This week continues to be an amazing week in Dash with new integrations and developments, continue reading to get a summary of the week.

Dash Integrations of the Week:

Pionex Singapore-Based Cryptocurrency Exchange Adds Dash: The Singapore-based cryptocurrency exchange that currently has over $47.3 million USD in reported volume has partnered with Dash Next to integrate Dash trading pairs with Bitcoin and Tether (USDT). The exchange also features five trading bots built into the exchange, including grid-trading bots and dollar cost averaging bots to help investors gain better returns without having to be online 24/7. The integration adds to Dash’s growing exchange presence in Asia, including DigiFinex, BigONE, Dcoin, and Bibox

MedeTrade Cryptocurrency Debit and Credit Card Integrates Dash: The online cryptocurrency exchange has now made Dash available for use with its Visa cryptocurrency debit and credit card that is issued through the Bank of Valletta in Malta and accepted worldwide. Additionally, the card offers 3% BTC back on all in-store purchases and offers verified users a line of credit of up to €700. The card will join other debit/credit cards and gift cards that can be purchased with Dash and better aid consumer adoption since it will enable consumers to use their cryptocurrency among merchants that have not yet adopted cryptocurrency.

Xera UK-Based Cryptocurrency Exchange Announces Dash Integration: The UK-based cryptocurrency exchange announced plans to list Dash in Q1 of 2020 and joins cryptocurrency exchanges such as CEX.io in serving the UK markets. The announcement comes as positive news by not only increasing Dash trading pairs, but also doing so after CEX.io initially delisted Dash due to the recent FATF “travel rule”, but reversed their decision after Dash Core explained the intricacies of Dash PrivateSend.

Dash Core Group Project Updates of the Week:

Here’s an update from Liz Robuck, Chief Product Owner, of what’s going on at Dash Core Group the past two weeks.

Week of December 12, 2019

🚀 Release DashCore v0.14.0.5, which will fix some ChainLocks issues observed on mainnet and a recently identified DoS attack vector. All nodes are encouraged to update. Download the new version at dash.org/downloads.

🖋 Implemented re-signing of InstantSend locks, which only happens when a non-locked transaction appears in a new block. This is required to make retroactive signing work when parts of the network have already seen the transaction in the mempool, and other parts only see it first in a block.

When this happens, the part of the network that sees it via the mempool might run into timeouts for the signing sessions, which causes the session to never be completed even if the other part of the network signs it when it receives the transaction via a block.

With this change, the first part of the network will re-sign the transaction when necessary at the time it receives the block so that the InstantSend lock will happen correctly.

🇹🇭 Launched Dash website in Thai.

🚎 Updated data triggers in DPP, which are functions that automatically execute based on data being added, read, deleted, or changed in the DPNS platform application. A precursor to smart contract functionality.

🎨 Implemented several updates on DashWallet iOS and Android as part of the UI redesign, such as the Hide Balance, Invalid PIN entry, Advanced Security (iOS) and Device Lock (Android) screens, among several others.

Week of December 5, 2019

✉️ Made some tweaks to the ‘Send’ popup message in DashQT Wallet, including highlighting when not all recipients of a transaction are displayed, clarified text explaining fee rounding in PrivateSend, display of transaction size and actual fee rate, and the number of inputs a PrivateSend transaction is going to consume with a warning if it exceeds 10 to let users know that it may reduce privacy by making it easier to track these funds back to the original wallet via clustering analysis.

🥅 Implemented state transition signing and verification logic in Dash Platform Protocol (DPP), which will allow for state transitions such as when a user’s contact list is updated.

🤸‍♂️ Updated Dash Platform Protocol (DPP) and Drive to use Identities, rather than Blockchain Users (the previous implementation).

☝️ Fixed a fingerprint bug in DashWallet Android and updated the Network Monitor and Transaction History/Status screens as part of the UI redesign.

