Decred Journal – November 2022

Image: Untitled by @Exitus.

November’s highlights:

Contents:

Decrediton v1.7.6 Release

This release fixes a few issues with the DEX (module updated to v0.5.6), plus 1 fix for Windows:

Get the latest release on GitHub. As always, we recommend to verify the files before running.

DCRDEX v0.5.7 Release

The standalone DEX app is slightly ahead of the Decrediton version noted above, including these changes since v0.5.6:

This release also comes with a signature made by @chappjc’s key 761D6A0BEB286C9B6A65DD053F857EEA746C64D1, making it possible to verify DEX downloads until they are available as part of the next core software release.

The latest DEX app can be downloaded here.

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.

Merged in master:

RPC server:

The RPC testing framework has been moved to the new repository called dcrtest. The framework connects to a dcrd instance and drives it via the RPC interface. It is used to write integration-level tests which exercise features and behaviors of the fully compiled dcrd binary. Living in a separate repository now, it provides nicer functionality in terms of selecting a specific version of dcrd to test against by making use of Go’s module system instead of always compiling the latest master branch. This allows consumers of the testing framework, such as dcrlnd, to provide more quality assurance by testing against release versions of dcrd as well as the latest master.

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).

v1.7.6 release:

Towards the next release on master, the Wallet Launcher has been redesigned:

DEX:

UX upgrades:

Other changes:

Fixes:

Dev tools and docs:

Image: Redesigned Decrediton launching. Decreducate youtself while your wallet is syncing.

Image: Redesigned Trezor setup in Decrediton.

Politeia

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

All changes below are towards the GUI remake on the new plugin architecture.

Improved navigation:

Other:

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.

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.

v0.5.5 release:

v0.5.6 release:

v0.5.7 release:

Next are the changes merged in master towards the next major release.

Client, user-facing changes:

Client, BTC wallet:

Fidelity bonds (client and server):

Server:

Image: Your market-maker bot assistant in DCRDEX.

dcrdata

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

Rosetta

dcrros is a middleware service that provides access to the Decred network via Rosetta API.

Other

In the research department, @matheusd published OP_PEEL: Unilaterally exitable coin pools. OP_PEEL removes several limitations of the previous MRTTREE concept for building multi-owner Decred tickets on the Lightning Network.

The main goal for introducing OP_PEEL is to build multi-user pools of funds, rendered as a single on-chain UTXO, such that any individual participant of the pool can unilaterally extract back its shares without requiring full or even partial group coordination protocols for the redemption stage of the contract.

The OP_PEEL concept may be a good way to implement multi-owner tickets (aka “ticket splitting”), but other applications could build on it as well.

People

Welcome the new first-time contributors:

In the latest installment of Decred Magazine Q&A developer @cli_query shared his path from foreign exchange trading to diving into crypto and Decred.

The feeling was extraordinary, being able to do work for and be paid by a decentralized protocol is extremely powerful. The fact that you simply need to provide honest work and add value to the community was mindblowing to me.

Community stats as of Dec 2 (compared to Nov 1):

Governance

In November the new treasury received 8,473 DCR worth $186K at November’s average rate of $21.92. 2,646 DCR was spent to pay contractors, worth $58K at November’s rate, or $70K at October’s billing rate of $26.27.

The treasury spend tx had 25 outputs making payments to contractors, ranging from 3 DCR to 1,108 DCR. It was approved on Dec 5 with unanimous yes votes. This was a fast approval (also called “short-circuit approval” in the spec) in 10 days instead of the maximum 12 days of voting. Voter turnout was 49% with 7,037 yes votes out of 14,339 eligible votes that had a chance to vote in the shortened voting period. More detailed view of the treasury spend transaction can be found at the staging instance of dcrdata and will soon arrive at the main instance of the block explorer.

As of Dec 10, combined balance of legacy and new treasury is 830,186 DCR (17.8 million USD at $21.48).

Image: Treasury balance history.

Image: Treasury monthly inflows and outflows.

The proposal to fund @dcrtimestampbot Twitter bot with $1,950 was approved with 91.4% yes votes and turnout of 33%. One day after the approval @cli_query posted an update on Politeia saying that the bot is active under the new ownership.

Network

Hashrate: November’s hashrate opened at ~87 Ph/s and closed ~68 Ph/s, bottoming at 50 Ph/s and peaking at 93 Ph/s throughout the month.

