Interesting - how did you come to this conclusion? Decred doesn't have any connection to Dash. Dash is based on C/C++ codebase, whereas Decred is based on a Go (golang) codebase. One thing Decred would like to avoid is what happened during Dash's launch. It needs to be taken as a lesson to try and learn from. Another good reason to get many people involved in airdrop.

Decred's goals are pretty simple. It wants to be open and progressive, and use community-based governance to make decisions. It wants to be self-funding and remain sustainable so it can continue its own development.


To be cheeky: btcsuite has been influencing Bitcoin Core development for years. It's been BC's red team. There are no plans for Decred to directly influence Bitcoin Core development. The relationship is between btcsuite and Decred, and it's a code relationship. If BC like what's happening, they can be part of it just like anyone else - or use the open-sourced code for their purposes.


Contentious issues need to be solved appropriately. The proposal put forward now is to conduct discourse and informal voting on a platform where anyone can participate with the issues - specifically geared for this purpose. Then issues move to the blockchain where it's handled by PoW/PoS, wherein PoS miners formally vote on each issue. That's a proposal for how Decred can deal with difficult issues and arrive at a solution. What we have now is just a starting point.

Funding:
There are basically three models we've seen in most free and open-source projects that want to remain sustainable (continue development over time). In these, funding comes from:

• Donation-type efforts, or hoping for goodwill
• Some type of initial offering, or selling influence to insiders
• Some external party, or selling influence to outsiders

Nobody here will tell you Decred is going to fix your world. Anyone who tells you that is a false prophet. What we can tell you, unequivocally, is that Decred is a project that will attempt to introduce a fourth option to counter the corruptive influence of funding we've seen destroy a lot of good ideas that started in an earnest way. By writing funding into a consensus rule, Decred attempts to put power back in the hands of its users. Some people will stop reading here and say it's a terrible idea. Others will come along on the journey and see where it goes. The fact remains, if the network dislikes the direction development takes, they now have a direct voice to communicate that - stop mining and staking and the funding stops. That's the fourth option.

All the other options we've seen are suboptimal. Donation-type efforts are limited in scale. Selling air to you saying it'll be worth something "if you just trust us" is sick. And finally, Decred won't accept a situation where it's owned by a handful of corporations astroturfing the community and manufacturing consent in its name. By putting funding into the hands of users, Decred attempts a representative democratic model where nobody owns it. Decred isn't for sale - and you can't inquire within about sale. And if anyone messes with that in the future, scream from the hilltops and burn the whole damn thing to the ground - it's our duty as a community.

btcsuite:
btcsuite has been funded by a single guy, relatively unknown, who is crazy about freedom. There's no selling and no venture capital. There have been attempts to buy influence, and they have been chased away. Bear in mind btcsuite is the backbone of a great number of Bitcoin businesses and organisations now. There isn't a number because many close off their code - so we don't know. You may be interested to know that Ethereum's most popular client (geth) is based on btcd, for example. The point is btcsuite is high quality software written in public view over years. That is what you will see from Decred from a development perspective - you need not look further than btcsuite's history.

That type of situation is obviously quite unique. A single source of philanthropic funding is both rare and a problem for a project like Decred. It's been sustained fine for a project like btcsuite, but Decred intends to build a multi-stakeholder development environment where anyone can come contribute and be rewarded for their work fairly when it becomes part of the codebase. 100% of funding goes to the benefit of Decred's development - in full view of the public. So funding isn't going to go to btcsuite as a separate project unless that code clearly and directly benefits Decred, goes into its codebase, and is part of a Decred feature. It's clear now how that can be confusing - what we mean is actual code contributions accepted into Decred's codebase will go to btcsuite too if it's applicable. Similarly, Decred gets free contribution from btcsuite where applicable. So the symbiotic relationship between the two is based on code, not funding, aside from the fact Decred gets free code from btcsuite's ongoing work. The word applicable is used because they're different systems and Bitcoin is more constrictive on what it can accept - chances of a hybrid PoW/PoS change are 0.

As for Decred, the community is beholden only to itself. If someone (person or organisation) wants to build a feature put up as a development proposal, and there's sufficient support from the community, it can built by that party, reviewed, merged, and becomes part of Decred's codebase. c0, for example, is a competent development stakeholder interested in continuing work on Decred, so it'll be doing work for Decred as a team. They don't own it, and anyone can be a development stakeholder if they are good - that's the meritocratic element of the system.

At very least Decred will enter into a mutually beneficial symbiotic relationship with Bitcoin. That's the goal. Improvements in one will feed into the other (where possible). Development has a lot more freedom in Decred because it's new, so there's room for innovative ideas and experimentation. Hopefully a foundation can be built where it can be kept that way - that's the other goal.


There's already been some press coverage. There will be some more next week, but as you can imagine, it's an uphill battle. A lot of people in the Bitcoin camp see anything alternative as an attack or a threat. That's not what this is about at all - it's not about competing, but about growing in parallel. Maybe that's just spin on "competition", but you get what's meant by the ideal.

Make sure you guys are signed up for airdrop on the site. Going to sound like a broken record, but the project will benefit from as diverse a group of people as possible.

