Decred Journal – March 2023

Image: Untitled by @Exitus

Highlights of March:

Contents:

Proposal to change PoW algorithm and reduce PoW rewards

A major change is coming to Decred’s consensus and economics. A proposal has been submitted to further reduce the Proof of Work share of rewards from 10% to 1%, increase Proof of Stake rewards from 80% to 89%, and change the mining algorithm from BLAKE-256 to BLAKE3. This will remove all currently mining ASIC hardware from the network with the goal to fix the price discovery of DCR. As of writing the proposal has been approved. Next steps will be to implement new consensus rules in code, release a new version of core software, let the network install it and let the stakeholders vote to activate the new rules. All of it should take a few months and there will be more communication about each stage on Decred’s official channels.

Bison Relay v0.1.6 Release Candidate

Two releases came out in March focused on improving group chat experience.

Highlights of v0.1.5 release:

Highlights of v0.1.6 Release Candidate 1:

Get the latest release binaries on GitHub (as of writing the Downloads page at bisonrelay.org still shows v0.1.4). Bug reports and feedback are welcome in the GitHub issue tracker and the #br chat on Matrix or Bison Relay itself.

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.

Hardening of consensus change voting code continued from last month:

Other changes:

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).

In progress:

Other:

vspd

vspd is server software used by Voting Service Providers. A VSP votes on behalf of its users 24/7 and cannot steal funds.

Changes to make vspd code easier to consume by other software (such as dcrwallet):

Other changes:

Lightning Network

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

LN Liquidity Provider (LP):

LN Liquidity Provider is software that takes control of a normal LN node and adds one useful feature to it: client software can ask the LP to open a channel back to the client. This gives the client additional inbound capacity and allows them to receive more funds over the Lightning Network. In return the LP operator collects a small fee for the service.

Bison Relay is a major user of Decred’s Lightning Network and benefits from improvements in both the base LN software and the Liquidity Provider.

cspp

cspp is a server for coordinating coin mixes using the CoinShuffle++ protocol. It is non-custodial, i.e. never holds any funds. CSPP is part of StakeShuffle, Decreds privacy system.

DCRDEX

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

Internal pre-release testing of the big v0.6 release has started with one beta and two release candidates tagged in March. All changes reported below will be included in the v0.6 release.

Client changes:

Client fixes:

Ethereum, client:

Ethereum, server:

Fidelity bonds:

Other changes:

Client changes on master towards the next release (likely v0.6.1):

Other stuff:

Image: UI updates in DCRDEX to replace registration fees with time-locked bonds. UI design is a work in progress. DCR amounts shown are not real.

dcrdata

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

Documentation

dcrdocs is the source code for Decred user documentation.

Dev Docs

dcrdevdocs is the source code for Decred developer documentation.

decred.org

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

Changes to the News page:

Bison Relay

Bison Relay is a new social media platform with strong protections against censorship, surveillance, and advertising, powered by Decred Lightning Network.

End user binaries have been released for Bison Relay v0.1.5 with all changes and fixes we reported in the February issue. Just one week later v0.1.6 Release Candidate 1 became available for download. Below are all changes in v0.1.6 RC1 and v0.1.6 final. The latter added very minor fixes and no binaries have been made for it.

Common changes in GUI and CLI apps in v0.1.6:

GUI app changes in v0.1.6:

CLI app changes in v0.1.6:

clientrpc automation API changes in v0.1.6:

Other stuff and what to expect:

Other

People

Community stats as of Apr 3 (compared to Mar 1):

Governance

In March the new treasury received 8,388 DCR worth $174K at March’s average rate of $20.69. 4,271 DCR was spent to pay contractors, worth $88K at March’s rate.

A treasury spend tx was mined on March 13, it had 27 outputs making payments to contractors, ranging from 2.7 DCR to 1,264 DCR. At January’s billing rate of $22.05 the TSpend is equivalent to $94K.

As of Apr 13, combined balance of legacy and new treasury is 852,332 DCR (17.8 million USD at $20.90).

There were 7 proposals submitted in March:

See Politeia Digest issue 57 and issue 58 for more details on the month’s proposals.

Politeia Digest is available on: Block Commons, Decred Magazine, Medium, and GitHub.

Network

Hashrate: March’s hashrate opened at ~71 Ph/s and closed ~73 Ph/s, bottoming at 64 Ph/s and peaking at 83 Ph/s throughout the month.

Image: Decred hashrate.

Distribution of 74 Ph/s hashrate reported by the pools on Apr 1: Poolin 54%, F2Pool 35%, AntPool 11%, CoinMine 0.2%.

Distribution of 1,000 blocks actually mined by Apr 3: Poolin 44%, F2Pool 43%, AntPool 9%, BTC.com 3%.

Image: Historical pool hashrate distribution.

Staking: Ticket price varied between 223-254 DCR.

Image: Ticket price has stabilized.

The locked amount was 9.64-9.83 million DCR, meaning that 64.0-65.2% of the circulating supply participated in Proof of Stake.

Image: DCR locked in tickets keeps crawling up.

