tiago Alves Dulce (@tiagoalvesdulce) shared his story and thoughts on contributing as a Politeia developer.

Victor was pretty passionate about cryptocurrencies and used to pitch it to us all the time. Fernando and I were still skeptical about it. At the end of 2017, Victor started contributing to Decred, and we decided to take a look into it. We liked what we saw. It was a good opportunity to contribute to a cool open-source project, and we started doing it at the beginning of 2018. As time went by, I researched more and more about the project and got pretty passionate about it.

Eduardo Lima (@elima_iii) joined the State of the Market episode to talk about his legal research paper “But Who is in Charge of Decred?”, his status with the project, and many other topics.

I believe that some of the heroes of all of this, of civil liberties, truthfully, are the software developers. The people who are building the technology. (…) Decred is kind of already future-proof, but if we don’t fight for our right for peer-to-peer exchange, if we don’t fight for our right for privacy, if we don’t fight for our right to not be censored and not be banned, and have due process of law before you have your assets just taken and frozen, if we don’t fight for these things, they will not be given to us. And so I say thank you to those developers out there.

Community stats as of Nov 1 (compared to Oct 1):

Governance

In October the new treasury received 8,850 DCR worth $232K at October’s average rate of $26.27. 2,645 DCR was spent to pay contractors, worth $69K at October’s rate, and $72K at September’s billing rate of $27.19.

The treasury spend tx had 31 outputs making payments to contractors, ranging from 2.3 DCR to 1,028 DCR.

As of Nov 1, combined balance of legacy and new treasury is 824,840 DCR (22.5 million USD at $27.28).

A proposal to continue retaining the services of Monde PR for another year at a cost of $48,000 was approved with 66% Yes votes and voter turnout of 59%.

A proposal to fund work done on the @dcrtimestampbot Twitter bot at a cost of $1,955 was submitted by @coinshuffle_bot.

See Politeia Digest issue 54 for more details on the month’s proposals.

Network

Hashrate: October’s hashrate opened at ~70 Ph/s and closed ~97 Ph/s, bottoming at 65 Ph/s and peaking at 97 Ph/s throughout the month.

Image: Decred hashrate.

Distribution of 84 Ph/s hashrate reported by the pools on Nov 1: F2Pool 59%, Poolin 26%, AntPool 5%, BTC.com 4.6%, CoinMine 0.6%.

Distribution of 1,000 blocks actually mined by Nov 1: F2Pool 57%, Poolin 33%, (likely) AntPool 6%, BTC.com 3.6%, CoinMine 0.9%.

Image: Pool hashrate distribution.

Staking: Ticket price varied between 224-246 DCR, with 30-day average at 233.7 DCR (+4.6).

The locked amount was 9.33-9.51 million DCR, meaning that 64.0-65.0% of the circulating supply participated in Proof of Stake.

Image: Staked DCR broke 9.5 million.

VSP: The 17 listed VSPs collectively managed ~6,800 (-1,020) live tickets, which was 16.7% of the ticket pool (-2.4%) as of Nov 1. Note: these figures exclude vspd.stakey.com, which is having API issues and reports outdated data. Its last fresh reporting was 1,332 live tickets on Oct 3, some of them have still been live and the real VSP stats were slightly higher on Nov 1.

Biggest gainers in October are 99split.com (+790), decredcommunity.org (+233), 123.dcr.rocks (+76) and big.decred.energy (+71).

Nodes: Decred Mapper observed 157 dcrd nodes on Nov 1: v1.7.0 - 10%, v1.7.1 - 27%, v1.7.2 - 15%, v1.7.4 - 10%, v1.7.5 - 23%, v1.8.0 dev builds - 4%, other 11%.

Image: Reachable dcrd node versions.

The share of mixed coins varied between 60.7-61.0%. Daily mixed amount varied between 293-461K DCR.

Decred’s Lightning Network explorer has seen 69 nodes (-1), 112 channels (+7) with a total capacity of 46.9 DCR (+4.4), as of Nov 1. Thanks to @karamble for providing the data while the LN map is on maintenance.

Ecosystem

Biggest VSP stakey.com is having issues since around Sep 20 when it had 2,183 tickets, or 28% of all VSP tickets and 5% of all live tickets. The API endpoint does not respond and the data returned by decred.org VSP API is outdated. Service operator @dema501 commented that voting wallets are functional but the API server is in limbo. Missed Votes chart at dcrdata confirms there have been no spikes in missed tickets as of Nov 14.

Binance added DCR to its Simple Earn Flexible Products. The service allows one to deposit DCR for a flexible amount of time and receive daily rewards (about 2.5% APR according to one report). Simple Earn has replaced Binance Savings and Binance Staking platforms, and its Flexible Products component is a new name for Flexible Savings.

decred.org updates:

Decred adoption:

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 #ecosystem chat to follow Decred ecosystem updates.

Outreach

Monde PR’s achievements:

Secured the following news articles:

Media

Selected articles:

Decred Magazine engagement stats for October:

Videos:

Many Decred videos are available in audio format on Decred Magazine podcast on Anchor and all the common podcast platforms like Spotify or Apple. It was renamed from Decred Society to make it a community podcast rather than a personal one. If you like listening on the go, give it a try.

Art and fun:

Translations:

Non-English content:

Image: Decred merch by @OfficialCryptos.

Discussions

Selected Reddit posts:

Markets

In October DCR was trading between USD 23.50-29.90 / BTC 0.00128-0.00152. The average daily rate was $26.27.

Image: DCRDEX monthly volume in USD.

Relevant External

October was a big month for crypto hacks and exploits, by the 13th there had already been 11 different DeFi attacks in which $718 million was obtained by hackers. One that stands out is Mango Markets, which was hit for a $100M exploit when a trader manipulated some prices to borrow all of the assets on the platform. One of the attackers tweeted about a “highly profitable trading strategy” which they had engaged in, after a settlement had been negotiated with the platform which would allow other depositors to regain access to their funds. Another quirk of the story is that the attacker made a proposal to resolve the situation with no criminal charges and then voted for it with some of the tokens they obtained from the exploit.

Kim Kardashian has settled with the SEC, agreeing to pay $1.26M over her undisclosed shilling of EthereumMax in 2021. SEC Chief Gary Gensler has been promoting this as a big win.

Rune’s “Endgame” proposal for MakerDAO has been approved, and it has been noted that the majority of delegated MKR voting for it is controlled by Rune. MakerDAO has also voted to first approve a pilot transaction of $1 Million in US Treasury bonds custodied with Coinbase, following this up with confirmation that $1.6 Billion would be invested with Coinbase in this way, earning 1.5% yield that will support protocol development and other work.

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

About

This is issue 52 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):