Image: Decred hashrate.

Distribution of 75 Ph/s hashrate reported by the pools on Dec 1: Poolin 43%, F2Pool 32%, AntPool 19%, BTC.com 5%, CoinMine 0.4%.

Distribution of 1,000 blocks actually mined by Dec 1: Poolin 51%, F2Pool 32%, (likely) AntPool 10%, BTC.com 6%, CoinMine 0.2%.

Image: Pool hashrate distribution.

Image: Historical pool hashrate distribution.

Staking: Ticket price varied between 226-237 DCR, with 30-day average at 231.5 DCR (-2.2).

The locked amount was 9.44-9.55 million DCR, meaning that 64.1-65.1% of the circulating supply participated in Proof of Stake.

VSP: The 17 listed VSPs collectively managed ~6,930 (+130) live tickets, which was 16.8% of the ticket pool (+0.1%) as of Dec 1. Note: these figures exclude vspd.stakey.com, which is having API issues and reports outdated data.

Biggest gainers in November are ultravsp.uk (+497) and decredvoting.com (+83).

Image: Distribution of tickets managed by VSPs.

Nodes: Decred Mapper observed 112 dcrd nodes on Dec 1: v1.7.1 - 27%, v1.8.0 dev builds - 17%, v1.7.5 - 17%, v1.7.2 - 13%, v1.7.0 - 13%, v1.7.4 - 4%, other - 11%.

Image: Reachable dcrd node versions.

Image: Historical dcrd version distribution, data from nodes.jholdstock.uk.

The share of mixed coins varied between 61.0-61.1%. Daily mixed amount varied between 265-445K DCR.

Decred’s Lightning Network explorer has seen 67 nodes (-2), 104 channels (-8) with a total capacity of 40.6 DCR (-6.3), as of Dec 1. Thanks to @karamble for providing the data while the LN map is undergoing maintenance.

Thanks to @bochinchero for improving the charts and adding new ones. Full chart sets are available here for reuse.

Ecosystem

Decred announcements will now be mirrored in the Fediverse at @decred at dcr.pw. Give it a follow if you use Mastodon or another instance compatible with ActivityPub.

Fediverse folk have a total of 3 Decred services now: a Mastodon instance at citadel.stakey.net for social networking (invite link), a PeerTube instance at tube.decredcommunity.org mirroring YouTube videos, and the latest @decred for following project announcements. Since they all speak the ActivityPub protocol, it is possible to get both text announcements and new videos in the same account’s timeline.

Tweet timestamping bot is active again. Mention @dcrtimestampbot in your tweet and the bot will save it to IPFS, timestamp on Decred blockchain, and reply with links to view the proof and the saved copy. Currently the bot is limited to saving only one tweet (i.e. no threads) that directly mentions the bot. This can be used to make a statement and protect it from modifications. Python hackers willing to help improve the bot can find the source code here.

Decred wallets for Android and iOS have been removed from Google Play and Apple Store locations announced in the v1.7.0 release (May 2022), as well as the APK downloads from the Android release. The source code is still available on GitHub.

Binance has increased the personal quota for their Simple Earn offering for DCR from 15 DCR to 300 DCR per person, and also bumped up the yield from 2.5% to 3.5%.

Poloniex has completed its 10-month-long maintenance of the DCR wallet which started 2 days after the v1.7.0 release. Deposits and withdrawals are working again and there is a new DCR/USDT trading pair.

Join our #ecosystem chat to follow Decred ecosystem updates.

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

Upcoming:

Media

Selected articles:

Decred Magazine engagement stats for November:

Image: Decred technology stack overview.

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.

Our YouTube channel now has a new short link @DecredTV. The videos are also mirrored on Odysee.

Audio:

Translations:

Non-English content:

Discussions

Selected Reddit posts:

Selected Twitter discussions:

cexes loaning customer assets out for shorts is only possible when the exchange has custody of those assets.

these loans often cut directly against the interests of the customers who own the assets, creating misaligned incentives.

the only ethical path forward is decentralized exchanges (dex) because of this incentive misalignment.

exchanges should never take custody of any assets and instead simply facilitate trades by routing messages between counterparties. [@behindtext]

Markets

In November DCR was trading between USDT 18.30-28.80 / BTC 0.00115-0.00146. The average daily rate was $21.92.