VSP: The 16 listed VSPs collectively managed ~7,200 (-210) live tickets, which was 17.6% of the ticket pool (-0.8%) as of Apr 1.

Biggest gainers in March were ubiqsmart.com (280 tickets or +155%) and dcrhive.com (+225 tickets or +25%).

Image: Distribution of tickets managed by VSPs.

Nodes: Decred Mapper observed between 162 and 176 dcrd nodes throughout the month. Versions of 166 nodes seen on Apr 1: v1.7.5 - 36%, v1.7.1 - 21%, v1.8.0 dev builds - 13%, v1.7.2 - 13%, v1.7.0 - 8%, v1.7.4 - 4%, other - 7%.

Image: Historical dcrd version distribution, data from nodes.jholdstock.uk. Data until Jan 2023 was incomplete.

The share of mixed coins varied between 60.5-61.1%. Daily mixed volume varied between 317-495K DCR.

Image: Mixed supply has recovered from a brief drop.

Decred’s Lightning Network explorer has seen 175 nodes (+17), 354 channels (+49) with a total capacity of 129 DCR (+14), as of Apr 3. These stats vary depending on the LN node. For example, @karamble’s node reported 175 nodes (+0), 376 channels (-9) and 135 DCR (-33) capacity on same day Apr 3.

Ecosystem

Metal Pay has disabled DCR trading according to a user report. This is confirmed by their support site which no longer shows DCR in the list of assets available for trading. Assets supporting deposits and withdrawals do not include DCR either, and apparently never did. Other coins delisted in the same batch with DCR include BNB, BUSD, DGB, PAX and TUSD. In the bigger picture, Metal Pay delisted 13 assets in December including XMR, ZEC, DASH and BSV. Since November 2022 the list of tradeable assets reduced from 63 to just 15. Metal Pay first listed DCR in April 2020.

Bittrex’s Instant Buy feature did not work for DCR due to low liquidity, according to a user report. This did not affect limit orders on the full trading interface.

Ledger representative came to Decred’s Matrix chat room to share a status update. The summary is: Decred support in Ledger Live is broken for some users, it is taking a long time to fix, and Ledger would love to redirect affected users to third party services compatible with their devices in the situation where an integration is broken on Ledger’s side. Therefore Ledger will benefit from the upcoming direct integration in Decrediton.

Binance announced the delisting of DCR/BTC and DCR/USDT pairs from Isolated Margin. For context, NEBL and XVG were also part of this delisting batch. Regular (Spot) DCR trading is NOT affected by this. At the same time, personal quota in the Simple Earn product has increased from 300 to 10,000 DCR per person. As of Mar 27, Simple Earn showed 1.67% APR while staking DCR directly yields about 7%/year.

Bittrex made a big announcement about shutting down U.S. operations due to regulatory and economic challenges. Per their timeline, fiat withdrawals must conclude by Apr 24 and crypto withdrawals by Apr 29 (sooner is better). Bittrex Global is not (directly) affected and will continue operations for non-U.S. customers. The move came after Bittrex was fined in December for $29 million for violating sanctions and AML regulations. Despite closing U.S. operations Bittrex may be hit by another lawsuit from the SEC for operating an unregistered securities exchange.

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 media placements:

Events

Attended:

Upcoming:

Media

Selected articles:

Decred Magazine engagement stats for March:

Videos:

Livestream:

Audio:

Art and fun:

Translations:

Discussions:

Other:

Markets

In March DCR was trading between USDT 17.53-25.90 and BTC 0.00068-0.00102. The average daily rate was $20.69.

Image: Applesaucesome is bullish. Follow on Twitter for more.

Image: DCRDEX monthly volume in USD.

Relevant External

Three US banks failed in March, the largest of them being Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), which was the second largest US bank failure of all time. One of the ripple effects was a temporary de-pegging of the USDC stablecoin as news emerged that ~10% of the funds backing USDC were stuck with SVB when the FDIC stepped in to take over before Circle’s withdrawal was processed.

The operators of the Tether stablecoin allegedly used falsified documents and shell companies to get bank accounts, in an article by the Wall Street Journal (non-paywalled link). WSJ reviewed a cache of emails from Tether staff which indicated a long-running effort to retain banking access by engaging in various schemes, including having someone in China making fake invoices and contracts to disguise deposits and withdrawals - a policy which was ultimately stopped when owner Stephen Moore wrote he “… would not want to argue any of the above in a potential fraud/money laundering case”.

Nic Carter has documented evidence for what he terms Operation Choke Point 2.0, a deliberate effort to restrict banking access to crypto firms by discouraging banks from dealing with them using various means.

Binance has been charged by the CFTC in a wide ranging complaint which covers a number of offences, including weak KYC/AML that allowed US customers to trade derivatives and securities which they were not registered to offer, allowed money laundering to occur, and traded against their own customers. The 74 page complaint includes quotes from messages sent between internal staff, including such gems as “I HAZ NO CONFIDENCE IN OUR GEOFENCING”, from the money laundering reporting officer. The complaint also mentions Bitcoin and Ethereum as commodities, in service to defining Binance’s activities as subject to CFTC’s jurisdiction. CZ reacted with “4” meaning “Ignore FUD”, and later with a longer response which recaps how much Binance has invested in compliance and cooperation with regulators. Some analysts are pessimistic about Binance’s chances against CFTC.

