Hi and welcome to another Decred News Update. We are the brink of Decred's biggest release in years the 1.6. This release will bring about Privacy, the Lightning Network, and it will decentralize the Treasury, making Decred one of the biggest DAO's in crypto. The treasury as of this video is now worth about $37 Million dollars and increasing with the bull market. We are also seeing the highest stake participation ever seen for the project, with over 55% of the circulating supply locked up.
The fact that so much Decred is being staked while we are in a bull shows how much confidence there is in the protocol.
With that said lets move on to Development updates. RC 1.5 is here.
This Release Candidate mainly has under the hood improvements fixing various bugs and other discovered oddities, as well as general polishing
In the Privacy tab users can now send all available funds from their default account to unmixed account by pressing a newly added button. This makes the process of mixing your Decred even easier.
The What's New Section of Decredition has also been updated to show the 1.6 features.
Wallet translations have also been updated.
Users can now turn off UI Animations to make the Wallet much more snappy when changing between tabs.
Decred Developer Marco Peereboom says there is more on the way for 2021, with 2 exciting things for planned for this year.
Remember decred has the ability to change its consenus code via stakeholder vote and the project treasury to fund new development.
Things will be built and added to decred not just in the next year, but in the Decades to come.
With the Treasury increasing so much in Value, I hope this attracts outside developer talent, and we start seeing more and more proposals on Politeia.
A development Pre-Proposal from DEX developer Buck has arrived called Decred Eco - A GUI Application Manager for Decred.
The goal of Decred Eco is to be a one stop Decred application manager which automatically stays up to date and allows users to launch Decred applications such as Decred's wallet decrediiton, the DEX, and other decred software such as Ticket Splitting. Other apps can be expected, as the Decred project is constantly growing and expanding.
Imagine a Decred based version of the popular gaming platform Steam - where all of your apps are constantly updated and ready to launch with minimal user tinkering.
Buck says a working prototype is done for Linux, and Windows is in process.
The timeline and costs are 9 to 12 months until completion and an ask of $59,800. I will leave a link in the video description for those that want to read more about Decred Eco.
Taking a look at privacy stats, Over 29% of Decred in Circulation has been actively mixed, that's over 3.5 million Decred, and release 1.6 has not even yet arrived.
Speaking of Privacy, Edward Snowden was again talking about Bitcoin's lack of privacy features, despite being in existence for 11 years.
If Edward snowden wants to hold Money that is both upgradeable and has privacy features, he should probably look into Decred.
We also saw lots of community activity in the form of podcasts and videos.
Decred contributer Checkmate Has released an amazing Decred walkthrough.
Decred Project lead Jake Yocom Piatt was featured on Cointelegraph talking about the possible effects of a central bank digital currency takeover.
He says cryptocurrencies like bitcoin and decred are fundamentally fairer systems than fiat currencies, so while CBDCs may adopt many cryptocurrency features, they cannot compete on fairness.
This is due to cryptocurrencies having deterministic issuance schedules and self-custodied assets, whereas CBDCs are just digital fiat.
Decred Arabia created an excellent educational video explaining Decred's Hybrid consensus system.
The Decred Arabia team has a proposal out to continue funding future work, more on that later in the video.
Staked podcast was very active producing new episodes. Eduardo has a proposal out, more on that later in the video.
As interest in Decred climbs in this bull market, Decred was the #3 traded coin on the Brazilian exchange NovaDax after Bitcoin and Ethereum.
Politeia, Decred's Public Proposal System has a few new proposals up for discussion and vote.
The Decred DEX Development Phase 2 proposal from Chappjc is here. Phase 1 of DEX development saw the completion and release of a Minimal Viable Product version of the DEX which has executed tens of of thousands of DCR worth of trades via atomic swaps with no middlemen, no KYC requirements, and no trading fees.
Phase 2 sets forth some well sought after objectives such as:
Smoother on-boarding via the use of Simplified Payment Verification wallets which will enable quick startups and greatly reduce disk space usage since users won't need to have full nodes to operate the DEX.
