image credit: medium

This small-cap coin looks like it might be a sleeping giant with it's innovative combination of cutting-edge blockchain technologies. Dero is combining decentralized Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) block structure, proof-of-work, and anonymous transactions with their own "Dero Rocket Bulletproofs," which are ten times faster than typical bulletproofs. They are also set to incorporate Full Homomorphic Encrypted Smart Contracts, essentially private smart contracts, with their Virtual Machine for their Stargate mainnet release, set to land in Q1 of 2020.

image source: medium

So, why does Dero have insane potential in the years to come? Well, imagine a privacy coin that performs faster than Monero. Dero has a 12 second block time with their "Dero Rocket Bulletproofs" and a 2 minute conformation time. Now, take that privacy coin and add the functionality of Ethereum. Dero has a Virtual Machine like Ethereum, and is adding smart contracts, only these smart contracts have the added feature of being private. It's a lethal combination that businesses will find a use for, and Dero has virtually no competitors that are trying to do anything similar.

Why are private smart contracts useful? The answer is input hiding and program hiding.

Without input hiding, say on Ethereum, I create a smart contract, and deposit my Eth. Then, somebody inputs the solution to my smart contract. The potential problem here is that everyone, including me, can see the solution. What if I don't want everyone to know that solution, or maybe I don't want to know the solution, maybe I only wanted to know that a solution was possible. What if i'm buying a code for a lockbox? Now everyone can look at the inputs to my smart contract and be able to open that lockbox.

Without program hiding, everybody can see the coding behind my smart contract. Potential issue's here are fairly obvious. If I create a smart contract that specifies that the contract is complete when the second party provides me with the answer to my math test, then anyone can look at my smart contract, and see that I'm cheating on my math test. Obviously, this presents problems when it isn't me cheating on my math test, but instead it is a corporation with a responsibility of keeping their dealings with clients private.

Dero is attempting to answer these kinds of privacy concerns and they are doing it with great technology, on a 51% attack immune, orphan blockless, programmed from scratch in Golang, blockchain.

If Dero's development isn't enough to give you chills, take a look at a comparison between price charts of early Monero and Dero:

image sources: me

When Monero and Dero were first introduced, they both immediately went into an extremely volatile cycle, bouncing up and down in price. This was followed by a drop to new lows. Then came an impulse up, followed by sideways consolidation. Monero breaks out and goes parabolic soon after this pattern. Dero just recently retested its previous all time low, actually bouncing just before it reached that low, and is now on an upward trend.

Here's a closer look at the last three months of Dero:

image source: me

As you can see, when Dero bottomed out with the rest of the market, it saw an insane spike in volume just before the beginning of what I think we can assume is a bull market in crypto. You should probably know that volume precedes price. If that principle holds here, it looks like Dero might be about to get a little bit crazy. Its a pretty cheap coin. Think about scooping up a few hundred Dero if you have room for a little risk in your portfolio. With their mainnet poised to launch early this year, in the middle of our first leg of this market cycle, we may be seeing the perfect set of circumstances for a moon shoot.

I'm not recommending you take something a stranger on the internet says as solid investment advice. Do a little research, and decide if what I had to say has any merit. Don't invest anything into a low-cap coin if you cannot afford to lose it.