This week has been yet another fantastic week in the Dash community with new network developments, integrations, usage, and general news. Keep reading for a summary of the week.

Dash Network Developments of the Week:

Dash Unveils Planned Platform Chain Sidechain for Decentralized Applications: This week, Dash Core released an update on its plans for the Platform Chain, the upcoming Dash Platform to handle data for decentralized applications (DApps) more efficiently. The Platform Chain will run only on the masternode network on a sidechain to enable more efficient and cheaper resource usage, easier data verification for light clients, faster state transition finalization for better UX, and a decreased risk to the core network functionality. The plan Dash has laid out will allow the network to have more advantages compared to other networks that run their DApp services on the main chain that can clog the network, such as the Ethereum network.

Dash Integrations of the Week:

Binance US Adds Dash Including US Dollar Trading Pairs: Binance US, the United States arm of top cryptocurrency exchange Binance, will be adding Dash with a USD pair to its exchange. This is a significant step considering the regulatory hurdles of a cryptocurrency exchange in the United States, especially with direct pairs against the dollar. Dash has been steadily growing its exchange integrations and InstantSend exchange support, including Coinbase. The growing exchange liquidity makes Dash more appealing to consumers and easier to get, along with aiding in the reduction of the strength of Bitcoin’s price movement affects on the whole cryptocurrency market.

eToro and The TIE Introduce Crypto Portfolio With Dash Comprising Largest Position: eToro, the popular cryptocurrency trading website, is partnering with The TIE, a cryptocurrency information services firm, to implement a Twitter sentiments trading portfolio, which lists Dash as its largest position. At the launch, Dash made up around 47% of the portfolio and the portfolio will be rebalanced on a monthly basis. The fact that Dash is such a major part of the long-term focused index indicates that Twitter users are discussing Dash favorably for the feature sets that it offers to consumers and merchants.

Dash Usage of the Week:

Dash Active Addresses Pass Litecoin for Week Straight in Growing Trend: Data from BitInfoCharts shows that Dash’s active addresses, a key cryptocurrency adoption indicator, have passed Litecoin’s active addresses for a week straight. Dash had 57,993 active addresses compared to Litecoin’s 39,772, which has been a growing trend including Dash claiming the status of the fastest growing active addresses, outpacing even Bitcoin. The trend confirms a previous Indexica survey that Bitcoin is having a smaller and smaller effect on the wider cryptocurrency market as the ecosystem matures.

Cryptobuyer CEO Says Dash Was Platform’s Top Coin Last Three Months in a Row: Latin American exchange and merchant solution Cryptobuyer said that Dash is the top most-used cryptocurrency on the Cryptobuyer Pay merchant solution for several months in a row, outpacing Bitcoin, Litecoin, and Binance Coin. The CEO, Jorge Farias, also said that he believes Dash’s low fees and unparalleled user experience lead to its rapid and large adoption. This past summer, Dash claimed 10,000 active Android wallets in Venezuela, with 15,000 in the greater Latin America region, where Dash has seen the most significant adoption. Now, Venezuelan active addresses is up to 24,000.

Dash Core Group Project Update of the Week:

Here’s an update from Liz Robuck, Chief Product Owner, on what’s going on at Dash Core Group this week.

🎨 Removed old themes in desktop wallet as part of simple UI update

👪 Completed work in DashCore to resolve orphan transactions when parents appear in a block, which will fix mempool inconsistencies seen when higher loads appear with many chained transactions

👨‍🍳 Couple mixing updates for PrivateSend

🥄 Some refactoring in DashCore for spork related functionality in tests

🛸 Completed several tasks on Platform Machine, which replicates and updates state in Drive according to the consensus mechanism

📂 Completed work on Dash Platform Protocol to update the structure of data contracts, documents and state transitions in Dash Platform

📱 Worked on several screens as part of the DashWallet redesign on iOS, including the locked view of the Home Screen, Main Menu, Change Pin screen, Settings Menu, Currency Settings screen, and About Settings screen

🐛 Removed some outdated transaction lock functionality and fixed an issue where sent payments were stuck in ‘Processing’ status in DashWallet iOS

🖼 Completed work on the Enter Amount, Confirm Transaction, and Successful Transaction screens on DashWallet Android as part of the UI update and fixed a couple of bugs

General News of the Week:

UNICEF Pledges to Hold Cryptocurrency Donations in Cryptocurrency: UNICEF France previously started to accept cryptocurrency donations, including Dash, back in September of 2018. Now, the parent UNICEF organization is pledging to hold and disburse cryptocurrency donations in cryptocurrency, starting with Bitcoin and Ethereum. The acceptance by the major charity organization highlights the benefits that cryptocurrency can bring charities such as cost savings and traceability. Some members of the Dash community have already taken steps to help individuals, such as Dash Text launching a pilot decentralized charity program with 100 initial students.

Study – Bitcoin Price Influence on Crypto Markets Is Decreasing: A new index study by Indexica shows that a growing cryptocurrency ecosystem is taking away price dominance from Bitcoin as individuals now have alternative entry points into the cryptocurrency market. The study cites “Quotability for Currency”, meaning it was discussed with other currencies, as one of the top factors taking away influence from Bitcoin. Another example was Mastercard’s partnership with R3 to develop a new blockchain solution.

Nash Cryptocurrency Exchange Claimed As Unhackable By Not Holding Customer Funds: Nash is a new cryptocurrency wallet that has been labeled as “unhackable” by not requiring users to store their cryptocurrency on the exchange until the last moment when they want to make a trade. They do admit that users’ funds could still be compromised if hacker could manage to push a malicious update directly to users’ devices. Alternatives to centralized exchanges also include pure decentralized/peer-to-peer exchanges and Dash, which offers transactions in less than two seconds and for less than a penny that makes it possible to wait until the last minute to send Dash to even a centralized exchange.

West Virgina Blockchain Voting Reportedly Compromised: West Virginia supposedly had its blockchain-based voting system hacked at the beginning of October and now have the FBI involved to investigate further. However, the Voatz system is mostly a private system with only 10 nodes and thus it has the potential to become more secure by becoming open access and adding more nodes. Additionally, the bigger fear is not that a hacker will change votes since data can be cross checked, but that a hacker will intercept personal identification and cast fake votes.

Dash Media of the Week:

Dash News Video Recap: Coinify Integration, Destinia Travel, Gentarium Masternode Hosting, BitMart Exchange: If you missed last week’s amazing Dash news then make sure to watch Heidi’s latest video recap to get all caught up!

Dash Podcast 126 – Dash Platform Feat. Dana Alibrandi, Anton Suprunchuk & Ivan Shumkov: This week, the guys are joined by Dash Platform Product Owner Dana Alibrandi and Dash Platform Developers Anton Suprunchuk and Ivan Shumkov to talk about the upcoming network developments. They discuss the ability of Dash Drive to store data and how they are working to make it function efficiently decentralized while still being affordable and have future buildability by developers. Make sure to tune in to find out more about Dash Platform, Dash Drive, Dash DAPI, and more!

This has been a bountiful week with plenty of Dash announcements, integrations, and general news. Expect even more news as Dash Platform development progresses. So make sure to follow Dash News to get this news, first!