Decredition integration efforts to get the DEX added into Decred's main wallet.
And support for more assets, namely Ethereum and its ERC-20 Token standard which would make trading popular Stable Coins such as USDC and Tether possible. Bitcoin Cash and other bitcoin Forks will likely be added as well as they don't require too much development time.
Other work for this proposal includes continued under the hood bug fixes, UI updates, and other product improvement as time passes.
Chappjc says the expected delivery for these developments is 6-9 Months with work split between 3 to 4 full-time developers. The total estimated cost is $245,000 USD payable in Decred and billed monthly via Decred's Contractor Managment System.
Certain Initiatives did not make the cut for this proposal, but could see work in the future are:
Monero Swap Compatability, Lightning Network Integration, and a server mesh which would bring decentralization to the next level.
All in the all comments were enthusiastic about the DEX release and the upcoming improvements proposed.
One commenter writes with the tighter KYC requirements and clamp down on privacy oriented coins, this proposal could not come at a better time.
The community appreciates and understand how important it is to be able to buy and sell Decred in a permisisonless, and truly decentralized manner.
The next proposal is Decred in Depth Live from Eduardo Lima.
Eduardo is taking the reigns from Mr. Black and starting up a new season of Decred in Depth, Decred's informative Podcast series.
He says will live-stream 24 to 36 episodes with each episode post-produced and turned into a podcast. Furthermore, he will pull several smaller clips from the Podcast in order to spread teasers on Twitter and other social media sites.
He is asking $500 per episode to be completed over the course of 2021.
He says the episodes will be live streamed for viewers to tune in as the Podcast is happening, then later edited and uploaded to various platforms.
Eduardo has been hosting his own Decred focused Podcast called Staked over the past 4 months, having a number of different guests on to talk Decred and cryptocurrencies in general.
Commentors have been positive about the proposal pointing out how important the Decred in Depth series has been for marketing, and about Eduardos commitment for the Decred project, having already produced 4 months worth of content.
Some concerns were mainly based on the format and the production quality. Eduardo says he will be handling Decred in Depth with more professionalism as compared to the Staked podcast, which is more free form.
This proposal is still up for discussion, you can add your thoughts and view politeia by visiting proposals.decred.org.
A new proposal from ammarooni titled Decentralized Credits: The Digitization of Money and State has arrived.
Ammarooni plans to author a book based on his studies of Decred in an economic context.
Phase 1 of his work involved researching the Decred protocol followed by a series of Written articles which have become quite popular within the Decred community.
His focus now is to study decred as a monetary asset and as a DAO.
His research articles will ultimately be published as a free book made available in PDF form as well as Amazon kindle.
Ammarooni argues One of the key reasons Bitcoin is so successful is because of the amount of education material that draws people into the rabbit hole. Decred has a more complex design than Bitcoin, yet we have only a tiny fraction of the amount of education material.
He is asking for a maximum billing rate of $2,000 per month payable in Decred over a 8 to 10 month period, and 1,500 for finalization and publishing of the finalized book once completed.
Commentors have been positive about the proposal, pointing to popular Bitcoin books as an excellent way to educate newcomers.
When asked about his writing ability, Ammrooni pointed out he was recently published in Bitcoin Magazine and NASDAQ.com
I will leave a link in the video description to Ammaroonis Medium account where you can read all of his completed Decred work thus far.
And finally we have the Decred Arabia Communications and Content Creation proposal from arij
The purpose of this proposal is to increase the awareness, presence, and adoption of Decred in the Arabic region.
This will be done via creating content in Arabic, hosting local events and growing Social Media presence.
Leading the proposal is Insaf Nori who has been actively contributing to Decred via translations, Content Creation, and events. Zakaria will be contributing as a designer. He has made numerous Decred Art, which you can find on Twitter.
They say Blockchain technology today is emerging in the Arabic world
The total budget is $6,200 lasting 6 months.
user feedback has been positive, praising the frugal budget and the hard work demonstrated by the proposer.
Thanks for tuning into this weeks news update, be sure to check out decred.org to learn more about the project.