Bitcoin’s founders intended to make money decentralized, but the first solution to market isn’t always the most effective. The founders of Dash paid attention to this and found a way to improve.

In this case, Bitcoin possesses some fundamental flaws, such as non-private and non-anonymous transactions. This in turn has given birth to a new breed of digital currencies called “anonymous digital currencies”.

Dash (DASH – Symbol) is one such coin and aims to “make digital cash easy to use and access for all users, even those who aren’t technologically savvy.”

While Bitcoin’s Block Rewards split 100% for miners, the Dash Block Reward is uniquely split. Miners receive 45% of the block, while 45% goes to ‘masternodes’, and 10% is reserved for the budget system.

A brief history

Originally released as “XCoin” on January 18th, 2014, then changing to “Darkcoin” a little over a month later, “Dash” was officially born on March 25th, 2015 as a portmanteau of “Digital Cash.”

JOIN OUR WEEKLY NEWSLETTER

Within the first two days of launch, 1.9 million coins were mined, approximately 10% of the total supply. Since then, the global Dash Core Team grew to 30 full-time employees, 20 part-time employees, and dozens of unpaid volunteers.

As of November 2017 the daily trade volume of Dash is approximately $185 million CAD per day and the market capitalization of Dash exceeded $6.1 CAD billion. It has also become the #1 active altcoin community on BitcoinTalk, an online forum for Bitcoin enthusiasts.

Features

Dash has three core pillars which give it its competitive edge.

Private send

This service allows users to send funds privately. The transaction mixes in between several other transactions, thus making it hard to identify any specific transaction.

Instant send

This service allows users to send Dash transactions instantly and solves the double-spending problem. Dash claims transactions occur in about 1 second or less.

Masternodes

In Bitcoin, each node is equal. Dash instead has special privilege nodes called Masternodes, which act as a savings account with a minimum deposit of 1,000 DASH.

A masternode pays rewards (45% block reward) which are very much like interest on a traditional savings account. In this case, the reward comes from performing services on the network such as PrivateSend and InstantSend.

A dash of innovation

Dash is the first decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) powered by a Sybil-proof decentralized governance and funding system for the company.

“Sybil-proof” means a system can prevent Sybil attacks, which are a breach in the reputation system of a computer. Hackers breach the network through creating forged identities in peer-to-peer networks.

Within the system, each masternode operator receives one vote. These votes can then be used in a democratic process to determine which proposals in the network are eligible for funding. They do this according to the following formula: (YES VOTES – NO VOTES) > (TOTAL NUMBER OF MASTERNODES * 0.1).

If there are more proposals that meet this criterion than there are budget funds for the month, then the proposals with the highest number of net votes will be paid. After the proposer has enough support, the network will automatically pay out the required funds in the next super block, which occurs monthly.

As of May 2017 the treasury system provides over $650,000 per month in funding and has induced an increase in funding and growth in value for the Dash.

Dash has created a self-sufficient business model where their treasury system has created a positive feedback loop. With additional development, the value of Dash increases. This in turn increases the amount of funding provided by the budget system.

Due to the nature of this DAO, governance of development milestones can occur very quickly and with little bureaucracy. For example, the masternode network can vote for Team B’s plan of deploying changes X/Y/Z instead of Team A’s plan of deploying changes A/B/C if the Dash DAO deems it to be more aligned with the company’s mission/vision. Recently, it came to a consensus to eventually raise the block size to 2MB within 24 hours.

And a pinch of ingenuity

Dash Evolution is a major upgrade that aims to focus on the user experience through the world’s first decentralized API (DAPI).

Users will click on a “Pay with Dash” button built onto a website, which will request payment to the Dash network via the DAPI. Then the network will authorize the payment to the user mobile wallet via the DAPI. Finally, the user authorizes the transaction to the Dash network via the DAPI, completing the transaction.

With Dash Evolution, crypto-addresses can be replaced with usernames and any network changes can be made “under the hood.” In doing so, a Paypal/Venmo-esque user experience can manifest.

The forgotten fork

Bitcoin possesses several forks.From soft forks including Bitcoin XBT, Classic, and Unlimited, to hard forks including Bitcoin Cash, Gold, and Diamond, the network has grown since its inception.

As each fork was created to improve upon Bitcoin, it turns out that Dash is another one such fork. The intent was to pick up where Bitcoin left off and to fulfill Satoshi Nakamoto’s vision of a truly electronic peer-to-peer electronic cash.

Image credit: DASH

Buy Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP, and other cryptocurrencies on Coinsquare.

Buy Digital Currencies on Coinsquare