General News of the Week:

Edge Wallet Highlights Dash Evolution Update, Skeptical on Store of Value Analysis: The Edge Wallet team has released a summary of the upcoming Dash Platform, codenamed Dash Evolution, to highlight its features like Dash Drive, Dash DAPI, and its network blockchain usernames and drive to make a user intuitive interface. However, the article also gave a mixed review of Dash Core Group’s proposal to reevaluate the blockchain reward split between miners and masternodes.

US Judge Approves Seizure of Edward Snowden Book Profits: The US judge Liam O’Grady ruled that profits from the sale of Permanent Record, the memoir published by whistleblower and privacy advocate Edward Snowden, can be seized, due to the book’s sensitive material not having been pre-approved by the US Central Intelligence Agency and National Security Agency. The ruling highlights the importance of private and secure money that cannot be forcefully sized or stopped without both parties’ consent. This previously occurred when the US government pressured private payment processors to not process money being sent to the transparency watchdog WikiLeaks, and caused them to adopt cryptocurrency, including Dash in their Wikileaks shop.

QuadrigaCX CEO Death Loses $250 Million Highlighting Cryptocurrency Usability Issues: The online cryptocurrency exchange, is unable to distribute funds to investors after QuadrigaCX’s co-founder and main operator, Gerald W. Cotten, allegedly died from complications from Crohn’s disease. QuadrigaCX had 363,000 total users and 115,000 of those users had balances in their accounts that totaled $180 million in cryptocurrency and $70 million in Canadian currency when it went offline due to Cotten’s death. Investors are now calling for a further investigation into Cotten’s death and crying foul play, but so far, investigators have only discovered poor organizational planning in the event of an important executive’s death and passing on password knowledge.

Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash to Be Dropped at 400 Australian Merchants Post Double-Spend Exploit: TravelByBit will reportedly stop accepting both Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash for payments at 400 Bitcoin-accepting merchants in Australia after a video showed both coins falling victim to a double-spend attack. Since 2017 a total of 3,874 Bitcoin Cash transactions have either been double-spent or are undetermined and the risk is becoming greater as the falling exchange price for both coins cause miners to stop mining and thus cause a lower hashrate. Dash, however, has been able to further mitigate the risk of 51% attacks by auto locking a transaction with InstantSend and locking in the first seen transaction with ChainLocks.

Dash Media of the Week:

Dash Isn’t a Privacy Coin? Nothing Is? Joël Valenzuela on Crypto Ramble: This week, Joel appeared on Crypto Ramble with Desi-Rae Campbell for an in-depth conversation on privacy coins discussing the concept of cryptocurrency privacy and the numerous variables including what exactly the user is trying to obscure (transaction destination, transaction amount, overall movements of funds on the network, etc.) and the tradeoffs associated with each option. They also discuss the growing arms race of increasing privacy and attempts to de-anonymize transactions, and how Dash fits into each of these categories with its optional PrivateSend feature.

Zcoin’s Reuben Yap on Privacy Coin Tradeoffs, Delistings, and Lelantus Protocol: Joel also sat down to chat with Reuben Yap, project steward of Zcoin, on the nature of privacy in cryptocurrency and the various privacy coins, including the ongoing tech battle between forms of obfuscation and de-anonymization techniques and the complexity of the privacy issue with different elements of a cryptocurrency to be obscured. They also discuss the tradeoffs between Dash’s PrivateSend and other CoinJoin-based variants, ring signatures such as what Monero uses, and the various zero-knowledge proofs from Zcash to Zcoin.

Dash Podcast 135 – Christmas Special with Amanda B. Johnson: This week, the guys welcome Amanda B. Johnson, Dash Investment Foundation Supervisor, to reflect on Dash developments and achievements in 2019 but to also future outlook for Dash in 2020 with Dash Platform. Make sure to tune in to not miss these valuable insights!

Dash continues to power ahead with plenty of new developments and an active community despite the poor exchange price performance, and is even discussing ways to further help improve the price performance. Continue to follow Dash news to get all of the future breaking news.