To give you a quick rundown of what Decred will need to work on immediately after launch:

- Sync from btcd (there is a new db branch that brings impressive gains - substantial overhaul of the database layer)
- Native wallet GUIs for Windows, OS X, *nix, and *BSD (there is a native framework being worked on)
- Payment processing from dcr to fiat and support for dcr exchanges (e.g., ShapeShift, Poloniex, etc.)

A key point to remember is that these targets shouldn't take more than a few months, otherwise it's easy to get bogged down if the initial roadmap is too lofty in real terms. Building out from the fundamentals will be a lot more interesting once it's multi-stakeholder too - see what other development parties bring to the table and setting up a communication platform to see what the community wants done (where voting can occur as well).

One thing the project is experimenting with is setting up a proper web platform geared toward discourse and voting so we as a community can engage and interact in a constructive way - all around the specific notion of software development. There are some really great open-source development efforts in this space, so it's likely Decred will draw on some of these actively maintained packages. Will post an answer to CoinHoarder's question since there is a proper roadmap of things the software absolutely needs, that will share nearly unanimous agreement. That may be a good starting point. But you can imagine with a proper platform, any other development party (or individual) can come along and choose a feature implementation proposal - and get paid for that work. No need to rely on donations and see it stagnate. The project will have continued development from day 1. Finding a way to connect the community to that process using a platform in a constructive way will be excellent, since that'll mean there'll always be a public and transparent pulse of the community-technology interface in the system.

You need to enter a link to an online account (can be a forum account with activity) so that the project can confirm you're a person, essentially.

You can go to https://decred.org and fill in the airdrop form. Let me know if you have problems with it. You can sign up until right before the launch date - but this is tentative as Jan 18th. Obviously a good idea to get in early because waiting that late could cause problems with correspondence between the project and yourself.

No wallets have been released and the web wallet service isn't up yet either. A list of full nodes will be made available in the future as we approach the launch of mainnet.

Appreciate this, CoinHoarder. Remember you from the days when MC2 was still a spring chicken. You're always welcome and your views are important to people here. Make sure you're signed up for airdrop - want to do this right and pull those up who care enough to contribute.


As soon as things go live, it'll be super important to build those services up to support miners. As for logo, there is one and anyone is free to modify it. It's just not present yet because this is a new account and it needs activity before it can display anything.


It's still in "pre-ann". The tentative date for mainnet to go live is Jan 18th. If it's after that date, it won't be much later. In near future, we'll publicly help all those interested in mining to get their gear setup for launch. All information will be posted here and on the other Decred platforms.


Thank you very much. The kind words echo hope for a legitimate alternative cryptocurrency - despite the fact that everyone has been beat up by crappy projects. We can't let that deter us as a community. A mutually beneficial symbiotic relationship between Decred and Bitcoin is not only a possibility, but becoming a reality. The btcsuite guys are dedicated and write high quality code - and that's the plan for Decred. Let the improvements flow both ways.

Hah, not everyone in the project is in IL. It's global and multi-stakeholder! That one came to you all the way from Australia. And no, Mr. Craig Wright is not part of the project.

That's a good question that's often overlooked. The three biggest problems that Decred takes note of when looking at Bitcoin are issues grouped under (1) project governance, (2) funding development, and (3) proof-of-work (PoW) miners having too much power. These observations are documented in a blog post by one of the stakeholders (c0) in Decred's multi-stakeholder development ecosystem. In addition, these stem from over 2.5 years of active contribution to the larger ecosystem by Bitcoin developers employed through c0 - the majority of guys who built and maintain btcsuite. This is the first time in history that such a group of developers - who come from a Bitcoin development environment - are sailing into alternative cryptocurrency waters. Alts have gotten a bad rap - for good reason - but that does not mean all alts have to carry that burden. It is possible to create a future where a symbiotic technological relationship exists between cryptocurrency systems. Good things in Bitcoin come to Decred, and good things in Decred will go to Bitcoin. That's the crux of the relationship Decred envisions between it and Bitcoin.

To work backwards, the technology hopes to address (3) by hybridizing PoW with proof-of-stake (PoS) where PoS becomes a "2nd authentication factor" on the content of blocks created by the PoW miners - and thereby providing a check on the power of PoW miners. PoS can effectively force soft and hard fork upgrades by voting against PoW blocks that do not adhere to the new rules - which creates a notion of continuity across forks that is not possible when using pure PoW. Furthermore, PoS helps to "democratize" the process of deciding what software upgrades should and should not happen. Finally, PoS rewards create an incentive for users to hold their coins and participate in the PoS consensus process. As a summary, these ideas are not possible in a pure PoW system - which has its merits, of course - but Decred argues we need a more robust consensus system. That is the heart of the technological system. There are endless architectural differences between btcsuite packages and the Bitcoin Core client that have been built, tested, and documented over the years - and improvements are worked on every day. All of that comes to Decred and dcrd would for example push contributions back to btcd in the future. If you are curious about (3), definitely have a look at DTB001 as a .pdf or on the wiki.

