A number of bitcoin developers and btcsuite creators have announced their intention to build Decred – a cryptocurrency and project which is aimed to fix problems that they say exist with project governance, the power of Pow miners and development funding in the bitcoin system.

One of the developers of Decred, Christina Jepson stated: “The intention is not to attack what we currently have in Bitcoin, we want to recognise what has been done well, but instead we want to take that and improve on what we think can be done better. That is the spirit that started the technology and we want to return to that to explore options to problems we cannot explore in the current system, while we continue to support the Bitcoin software. Alternatives are progress and a way forward to improve the greater ecosystem,”

Whilst bitcoin and blockchain are touted as being decentralized and therefore free from interference and manipulation, there have been concerns raised by people over the way that rules and decisions are made and implemented by a core group of developers without the community holding any real sway.

Jacob Yocom-Piatt, CEO of Company 0, who has funded development of bitcoin since 2013, noted: “Many people may not know that despite the technological decentralization Bitcoin has brought the world, there are serious and growing issues of centralization that rule decisions made about the present and future of the project. The Bitcoin software is controlled by a small group of people who decide exclusively what can and cannot be changed. This is in part due to a lack of mechanisms and pathways for funding development work directly from the community, and as a result Bitcoin development is funded by external entities that create conflicts of interest between the developers and the representative power of the community that uses Bitcoin. We want to change that”

A full list of features can be found on its website but some of the key features of Decred include:

A hybrid proof-of-work/proof-of-stake consensus system.

An internal voting system to allow the inclusion of new features and fork selection.

Cold staking and decentralized stake pooling.

Compatibility with bitcoin.

Decred is aiming to expand the decentralization association with digital currency to the governance system by enabling the community to take control and vote on decisions that affect the system. The system also controls its own development funding, as proposals successfully chosen by the community will be paid for by the Decred system.

An invitation has been extended to anyone interested in contributing ideas or work to sign up for the launch of the project and receive Decred in an effort to spread the network to as many people as possible and it has also been announced that there will be an ‘airdrop’ of 4% of all coins to promote the new cryptocurrency. The projected launch date is January 18th 2016.