Coinbase has been threatened by the SEC of a possible legal action for violations of the federal securities laws. Coinbase representative went public about company’s frustration about SEC’s unclear selection of cryptoassets considered to be securities, and cited SEC’s denial to tell which specific assets traded on Coinbase platforms are securities.

Justin Sun and his companies Tron Foundation, BitTorrent Foundation and Rainberry have been sued by the SEC for violations including sale of unregistered securities (TRX and BTT) and manipulating the secondary market for TRX through extensive wash trading. A number of celebrities who were engaged to promote Sun’s projects have also been sued in the same motion for promoting TRX/BTT without disclosing the arrangement, they include Lindsey Lohan, Jake Paul, Soulja Boy, and Lil Yachty. The period for which Sun is accused of wash trading covers April 2018 to February 2019, during which time Sun allegedly provided between 4.5 million and 7.4 million TRX and instructed staff to wash trade it using two of his accounts.

Do Kwon, of Terra/Luna infamy, was arrested in Montenegro for using forged documents. Both the US and South Korea have announced their wish to extradite and prosecute him.

The second Retroactive Public Goods Funding (RetroPGF) initiative by Optimism was completed in March, with 10 million OP being distributed to 195 different projects and people that had contributed something to the Optimism or Ethereum ecosystem. The funds were distributed to recipients in three different sections, Infrastructure (received 37%), Tooling & Utilities (32%) and Education (31%). To decide how the OP would be distributed, a panel of 90 community members was formed by selecting community members using a variety of different means. Each “badgeholder” ranked the nominated projects and funds were dispersed according to a weighted average of their votes.

Arbitrum, an Ethereum Layer 2, conducted its long-anticipated airdrop, and there has been controversy about how well anticipated the conditions were by airdrop hunters. Analysis of the airdrop indicated that, despite rules to avoid giving airdrops to Sybil users, as much as 48% of the airdropped tokens went to an address that was strongly associated with at least one other address which also received the airdrop - with 22% going to advanced Sybil users who had thousands of associated addresses receiving the airdrop.

Once the tokens were airdropped their holders (those who didn’t dump immediately) became Arbitrum’s governance decision-makers. In the first proposal (AIP-1) they would decide on whether to allocate 750 million ARB (worth $1 billion) tokens to the Arbitrum Foundation, and it turned messy. Community members objected to the Foundation having discretion to spend some of these funds without on-chain community approval, and when it was clear that the proposal was in difficulty the Foundation published a blog post explaining that the vote was to ratify something that was already happening, the Foundation already had the funds and had in fact started spending them. This appears to have been a miscommunication about the nature of the vote, but following the controversy which erupted the Foundation has taken steps to reassure the community that the remaining 700 million ARB will not be touched until a proposal has been approved by the community.

This month’s record breaking DeFi hack is a good news story, because it’s the largest ever recovery of funds, by the Euler Labs team. The Euler Finance protocol was exploited by a flash loan attack on March 13, the attacker was able to obtain $197 million, and causing the value locked in Euler contracts to drop as low as $10 million. Euler Labs tried to negotiate the return of 90% of the funds with the hacker and when the negotiations broke down put out a $1 million bounty for information about the attacker. Although a deal could not be reached the attacker began to sporadically return the funds, until eventually on April 4 Euler Labs announced that all the “recoverable funds” had been returned and the bounty was cancelled.

LinksDAO is seemingly on course to achieve its main objective and buy a Links Golf Club, specifically Spey Bay on the Moray Coast of Scotland. The Club was listed for $905,000 and LinksDAO’s representatives were the top bidders, with the sale to be confirmed and the final sale price as yet unknown. LinksDAO is still reported to be on the lookout for US golf properties, as presumably not many of its 5,400 global members have easy access to the Moray Coast to play a round.

The “Skull of Satoshi”, an art installation commissioned by Greenpeace as part of a campaign to highlight the impact of PoW mining, has been adopted by the Bitcoin community as its own. The artist has come to the realization that it is not a black and white issue, as they thought it was when they began creating the piece.

Ron DeSantis, Governor of Florida, has proposed legislation to ban the acceptance of Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) in the state. Doubts have been raised whether the legislation is workable, it is likely that a Federal push for a CBDC could overturn pre-existing state law.

Dubai has published new laws in February that ban issuance and use of anonymity-enhancing cryptocurrencies like Monero.

Two UK banks have restricted retail customers’ access to crypto. Nationwide introduced a daily limit of £5,000 on debit-card purchases, while disallowing to use credit cards to buy crypto. HSBC has also blocked crypto purchases with its credit cards.

Nigeria has been pushing its CBDC, when incentives like discounts on taxi fares didn’t work to increase adoption they restricted access to cash to force the issue, but people are protesting about the lack of cash and still adoption of the CBDC is at less than 0.5% of the population.

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

About

This is issue 57 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.

Updates:

Credits (alphabetical order):