When we talk about (2), it becomes critical to generate funding internally. Bitcoin has to rely on funding from external parties, where transparency isn't always possible. This may have a corrosive effect on the overall system if the influence of those parties are not aligned with the interests of Bitcoin users. By including a development subsidy as a consensus rule, what is essentially said is that the financial influence over the project is shifted to the users where you don't have to rely on donations. If the users don't agree with the direction of the project, they don't mine and use the software, which acts as a check on those who have to administer it. What you do end up with, if handled responsibly, is a self-funded development mechanism that remains sustainable as the network grows. The upside in Decred's case is that there's a legitimate track record of quality development by way of btcsuite, as well as the other free and open-source projects the devs have produced that haven't been mentioned here yet.

Finally, (1) is where all of us as a community will play a very active role. The current proposal is for a meritocratic form of open governance. Bear in mind this is a proposal, so it's open for discussion as well, and will mature with community input. The goal is a system where your contribution, not your status, carries influence and has attrition built into the design. This is to say that if you contribute lots of code, but then stop, that influence diminishes - so you can't call shots just because you contributed lots in the past. It must therefore remain consistent. This gives newcomers the ability to become just as influential as people that were part of Decred from the beginning - entirely based on continued contribution to the ecosystem. This is again based on observations in the Bitcoin development ecosystem over the years.

Hopefully that gives some insight what Decred is about in terms of its relationship to systems like Bitcoin's. Not entirely familiar with the deeper systems involved in Monero, but if anyone would like to add in where we can improve as a system or technology relative to Monero, that would be very helpful in guiding development. tacotime, for example, represents another stakeholder in the multi-stakeholder ecosystem described above, and has been very active in Monero technologically - so he may be well aware of how the finer Decred points operate relative to that system. Having said that, any new stakeholder from Monero can plug into Decred without fear of missing out on the early Decred days, same goes for anyone. The goal isn't to create more competition, it's to bring an entirely different way of thinking about how we relate to one another.

All domains possible have been grabbed in the interest of preservation, but I'm sure some have been missed! Top-level is definitely a preference though - for a broader audience expansion in the future. Any domains people want to develop can be included, or reimbursed at cost like you suggest, and we can include those in the broader Decred infrastructure. As a community, we should try and set up something where we can put up tasks for anyone to pick up and do and have a process whereby that gets included throughout the larger system - that could work really well.

Like jcv said above (he's a Decred dev), it's definitely not just coding contributions. If you have plans to support Decred in the future in whatever way you want, you'll be part of the airdrop. If you've already made contributions to other technological ecosystems, even better. There's plenty of space since the hard cap is 5,000 people. The intention was to make it broad but contribution focused - as that's the system Decred envisions and builds itself around. If you want to contribute, there's space for you, and if you are contributing to Decred in the future, there's opportunity for you. Those are the basics of the system everyone's looking to build.


As you may now, veteran devs are pretty set in their ways. There's a security protocol in place around development communication and code before mainnet is live and open-source, so it's unlikely devs will make their way to an external service like slack - especially since they're focused now. If Decred members (that includes you) want to set one up, the project will make sure there's representation in there with someone who can communicate with devs prior to mainnet. Once mainnet is live and public, even IRC will have more activity and other mediums too. So feel free to set it up if you want and let people know here so community members can engage and organise that way too - you've got freedom here, don't need to ask for permission!

If you haven't already done so, sign up for the airdrop (can be as a team, but it's recommended you do it individually). If you want to talk about specific contributions get in touch on here or any of the other platforms (some of the devs are also in #decred on irc.freenode.net).

Agree with the points on vendors and exchanges. We as a community will have to make that happen, since the primary focus now is making sure the technology is up and running and tested thoroughly. Beyond that, anything done will be a collaborative effort anyone can engage in. Lots of energy in the community, so no doubt we'll be able to make it happen if the tech is solid.

5 min. 1 MB. No penalty for size (as of yet). Anything within reason is up for voting where the technology permits it with sufficient testing and simulation. ~21e6 works well as a comparison to Bitcoin, for a short answer.

That is very odd. Can't replicate it on this end at all. What browser are you using? If you're not comfortable discussing here, send a PM or visit the other Decred sites to get in touch so someone can help you.

Non-coders are welcome! The project is inclusive by design and in its philosophy going forward. If you are interested in contributing in the future, there's a place for you, even if you haven't contributed to things in the past. All we ask is that you submit some form of online presence so we can filter out people who have no real interest, since the project will be built on contributors. Even a forum account where you've talked and thought about the issues is sufficient to be included in the airdrop. It's a crude mechanism to try and act in the best interest of the starting conditions of the project (balanced against the realities of building technology like Decred).


The web site is up and running on this end. Can anyone else confirm problems? If you continue having problems, contact @decredproject on Twitter or post in r/decred on reddit for help with getting submitted for the airdrop.

Everything is up for discussion - but at this point in time all effort the project has is going into making sure the technology works as intended and is tested properly. That's the primary focus now. The logic behind the structure of the airdrop is for it to be as simple as possible. It will all be over in a single block.


Funny you should mention that, pretty sure it came up in early discussions. In all likelihood it'll end up being a made-up word now in terms of meaning - have it take on a meaning people ascribe to it over time.


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