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Decred Journal

Decred Journal – April 2023

If you're here for cypherpunk ideals it's hard not to be enthusiastic for Decred’s development this month. New releases and feature updates for Decrediton, DCRDEX and Bison Relay.

Decred Journal – April 2023
Decred Journal – April 2023

Image: Untitled by @Exitus

Highlights of April:

  • Decred DEX saw a major new release shipping around 8 months of dev work, including ETH and USDC trading.
  • v1.7.7 of the core Decred software has been released, featuring optimizations and bug fixes as well as ta feature allowing Decrediton users to vote on individual TSpends.
  • Another new Bison Relay release deployed many of the improvements to UX and onboarding.

Contents:

Core Software v1.7.7 Release

Highlights of the v1.7.7 release:

  • dcrd got a few optimizations to use a bit less bandwidth and CPU in certain scenarios.
  • dcrwallet got many bug fixes and performance improvements for SPV mode, ticket buying, and mixing. In particular, this benefits heavily-used wallets that contain many transactions.
  • Decrediton gained voting for individual TSpend transactions, redesigned launcher views that educate the user while the wallet is loading, redesigned Trezor views, an upgrade to DCRDEX v0.6.0 with ETH and USDC trading, and a number of bug fixes.

Visit the GitHub release for the full list of changes and downloads. As always, we recommend to verify the files before running.

Image: New launcher views - learn about Decred while the wallet is syncing

DCRDEX v0.6.0 Release

The long-awated v0.6 has shipped around 8 months of development work. Major changes since v0.5:

  • ETH and ERC-20 wallets and trading
  • Built-in light wallets for Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and Litecoin (LTC) allow to store and trade funds without running full nodes
  • Registration fee is replaced with fidelity bonds, time-locked funds that can be returned back to the user
  • Ability to connect to a DEX server in view-only mode
  • Restyled Markets and Wallets pages with different layouts for various screen sizes
  • Experimental market maker bot

Other notable changes:

  • Manual peer management controls
  • Fee estimates on Send pages
  • Ability to disable an existing wallet
  • Archiving of older order data
  • Snappier order placement
  • Recent matches shown on the Markets page
  • Numerous improvements and fixes in Electrum support, Ethereum support, order tracking and presentation, error reporting, fee estimation, translations, and more

There are 3 ways to obtain DCRDEX:

  • As part of the Decrediton wallet (all integrated, no separate app to run, signed by Decred Release key)
  • Standalone dexc app from core software release (more CPU and OS options, signed by Decred Release key)
  • Standalone dexc app from DCRDEX's own release (has a more Windows-friendly build with a system tray icon and no terminal window, signed by DEX developers)

Please take the time to read Important Notices to learn about specifics of non-custodial P2P trading.

Tips:

  • Check new video guides on setting up the DEX in Decrediton and setting up light built-in wallets for LTC, BCH, and BTC, and more on @DecredTV.
  • Built-in LTC wallet can be slow to get started as it searches for a node that supports compact block filters. Users can go to DEX wallet page, click Litecoin -> Settings -> Manage Peers, and manually add one peer from this list to help boostrap the process.
  • Market maker bot can be enabled by running DEX client with --experimental flag and selecting "Market Making" from the hamburger menu. Be sure to turn up the "oracle weight". The bot helps to add liquidity but should be used with care while it is considered experimental.

Image: Updated trading view in DCRDEX v0.6.0

Image: Updated wallet view in DCRDEX v0.6.0

Bison Relay v0.1.7 Release

New release has landed just 4 weeks since v0.1.6 RC1. Notable changes in v0.1.7 final:

  • Improved onboarding flows thanks to new pre-funded invites, prepaid server-based invites, and automated wallet setup
  • Right-clicking a username opens a menu, making tipping much easier
  • Button to suggest a user to exchange keys with another user (i.e. introduce one to another)
  • UI notifications for new posts and new comments to existing posts
  • Send and receive DCR on-chain (can be used to withdraw DCR from Bison Relay)
  • Improved and fixed scrolling behavior
  • Listing of all own posts
  • Better UX for adding files to posts
  • Received files can be opened directly from BR
  • Improved macOS installer, the app is signed and notarized
  • More details in the Bison Relay Development section below

Get the latest release binaries on GitHub. Bison Relay downloads can now be verified thanks to the added signatures made by the same key that signs Decred releases (Decred Release <release@decred.org> with fingerprint F516ADB7A069852C7C28A02D6D897EDF518A031D).

Check the install guide and the tipping guide to avoid common issues with receiving tips. Find more Bison Relay video guides at @DecredTV.

Image: Bison Relay v0.1.7

Image: Oprah's tipping in action in Bison Relay

Development

The work reported below has the "merged to master" status unless noted otherwise. It means that the work is completed, reviewed, and integrated into the source code that advanced users can build and run, but is not yet available in release binaries for regular users.

dcrd

dcrd is a full node implementation that powers Decred's peer-to-peer network around the world.

Past changes backported to v1.7.7 release:

  • Increased minimum Go version to 1.17 for peer and addrmgr modules to enable Go toolchain optimizations like module graph pruning and lazy module loading. peer and addrmgr modules provide a solid foundation for building software that talks to the Decred network.
  • Increased version of the peer-to-peer protocol used by the peer module to no longer use the reject message (we explained it in the November issue).
  • Fixed caching of other peers' inventory (small traffic optimization).
  • Optimized peer address selection and mitigated excessive CPU usage in testnet scenarios.
  • Updated code formatting, build scripts and README for Go 1.20.
  • Updated to latest sys module (low-level interaction with the operating system) to support building on OpenBSD with 64-bit RISC-V processors.
  • All backported changes have been added to the release branch as opposed to just increasing module version numbers in the go.mod file. This makes building from the release branch easier for some developers.

Changes merged in master towards future releases:

  • Added definitions for the upcoming consensus votes to change the proof-of-work hashing to BLAKE3 and to reduce PoW block rewards. These changes will be documented more formally in Decred Change Proposals DCP-11 and DCP-12, respectively. The definitions only add basic information like vote description, choices, and validity dates. Code implementing the real changes will be added separately.
  • Implemented the DCP-12 consensus vote. If it passes, block reward split will change to 1% PoW, 89% PoS, 10% Treasury.
  • Added a function for generating a private key using a custom source of entropy. Having such a function in dcrd allows to remove duplication from other Decred packages.
  • Code refactoring and cleanup.
  • Versions of several modules have been bumped to enable Go's module graph pruning across the codebase.

dcrwallet

dcrwallet is a wallet server used by command-line and graphical wallet apps.

Changes backported to v1.7.7 release:

  • Added watchlast option to limit initially watched addresses, which benefits large wallets with many old addresses.
  • Removed needless balance calculation when using the ticket auto buyer. This improves performance for more active wallets.
  • Fixed an edge case where ticket purchasing is cancelled due to a change of the ticket price, leading to some wallet's transactions not being discovered.
  • Implemented a faster way to select random UTXOs (aka "coins") used to create new transactions.
  • Avoid creating small mix change so that the unmixed account is not filled with these outputs that are too small to mix, and too tempting to spend together. "Mix change" are special outputs of mix transactions that are created when the DCR amount sent into the mix does not divide evenly by the mix denomination. For example look at this mix: 3.2189 DCR goes into the mix and the outputs include 17 outputs of the standard mix denomination of 0.1678 DCR (totalling 2.8521 DCR) and 7 "change" outputs of smaller size (totalling 0.3666 DCR). According to mix.decred.org, mix change is not anonymous and can be used to damage the privacy of mixes. dcrwallet can anonymize such change by carefully mixing it, but this cannot be done for change outputs smaller than 0.00264314 DCR (smallest mix denomination of 0.00262144 DCR plus default fee). Instead of creating such small outputs that should not be used anyway, their value is rolled into the transaction fee.

Changes merged in master towards future releases:

  • Cleaned up and simplified public API of internal VSP code. This is part of consolidating VSP code in the vspd repository for easier maintenance and code reuse.
  • Removed ticket revocation support from the VSP client. This removes a significant dependency from the VSP code, and it is unnecessary anyway because revocations are automatic since DCP-9.
  • Fixed max VSP fee set in the config not being respected and always overridden with the hard-coded value of 0.2 DCR. Also, VSP config validation has been moved to startup code so that invalid options are reported earlier.
  • Code maintenance and 1 concurrency fix.

dcrctl

dcrctl is a command-line client for dcrd and dcrwallet.

  • Updates for the v1.7.7 release: switch to latest GitHub build code, Go 1.20, and latest dcrwallet code.

Decrediton

Decrediton is a full-featured desktop wallet app with integrated voting, StakeShuffle mixing, Lightning Network, DEX trading, and more. It runs with or without a full blockchain (SPV mode).

Changes backported to v1.7.7 release:

  • ~34 commits with all fixes and improvements made since November 2022.
  • Updated to include DCRDEX v0.6.0.
  • Fixed a bug on the Send form that caused wrong DCR amount to be reported or sent in some scenarios.
  • Fixed delay when opening wallet by removing the unnecessary fetching of VSP info.
  • Fixed loading status on Process Managed/Unmanaged Tickets views and added tests for them. These views help to ensure that all tickets are registered with VSPs and their fees are paid.
  • Fixed ETH showing as not supported in the DEX window. Release binaries were quickly rebuilt to include this fix.

See the release notes for a summary of all changes since v1.7.6.

vspd

vspd is server software used by Voting Service Providers. A VSP votes on behalf of its users 24/7 and cannot steal funds.

  • Updated to latest Decred modules from dcrd and dcrwallet.
  • Code maintenance.

Lightning Network

dcrlnd is Decred's Lightning Network node software. LN enables instant and low-cost transactions.

  • Backported a change from upstream lnd to bring account-related functions (import account, import a single public key, list accounts, etc.). On top of that a few more features have been added: creating additional wallet accounts, exporting individual private keys, and spending specific UTXOs. The goal for these changes is to allow users to create an account from which individual private keys may be extracted and then spent. This is used in Bison Relay for funding prepaid invites.
  • Updated to latest Decred modules from dcrd and dcrwallet.
  • Added RPC request for getting information about a transaction that belongs to LN wallet.

cspp

cspp is a server for coordinating coin mixes using the CoinShuffle++ protocol. It is non-custodial, i.e. never holds any funds. CSPP is part of StakeShuffle, Decreds privacy system.

  • Project Lead Jake Yocom-Piatt reports peer-to-peer mixing will eventually replace the central server that coordinates mixes currently.

DCRDEX

DCRDEX is a non-custodial, privacy-respecting exchange for trustless trading, powered by atomic swaps.

Client changes included in v0.6.0 release:

  • Do not put web server's address to Content Security Policy (CSP) HTTP header if it is an IPv6 address. This is a fix for a workaround for a Safari bug that resulted some in icons not loading properly.
  • Fixed potential integer overflow when calculating Ethereum transaction confirmations.
  • A few smaller fixes.

All other changes below are merged in master towards future releases.

Client:

  • Show a notification when failing to connect to a wallet.
  • Default to using 127.0.0.1 IPv4 address when it is not specified in the config. This helps to satisfy the Content Security Policy protocol in a way that also work-arounds a bug in Safari. The new default avoids an issue where some icons are not loading properly because of CSP failures.
  • Always show market's recent matches. Previously the Recent Matches list was cleared in some situations like restarting the client.
  • Show order rate even if the order box is collapsed. Rate (price) is important info that must be visible without having to click to expand order details.
  • Removed excess trailing zeroes from some UI elements and improved overall consistency of number formatting.
  • Remember last selected candle size across page reloads. Default candle size changed from 5 min to 1 hour.
  • Track confirmations for the redeem transaction and retry it if necessary. This is addressing an edge case when the mempool is so full that transactions paying lower fees are purged and never mined. Such transactions must be retried later, possibly with a higher fee.
  • Added release notes for v0.6.0.
  • Fixed market prices on the left sidebar getting out of sync.
  • Fixed handling of server notifications that may come before client's markets are initialized.
  • Fixed error during shutdown when running in Decrediton.
  • Fixed ~2 smaller UI bugs.

Ethereum:

  • Show more meaningful Walle Types such as "RPC" for ETH wallets powered by 3rd party data providers and "Ethereum token" for USDC wallets.
  • Updated docs: Removed ArchiveNode.io provider which is shutting down, advised against using Flashbots.net, added Wallet Recovery tips.
  • Refactored code for rotating bonds to integrate ETH bonds more easily.
  • Changed to broadcast transactions to all RPC providers instead of only one preferred provider. This should help ensure the transactions quickly propagate and are mined.
  • Added config guide link to forms related to wallet setup. Also two input fields will be shown for RPC providers instead of one. It is important that users understand that provider's failure may lead to loss of funds, and configure 2 or more providers to always have a fallback.
  • Added a developer tool for getting gas estimates for DEX-critical operations on Ethereum. It will help to add new tokens or new contract versions.

Litecoin:

Zcash:

  • Replaced usages of deprecated address methods for Zcash. This requires zcashd v5.4.2 or newer.
  • Added initial infrastructure for shielded pools, a Zcash feature enabling private balances and transactions. First stage of Zcash privacy integration will be limited to shielding/unshielding own funds, and sending from own shielded to arbitrary shielded or transparent addresses. Only transparent addresses will be involved in swap activity initially.
  • Fixed spelling of Zcash across the codebase.

DigiByte:

  • DigiByte swaps have been tested on mainnet, DGB support has been merged and is planned for the upcoming v0.6.1.
  • Running a DigiByte full node is currently the only option since it is based on Bitcoin Core v0.17 and has no compact filters support (so DEX cannot implement a light built-in wallet for DGB). A big upgrade to Bitcoin Core v22 features is in progress so this may change in the future.
  • For some background, DGB community members expressed interest back in November 2022 and have been active on Twitter and DEX's GitHub. @chappjc created a patch that improves DigiByte node's performance on testnet to facilitate the development. In March 2023 Decred stakeholders approved DGB integration as part of the latest DEX development proposal.
  • Note that this stage is just software support in DCRDEX, getting DGB markets up and running is a separate task.

Server:

  • Removed server startup requirement of having DCR registration fees configured, and removed code strictly tied to DCR fees. This old code was made obsolete by the ability to pay the registration fee in assets other than DCR. Now with the transition to fidelity bonds the multi-asset registration fee support is itself deprecated, but it will remain available for some time.
  • Fixed startup balance check bug that could erroneously unbook an order.

Other:

  • Many less exciting but necessary changes are made behind the scenes to add new assets more smoothly, such as code refactoring, cleanup, build code optimization, etc.
  • Some of the fixes listed above will be backported to the upcoming v0.6.1 release.
  • Umbrel integration has been completed. Decred's Umbrel Community App Store has been updated with the latest Docker image including DEX v0.6.0 release. Umbrel installation links have been added to dex.decred.org. Finally, DEX v0.6 release on Umbrel has been announced on Twitter.
  • Litecoin node operators are advised to upgrade their nodes to v0.21 and enable compact block filters. Currently it is hard for the built-in SPV wallet to find its first peer because not as many public full nodes serve compact filters. DCRDEX users can work-around this by manually adding peers from this list.

In progress:

Image: DigiByte is coming to DCRDEX

Image: Umbrel is one more way to get DCRDEX

decred.org

dcrweb is the source code for the decred.org website.

Bison Relay

Bison Relay is a new social media platform with strong protections against censorship, surveillance, and advertising, powered by Decred Lightning Network.

New features have been first tested by the community in Release Candidate 1 which revealed a few bugs that got fixed in v0.1.7 final.

Common changes in GUI and CLI apps in v0.1.7:

GUI app changes in v0.1.7:

  • Added a menu command to suggest one user to do a key exchange with another user. This allows to connect two users together by mediating their key exchange.
  • Made received files interactive: each file has an icon indicating its type, and clicking the file opens it with a program as configured in the operating system.
  • Added tooltip explaining the Cost field when sharing content (it is the price users will pay to download content).
  • Added context menu when right clicking user name in various places like chat, user list, feed, or post comments. This provides faster access to tipping and other actions on users.
  • Improved UX for embedding files in posts. Several users failed to press the + button to add a file, resulting in posts without images. The confusing + button has been removed and files are now added in one action.
  • Added a page listing all own posts.
  • Added prepaid invites. When such an invite is imported its DCR will automatically fund the Bison Relay wallet of the invited user.
  • Added wallet account management (create and list accounts) and the ability to send and receive DCR with on-chain (not LN) transactions. With this BR can act as a simple DCR wallet, becoming a third actively supported GUI wallet after Decrediton and DCRDEX.
  • Added server-based invites (aka RV-based invites) which avoid the need for exchanging invite files. Instead the invite is pushed to the server and its download is pre-paid by the sender. Receiving user may fetch such invite without having any funds to pay the server. If the invite has any DCR in it, it can be redeemed to bootstrap new user's wallet for using Bison Relay.
  • Added automated onboarding flow using server-based invites. It performs all wallet setup tasks if given an appropriate prepaid invite key. Tasks include: fetch the invite, redeem funds, open outbound and inbound LN channels, and perform an initial key exchange with the user who created the invite.
  • Fixed unwanted newline getting inserted when sending with the Enter key and the cursor is not at the end of the line. Also fixed sending of empty messages.
  • Fixed a few input forms not responding to Enter key, which normally submits the form.
  • Fixed and improved chat scroll behavior. New messages will no longer cause scrolling to the bottom and loss of scroll position. After leaving and returning to a chat it will scroll to the bottom like in Element. Scroll to first unread message has been added.
  • Fixed error message when using Query Route feature to check if there is a valid route to the LN node used by the Bison Relay server.

GUI app issues found in v0.1.7 Release Candidate 1 and fixed in v0.1.7 final:

  • Added notifications for new posts and new comments to existing posts. If there are unread items, icons on the main sidebar will change, Feed items will be tagged with "New Post" or "New Comments", and new comments will show in bold until the user clicks away from the post.
  • Updated icons for macOS and Windows, changed app name from "bruig" to "bisonrelay".
  • Fixed New Post button navigating to a wrong page.
  • Fixed icons being hard to see in dark mode.
  • Fixed Chats tab behaving like like the user has no contacts yet and showing the initial invite prompt, until the app syncs with the network. This has been replaced with loading animation while the address book is loading.

CLI app changes in v0.1.7:

  • Added an option to the /channels command to show additional info for LN channels.
  • Fixed attempt to load TLS certificate when its path is empty on the "Request receive capacity" view.
  • Updated the build script and removed leftovers from ZKC (Bison Relay's predecessor).

Changes merged in master towards future releases:

  • Fixed possible crash of the CLI app when listing LN channel balances with /ln channels command.
  • Updated GUI app styles for new post and new comment notifications.

Other stuff:

  • Tipping bot Oprah will be sending messages to users when it fails to send a tip. This way, tip recipients will be notified of issues with their receive channels.
  • Existing public group chats will be upgraded to support multiple admins and utilize the new onboarding admin bot. Members of such rooms should upgrade to v0.1.6 or higher.
  • New admin bot will further streamline onboarding by helping new users discover public channels and inviting them automatically, removing the wait for a manual invite.
  • After the onboarding work developers plan to work on pages, stores and mobile apps.

Image: Bison Relay can now be used as a simple DCR wallet

Image: Tipping users in Bison Relay got much easier

Image: Friendly bot helps to discover public chats

Other

  • Decred's own release build tool gained build flavors which will be used by DCRDEX builds with Windows system tray integration. Support for OpenBSD on 64-bit ARM has been added. Windows on 64-bit ARM was explored but removed due to one dependency not supporting it yet.
  • decred-release automatic installer has been updated with hashes and signatures for v1.7.7 release.
  • dcrtest integration test framework has been updated to latest Go modules from dcrd.
  • During the reproducible building session for v1.7.7 release developers encountered a mismatch in go-ethereum builds for DCRDEX, which turned out to be "a doozy of a compiler bug" (it is quite an achievement to hit a compiler bug!) and another bug in Go building code. Investigation has delayed the release by a few days, eventually both bugs got fixed and the fixes will ship in Go 1.21 and Go 1.20.4.

People

Welcome the new first-time contributors:

Congratulations to @norwnd for getting the Decred Contractor Clearance!

Community stats as of May 3 (compared to Apr 3):

  • Twitter followers: 53,077 (-112)
  • Reddit subscribers: 12,701 (+23)
  • Matrix #general users: 763 (+2)
  • Discord users: 1,573 (+17), verified to post: 921 (-2)
  • Telegram users: 2,508 (-111)
  • YouTube subscribers: 4,630 (+0), views: 228.1K (+1.6K)

Governance

In April the new treasury received 7,958 DCR worth $161K at April's average rate of $20.22. 3,087 DCR was spent to pay contractors, worth $62K at April's average rate.

A treasury spend tx was approved with 6,900 Yes votes and 54% turnout, and mined on Apr 16. It had 23 outputs making payments to contractors, ranging from 7 DCR to 1,102 DCR. Most of this DCR was likely paid for February work, at its billing exchange rate of $24.03 the TSpend is worth around $74K.

As of May 9, combined balance of legacy and new treasury is 856,305 DCR ($14.5 million USD at $16.96).

Image: Decred Treasury balance in DCR

Image: Decred Treasury balance in USD

There were 2 new proposals submitted in April:

  • Decred Vanguard is a new initiative to fund a community-driven outreach team with a budget of $46,784. There will be up to 25 paid positions for participants to receive $100/month, as well as $100 prizes for good contributions from inside and outside the Vanguard team.
  • BTC-ECHO, a German crypto news site, submitted a proposal requesting $9,500 for 2 sponsored articles and related promotion, running over a period of 3 months.

@jy-p's proposal to change the reward distribution so that PoW miners get just 1% and the hashing algorithm changes was approved with 97% Yes votes and turnout of 62%. @bee has compiled the most common questions and answers from the highly active comments on the proposal. The development work needed to implement the DCP-12 change has already been merged to master.

A proposal from @joegruff to develop Decrediton support for Ledger hardware was approved with 89% Yes votes and 39% turnout.

See Politeia Digest issue 59 for more details on the month's proposals.

Network

New ATHs in April:

  • Staked DCR: 9,882,748.69 DCR
  • Mixed and unspent DCR: 9,380,774.51 DCR
  • LN nodes: 192
  • LN channels: 392
  • LN capacity: 163.63 DCR

Hashrate: April's hashrate opened at ~94 Ph/s and closed ~76 Ph/s, bottoming at 62 Ph/s and peaking at 94 Ph/s throughout the month.

Image: Decred hashrate

Distribution of 72 Ph/s hashrate reported by the pools on May 1: Poolin 64%, F2Pool 30%, AntPool 6%, CoinMine 0.3%.

Distribution of 1,000 blocks actually mined by May 1: Poolin 63%, F2Pool 28%, AntPool 6%, BTC.com 2.5%, CoinMine 0.2%.

Image: Historical pool hashrate distribution

Staking: Ticket price varied between 236-253 DCR.

Image: Ticket price has been unusually stable in April

The locked amount was 9.75-9.88 million DCR, meaning that 64.6-65.3% of the circulating supply participated in Proof of Stake.

Image: DCR locked in tickets is crawling up

VSP: The 14 listed VSPs collectively managed ~6,960 (-240) live tickets, which was 17.1% of the ticket pool (-0.5%) as of May 1.

Biggest gainer in April was vspd.bass.cf (+165 tickets or +27%). Two VSPs got delisted.

Image: Distribution of tickets managed by VSPs

Nodes: Decred Mapper observed between 163 and 171 dcrd nodes throughout the month. Versions of 166 nodes seen on May 1: v1.7.5 - 28%, v1.7.1 - 21%, v1.8.0 dev builds - 13%, v1.7.2 - 12%, v1.7.7 - 11%, v1.7.0 - 5%, v1.7.4 - 4%, other - 7%.

Image: Historical dcrd version distribution, data from nodes.jholdstock.uk. Data before Jan 2023 was incomplete.

The share of mixed coins varied between 61.0-61.8%. Daily mixed volume varied between 303-502K DCR.

Image: Mixed supply is on the rise

Image: Uptick in "adjusted transaction volume" as defined by Coin Metrics, in both DCR and USD

Decred's Lightning Network explorer has seen 196 nodes (+21), 399 channels (+45) with a total capacity of 163 DCR (+34), as of May 1. These stats are different for each node. For example, @karamble's node reported 193 nodes (+18), 429 channels (+53) and 174 DCR (+39) capacity on same day May 1.

Decred's LN has surpassed Litecoin LN in node count and channel count, and is getting close in capacity according to Litecoin LN data from 1ML.com.

Image: Decred's Lightning Network is seeing more nodes

@bochinchero created charts showing balances of top mining addresses against DCR's price history and key events like ASIC launch dates and CEX listings. While not providing much analysis or commentary on its own, it contributes to the collective research of miners' participation in malicious suppression of DCR markets, which is the key argument of the recent proposal to reduce mining rewards to 1% and change the mining algorithm.

Image: Combined balance of top 22 mining addresses vs DCR price history

Ecosystem

Services gained or listed:

  • New DCR/USDC, BTC/USDC and ETH/BTC pairs are live at dex.decred.org. DEX client version 0.6.0 or higher is required to create ETH and USDC wallets and trade.
  • Bison Relay has been added to Community links at decred.org.
  • Trocador.app has been added to Exchanges, it is a meta exchanger that finds quotes from various services and then fronts it for the user via their APIs. It works without JavaScript and over Tor (they even have an Onion URL). A useful feature of Trocador is it rates the probability of each backend provider forcing KYC/AML after the fact. This is the biggest risk with instant exchanges other than outright scamming. Additionally, Trocador may reimburse some of the exchanged amount if for some reason the backend provider fails to send funds or provide some proof of a legal order justifying it. DCR was listed in February 2023.

Image: Trocador.app finds best rates, isolates from vendors, and warns about KYC risks

Services lost or delisted:

  • VSP dcrpool.ibitlin.com has been removed from the VSP list after being offline since Feb 28, last time it reported 4 live tickets. This VSP had been serving since Jan 2021 and voted ~1,200 tickets with a miss ratio of 0.75%. The fee was 1% of the ticket reward.
  • VSP dcrvsp.dittrex.com has been removed from VSPs, it was last seen online on Apr 04 with 2 live tickets. The owner clarified on GitHub that the VSP is being retired. It had been serving since Apr 2021 and voted ~500 tickets, missing only 0.6% of them. This one had a 5% fee.
  • Metal Pay was removed from Exchanges, it disabled buy orders for DCR as reported in March issue.
  • GloBee was removed from Exchanges. A payment processor founded by Monero's fluffypony and others, is now offline. We could not find any shutdown announcement on its Twitter or elsewhere. