There is an increasingly interesting coin we’re following since the very beginning of 2018. We saw it going through the BTC bear and ICO craze without any fear as each of its promised features was thoroughly being implemented. We saw a small dev team delivering features faster than any highly funded project around and a community slowly emerging through the months. Today we’re going to talk about DERO, the cryptocurrency you better include in your portfolio before this year ends.

What is DERO

DERO is an open-source cryptocurrency born in December 2017 by an anonymous cryptograph called Captain. The goal of DERO is to combine the smart-contract technology popularized by networks such as Ethereum, NEO, Stellar, EOS, etc. with the privacy feature of cryptocurrencies like Monero, Zcash, Pivx, etc. To achieve that goal, DERO was initially forked from Monero, then rewritten entirely from scratch in Golang. That fresh redesign what the occasion for the dev team to improve drastically the protocol and implement modern features that will be detailed below.

Though the coin is still in its infancy, what has been achieved so far is quite impressive. In 6 months they implemented all the privacy and performance improvements (Atlantis upgrade) and, as we are writing this, the smart-contracts feature is already on its way. The work put into this project is actually outstanding when you compare it to the very low “work done/money raised” and “work done/time elapsed” ratios we were accustomed with ICOs. DERO delivers for sure, but what does it deliver?

Specifications

Technical

Algorithm: Cryptonight PoW coupled with DAG technology, all written in Golang

Block Time: 12 seconds

Confirmation Time: 2 minutes

Between 75 and 500 tx/sec in normal conditions.

Privacy: Ultra secure and anonymous transactions thanks to SSL/TLS, Ring Signatures, and Bulletproofs technologies.

Economics

Max supply: 18 400 000 DERO (8 years), then 157 000 DERO / Year

Current supply: 5 661 824 DERO

Premined: 2 000 000 DERO unlocking 20%, 20%, 30%, 30% (4 years)

Current price: ~ 1.5 $ / 0.0003 BTC for 1 DERO

Market Cap: ~ 8 M$ (Rank ~ 340)

Current Exchanges: TradeOgre, Stex, SouthXchange, Crex24.

Total Volume 24h: Between 50 000 and 100 000 $

3 Reasons Why We Need DERO

Before telling you why you need to buy DERO now and not later, here are the three reasons why DERO is the most disruptive coin around. Also, keep in mind that all of the following information isn’t just whitepaper promises, it is the actual current product.

We need an optimized, fast and secure cryptocurrency

Most of the widely used cryptocurrencies rely on “old” technology. Bitcoin, Ethereum and Litecoin are the three most used non-private cryptocurrencies. However, they top at respectively 10, 20 and 60 TPS. Monero and Zcash are the most used private cryptocurrencies and yet they top at respectively 1000 and 30 TPS. DERO uses a very advanced DAG blockchain coupled with 12 seconds block time. This results in almost instant payments (try it, you’ll see) and no orphan blocks. To give you a comparable value, DERO’s minimum TPS is 75, with a top around 1000 TPS in optimal conditions.

We need a truly anonymous coin that has no flaws

Technically, DERO is the most private cryptocurrency you can think of. This is not a marketing ploy, it is simply true. It started as a mimic of Monero with the desire to later integrate smart-contracts capabilities into its core. But DERO devs went way further than that when they designed the core protocol. Since the last update named Atlantis, DERO is a mix between Ring Signatures, the newly developed Bulletproofs, TSL/SSL inter-nodes communication by default and the highly scalable DAG technology powering a PoW CryptoNote blockchain.

Politically, it is indeed centralized like pretty much any altcoin, but the team developing this “Monero on steroids”maintains a Satoshi-like secrecy that makes the whole project security even more consistent with the main privacy-focused ideology. This choice clearly slows down the spread of the cryptocurrency on exchanges, but it also diminishes many legal risks. Of course, they don’t spread useless information on social media and they aren’t overselling the thing either. They just work on the product and deliver, piece by piece, what was planned one year ago.

We need truly anonymous smart-contracts

Well, I have to admit that this does not strictly qualify for the “actual product” category but I can say with enough confidence (and from reliable sources) that this is close to become a reality. Anonymous smart-contracts are clearly the most needed and also the most unique feature proposed by DERO. Currently, companies who want to publish smart-contracts on a secured network need to go on a public blockchain. However, all of them show every detail for each transaction in clear. It’s unrealistic to think that companies or even individuals want to disclose all their payment information. In fact, most smart-contract transactions would better be done privately and that is what DERO is about to solve. Don’t get me wrong though: the code will still be auditable, but Decentralized Autonomous Organizations need the crucial confidentiality that will protect them against hostile corporations and governments. That’s what DERO is going to bring to the game quite soon and not only companies will take advantage of this huge improvement.

Why DERO Outclasses Any Other Anonymous Coin

As you read above, DERO technology is already way superior to Monero and is going to be infinitely better than any actual cryptocurrency when the private smart-contract feature will be available on the mainnet. The comparison against Zcash is easy. Firstly, Zcash anonymity protocol is proven to be defective for a few months and nothing has been done yet to fix the privacy issues. Secondly, 20% of the mining rewards are going directly in the pocket of the founders. Note that those founders are rather chilling with cocktails than actually working to make Zcash better. Zclassic and Zencash are better Zk-Snarks alternatives, but they still suffer from the privacy vulnerability reported by the UCL paper.

On the economics side, DERO is indeed a way better opportunity than any privacy-focused cryptocurrency. Not only you are buying ultra-secure coins, but you also bet on the upcoming success of the private smart-contracts. Today, Monero and Zcash are both trading around 100$ for total supplies of respectively 15 M and 5 M. DERO’s total supply is 18 M while the coin is trading between 1 and 2 $. We expect it to reach the 5-10$ range (rank < 100) before the official release of the smart-contracts feature, then the 10-25$ range (rank < 50) after the release. Mark our words, we were right about EOS, we’ll be right about DERO.

Conclusion

As you may have noticed, we are totally thrilled by DERO. In a crypto ecosystem filled with lookalike projects, DERO proposes something new and useful, something that truly has the potential to count in the real world. Now it is up to you. If you are a developer, you may just wait for the release of the smart-contract feature in order to code the first private decentralized applications. If you are an investor, you should get some DERO quickly before it climbs the top 100. The price won’t explode tomorrow, but the hype is already building and the support has been strong around 25k sats even during the recent BTC crash. If you have no idea what to do, we highly suggest that you go on their official channels and groups to see by yourself how active the project is. Also, there is a meetup planned in Berlin soon, go meet the team if you’re around!

Register to the first DEROCON happening December 6 (5.30 – 9.30 pm)

Links

Official Website

BitcoinTalk Thread

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