Image: DCRDEX monthly volume in USD.

Relevant External

The US Attorney’s Office has confiscated over 50,000 BTC (valued at $3.36 billion) which was apparently obtained through “a sophisticated scheme designed to steal bitcoin from the notorious Silk Road Marketplace”. The sophisticated scheme involved depositing BTC and then immediately (i.e. within the same second) requesting withdrawals of this amount multiple times, which would duly be processed by the Silk Road’s server at the time. The BTC was confiscated from one James Zhong, along with some cash, equities and precious metals. Some of the BTC was stored “on a single-board computer that was submerged under blankets in a popcorn tin stored in a bathroom closet”. Zhong had exchanged the BCH which accrued to their addresses for more BTC on an offshore cryptocurrency exchange, and this may have played a role in allowing the authorities to track him down.

The cryptocurrency exchange FTX has filed for bankruptcy protection and halted all withdrawals for its International and US sites, affecting over 1 million users. The collapse of FTX started with a story on CoinDesk about a leaked balance sheet for Alameda Research (one of Sam Bankman-Fried’s companies) indicating that it was heavily reliant on FTT tokens (for the FTX exchange) which it was placing a higher than market value on. CZ of Binance fueled the fire by suggesting that Binance would liquidate its substantial FTT holdings in light of this information. Alameda tried to prop up the FTT price for some time but it dropped significantly and this made them insolvent, in the process triggering a run of withdrawal requests from increasingly panicked FTX users which ultimately FTX was unable to meet. SBF confirmed that something was very wrong by tweeting that Binance were going to step in and buy FTX to ensure all customers would be able to access their funds, an arrangement which fell apart within a day, and within a few days there were reports that SBF was looking for a $9.4 billion rescue package from investors. After declaring bankruptcy a big chunk of FTX’s crypto balances started moving, it has apparently been “hacked” by a (former) insider. The appointed administrator has criticised FTX as one of the worst run companies he has ever seen (he administered Enron’s bankruptcy among others). SBF has been tweeting and giving interviews intermittently throughout the saga, against the advice of his lawyers (who have dropped him as a client), and many crypto commentators have been lamenting the relatively kind treatment he has received in the mainstream press.

There have been a number of high profile crypto companies who have struggled with the contagion of FTX/Alameda’s collapse and the unravelling “Sam coins”. The Gemini exchange had to pause withdrawals and BlockFi first suspended withdrawals then filed for bankruptcy. The Digital Currency Group’s brokerage Genesis suspended withdrawals, while the Grayscale Trust, another DCG company, saw GBTC trading at a 45% discount to BTC, as they failed to provide definitive “Proof of Reserves”.

Proof of Reserves (PoR) is a way of keeping exchanges honest by publishing addresses where they hold customer funds, ideally alongside a list of liabilities, in the aftermath of the FTX collapse PoR has seen renewed attention and several exchanges have implemented versions of it to assure customers that their assets are safely held. Nic Carter has a website which outlines the concept and tracks which exchanges have implemented some kind of PoR. There have been questions raised about some of the PoR efforts of exchanges, in particular Crypto.com “mistakenly” sending over $400M worth of Ethereum to Gate.io was seen as a possible attempt to cheat by one or both exchanges.

The Cosmos Hub community voted to reject a major and controversial ATOM 2.0 whitepaper which proposed significant changes to the tokenomics and new consensus level mechanisms for the network. The vote had high turnout, with 73.4% of all ATOM tokens participating, and while 47.5% voted Yes, 37.4% voted “NoWithVeto”, and any more than 33.4% NoWithVeto votes means rejecting the proposal. The proposal was described as a signalling proposal, it came from a variety of figures within the community including a co-founder, and it is likely that many of the aspects of the long document will return for specific votes on their technical implementation after feedback from the community has been addressed.

One of the MakerDAO co-founders, Nikolai Mushegian, has died after an apparent drowning incident, his body was found on a beach in Puerto Rico known for strong currents. Mushegian had been tweeting about CIA and Mossad being out to frame him or torture him shortly before his death.

The LBRY content network, best known for Odysee video app, lost its long-running case against the SEC for selling LBRY tokens as an unregistered security. The judge issued a summary judgment that the LBRY tokens were obviously securities, with comments which cast a wide net and would see the majority of crypto tokens classified as securities.

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

About

This is issue 53 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):