Just to let everyone know, airdrop invitation e-mails will start going out January 8th, 2016. They'll continue being sent out over the weekend and early next week. Airdrop applications will continue being accepted until January 18th, 2016, and invitation e-mails will continue until prior to mainnet launch. The project has been swamped with interest and every application gets individual attention, so there will be more information about mainnet launch as well. The current anticipation is a delay of one week, which is unfortunate, but it's important to give all the applications proper attention and not leave people behind.

There are some really talented people who have signed up to join the Decred network and community. It's humbling to think there are so many high calibre individuals who want to explore technology together to build on what Decred is putting forward. You're thanked from the bottom of the hearts of those who have built it up to this point, and it's going to be an honour to work together and see where the wind in our sails takes us.

The expectations is that there will be at least one exchange up within the first 4 weeks after launch. It may happen sooner, but it cannot be made a priority without it affecting the mainnet launch date. There is a lot of work that needs to get completed before mainnet launch on January 18th. Launch may be delayed by up to a week in order to get a final few important items completed, and this is without even thinking about the exchange issue.


Good point. The project forgot to put up a privacy policy for the airdrop. This was a bad oversight, however the information will not be used for any purpose outside the Decred airdrop. Your signup information will never be shared with anyone else and will only ever be used for the purpose of including people in the airdrop.


The Decred Constitution is a document that will describe the governance system, the process for doing paid work for Decred via the dev org, and the guiding principles of the project. It was drafted with input from a wide number of sources, including the developers, and this draft document will be made public in the near future. It is not an exhaustive and long document, but is intentionally compressed in form to be clear in wording about the process, and for it to be accessible to all users. It will be put up on GitHub for community input and proposed changes for further development.


Sidechains are an interesting addition to Bitcoin for testing new features, but there are a number of reasons that contributed to Decred not being developed as a sidechain.

• There is no financial incentive to develop a sidechain for developers unless they are paid by a 3rd party to create it. Since sidechains are designed to preserve the value of bitcoins transferred to them, it is not possible for developers to create a sidechain and derive a financial benefit directly, i.e., you put in work to make a great sidechain and you cannot benefit from that directly by increasing the number of bitcoins you have. If your sidechain positively affects the price of Bitcoin, you can indirectly benefit from the sidechain.
• The project believes there are fundamental problems with Bitcoin that will never get fixed with the current governance structure and social contract. In order to fix these problems, the project has substantially altered the incentive structures in Decred. Mapping these changes onto a sidechain would be complex work, make it so that developers cannot benefit from creating a successful project, and bind them to what the project considers an effectively broken governance model.
• Even in the event that the project made a popular sidechain for Bitcoin and many people switched to it, developers would stand to gain nothing to continue development in real terms. Bitcoin has shown that a donation-type model is not sustainable and a difficult burden to place on users, which has prompted reliance on outside funding that does not necessarily come from users directly involved in the process. So even in this extremely unlikely case where a project suddenly becomes popular, the development work is still unfunded or underfunded, which jeopardizes the future of the project.

The project certainly understands the motivations behind Bitcoin sidechains, however, the view is that they are not suitable for use when developing another cryptocurrency with Decred's goals.

This is duly noted. Thank you very much for your efforts in reaching out to sp_ and communicating your findings here. This is definitely something to pursue.


Good job on creating these! Just realised you haven't been thanked for them.

"Monumental assholes" are welcome in the project, so long as they bring logical, reasonable, and evidence-based discussion on the issues they want to address. The point raised about the negative comments is that no attempt was made to interact with people posting here and elsewhere prior to making definitive statements. That is not good.


You should do this for sure. All projects interested in stepping up and running their own initiatives like these will get support insofar as possible. If it is to the benefit of the community, it's contributory, and will enjoy support.

Thank you for bringing this up on IRC, it's critically important to understand how the subsidy system works and where the funds are going. The base reasoning is correct, but the inferences require detailed explanation inline below. The calculations referenced in this explanation are contained in a spreadsheet, linked here.

• The premine will split 8% equally between two groups: (A) c0/devs and (B) the airdrop participants. This means that 50% of all the decred in existence at launch will be owned by c0/devs. The other 50% will be owned by the larger community.
• At the time of launch, the development organization (dev org) will have 0 coins. As blocks are mined on mainnet, the dev org will begin to receive its 10% subsidy from each block.
• Since approximately 3.02M coins will come from block subsidies, i.e. not premine, this means the dev org will collect 302K coins. The dev org will fund ongoing work, so it is expected to spend most of the coins it receives and not accumulate large amounts of coins. The average amount of stake held by the dev org should be relatively low as a function of the org not carrying a large balance.
• Starting with 50% of the coins at launch and 4% of the total does not entitle c0/devs to 15% of all minted coins. The reason is that 60% of the subsidy goes to PoW miners, which c0/devs have no overlap with. The plan is to have a few GPUs mining Decred after launch, but 60% of all the coins end up with PoW miners. When these coins are held by PoW miners, or whoever they sell it to, they can be used to mine PoS themselves. If coins are voted in proportion ('in proportion' explained below) to the amount held, the 4% premine turns into 7.32% of the total at the end of year 5, which is assuming none of the premine coins are spent. This means that c0/devs have 4% turning into 7.32% in 5 years, not 4% turning into 19%.

• Per above, the concerns about the dev org mining lots of stake are addressed. The plan is that most of these coins will be paid to a diverse group of developers in the form of contracts who complete deliverables for the project on an ongoing basis.
• There are two "bounding" scenarios to consider: (1) where everyone mines PoS and (2) where nobody mines PoS besides c0/devs. The spreadsheet linked to in this post contains the projection for the "everyone mines" scenario. In that case, the 4% premine, if entirely unspent, grows to approximately 5.38% after year 1, 6.16% after year 2, and 6.67% after year 3. The percentage of total coins held by the 4% drops from 50% at launch to 24.4% after year 1, 18.0% after year 2, and 15.1% after year 3. The "nobody mines" scenario is a failure mode of Decred and is unlikely to happen.
• The hope is that a large number of the coins are used to mine PoS since you not only want users to share in the gains from PoS mining, a strong participation in PoS is needed to secure the network.
• In the event that there is a low participation rate in PoS mining, the plan is to throttle c0/devs' PoS mining so that it does not hoover up all the coins. The goal with PoS is not to hoard the coins, but to create a strong incentive structure for users to participate in securing the network with their voting. c0/devs will not mine more PoS than projected in the "everyone mines" scenario, as it would go against the spirit of the project.

The threat you describe, "How do we moderate the amount of PoS mining power for our 4% premine?", was also discussed prior to your bringing it up. The plan was to start mining PoS at a moderate pace so that people besides the 4% premine can get stake tickets without too much effort. After you brought this up, the other possible options were discussed that have been mentioned by you and others in the community.

The complexity of the constraint for what would be considered good behavior on c0/devs' part makes implementing such a constraint difficult. The belief is that the proper constraint would be "c0/devs can mine some PoS, but not too much PoS, and no pump and dumps" or similar. Other projects have CLTV'ed coins to make them unusable until a certain block number, but this would mean c0/devs cannot use these coins to secure the network by mining PoS. A notable distinction here is that Decred never took external funding for the bringup work, and, as such, has no pre-existing social contract with the userbase that would merit a promise to behave a certain way. Although, it must be said that inappropriate behaviour by c0/devs removes any prospect of sustainable development, which goes against c0/devs' history of development over the years. This is because there is strong incentive to reproduce this level of activity for Decred as one of the development stakeholders in the ecosystem. The reasoning for airdropping 50% of the premine was based on the logic that Decred will be most vulnerable at mainnet launch and therefore require a steward to ensure it is not essentially dead-on-arrival. Airdropping more than 50% of the premine was considered, but doing so would be a risk to the security of the chain since bad actors could scoop up a large percentage of the initial coins and wreak havoc with PoS mining. A 50% airdrop in the premine was the largest safe size for the airdrop that could be determined, and it can be viewed as a set of training wheels that are taken off as time passes after launch.

This is presented as an "intention of stewardship" and will be judged against deliverables, instead of taking people's money and making lots of potentially-empty promises. There's no claim it's a perfect system, it's an alternative model that will explore new areas in both technology and governance, but hopefully this post sheds light on the stewardship process and issues raised.

Going to quote this and highlight it to say thank you. This is well constructed and informed critique. The devs are still asleep, so when everyone is back this issue will be addressed. Important to confirm the numbers since it's a full post and run projections. In coming up with a solution, the project needs to stay within a certain framework that can't be removed:

• Developers do need to be rewarded for the risk they took by purchasing coins at a relatively high dollar value prior to any community support - even if it just hinges on the simplistic notion that the coins they purchased will be worth something in the future (or be worthless if Decred isn't decent software or the larger community rejects the project) - no free meals for the devs
• The community airdrop needs to stay intact since there's a social contract in place and no money will be taken from the community (the people won't be made to carry the devs' risk), and
• The project must remain sustainable so that development can continue beyond the current developers - the future extends far beyond the current set (even though they will be around no matter what, that's both human behaviour and very few people just walk away from something they have worked on for years)

It does appear that there's broader support for these three points, and so working within that framework to find a solution seems optimal. That will be done.

Saw that earlier. Pretty saddened by the fact that the article is generally positive but all the quotes are quite hateful. ETH, NXT, and BitNation (Swarm too) with so much fire from out of nowhere. Very surprising since Decred isn't taking any money from anyone, but all those projects did before code was even written - and yet Decred is the scam. Really don't want to be a dick about it, but that was quite harsh, especially without talking to anyone involved in the project or the community forming here for example.

How does one fund development in real terms without money? Legitimate question about the funding model and what a better option would be.

Bear in mind the number you're referring to (USD 0.494047619) was used to calculate the rate devs would purchase coins at so the project had continued funding while it was being developed. Funds were pooled in this way. It's arbitrary, agreed, but it was done so real dollars and time could be assigned to the project. It's pretty unusual since most projects expect free coins for the devs and/or expect people to pay for the coins. Decred did the opposite of that. Devs paid and community will get coins for free if they care about contributing (unconditionally, but in the spirit of contribution). It was the only real way the project could carry the risk and not expect its users to carry it for them.

Thank you for the good wishes. The project has certainly tried to explain the logic transparently and in detail - hence the long ANN OP post. If anything is unclear, people should ask so explanatory improvements can be made for new visitors and future community members.

Hi Gladimor, thanks for letting people know about the ticker. It's duly noted. Obviously no one had an idea DeltaCredits operated under DCR when that ticker was decided on. Contentious issues are dealt with as a community, which in Decred's case is discourse and voting on a separate platform. This will be addressed in that way.

You need to remember that a ticker isn't the biggest concern right now as development continues and time is being spent on helping people who are trying to learn about the project. So it's being said with respect that everyone is aware of the matter and it will be addressed. Doesn't mean the outcome is necessarily a change, however, but there is due process to follow. You can also see the difficulty in tickers crossing over each other when most tickers are three letters. It's really important that the thread sticks on topic and not derail because of an issue like that when it's being taken into consideration.

The dev subsidy travels through the blockchain to DHG and from DHG back through the blockchain to development parties. It's transparent. This is also summarized and accounted for in a traditional way by public financial statements. If it changes and becomes less transparent, people need to rise up and turn against Decred.

You can have a look at this message for more information on the funding mechanism and how it's going to work.


An idea that's been proposed is to treat issues in layers. The first layer is an informal, but structured platform, where users can conduct informed discourse and vote on issues so everyone can gauge the level of interest different issues attract. This would be a web-type platform. There'll be some experimentation with a platform like that this week. From this layer, issues will graduate into the blockchain where PoS can vote on the issues in a formal capacity for inclusion in the software. That is one proposal put forward that may end up being conductive to progressing the technology (especially contentious issues).

What appears to have happened is Softpedia picked up a press release distributed a few weeks ago that the project wrote to try and create a bit of awareness for the airdrop initiative. Didn't anticipate much coverage, but a decision was made to at least try and get some exposure - nobody wanted to look back and face accusations the project was kept in the dark for a select few. Here is a link to the original press release on the wiki.

Softpedia published an article by the title of "Amid Bitcoin Centralization Worries, Core Developers Start New Currency Called Decred". It looks like confusion started here about the word "core". The original title put on the press release was "Bitcoin Developers To Start New Digital Currency". Media houses seem to rewrite these, so it was only a matter of time before this happened. This got picked up by Slashdot and now it's on their front page.

An uncomfortable conversation may now ensue about who has the right to call themselves "Bitcoin developers". The assumption that the phrase automatically means "Bitcoin Core developers" is unfortunate. This is not true, as many developers form part of the Bitcoin ecosystem, but sadly it speaks to the larger mindset. However, btcsuite is made up of Bitcoin developers, has been since 2013, can go head and head with Bitcoin Core any day, and some of these btcsuite developers now work on Decred. c0 funds development on both. Those are the material facts.

Having said that, this is the Internet. Things are going to get crazy. If you're interested in Decred, strap yourselves in, stay true to the ethos of the project, focus on the work, and enjoy the ride.

No, it has not been minted yet. When all of this happens it'll be made public - and you'd be the first to know here!


The 10% goes to a development entity that will administer the funds so that "proof-of-development" parties can get paid for their contributions to the codebase and Decred's development. This will be administered as contracts and open to anyone and based on merit. Ideally, it would be great to have this administered as a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO), but the technology isn't quite there yet. So logistically it's administered by an organisation called Decred Holdings Group (DHG), currently based in Nevis, that will release financial statements publicly for anyone to examine. This is an entirely logistical requirement, so one can easily verify the funds going in and out of DHG, and this will be accounted for transparently. Once it can be moved to a DAO, that will be embraced. As for form, payment will be in decred. Here's a quote from wiki.decred.org:

"The development organization will be open to anyone who makes contributions to develop Decred, will remain transparent and issue regular financial statements biannually, and will publicly account for how funds are spent. This entity is built to be adaptable and open to community feedback and guidance, and may therefore change in the future if circumstances require adaptation for it to continue serving its goal to make and keep Decred development sustainable as the project and network scale upward."

No plans to merge mine as of yet. Decred is 14-round.

Nice. Thank you. Appreciate you helping people in here too. The best thing for what's being proposed is an informed userbase so good ideas can influence the system and users can call out wrongdoing no matter where it occurs.

Both AMD and NVIDIA miners will be supported out of the box. And of course any work done on this by any party will be compensated through this system. Anyone can step forward right now and start interacting with the process if they're interested in improving NVIDIA support.

It goes against the self-interest of the devs to dump anything - since that would hurt the project and therefore any future dev they do on it. So the first 4% is secure. The second is distributed amongst the community, so the dumps will be much smaller if they occur. No different to what miners will accumulate. Hard to give any guarantees, since it's all based on a rational actor model, but in theory it checks out.

Just so you know, this isn't being ignored. Passed on the questions and just waiting for the devs to come back with some information on this issue (future plans, and so on).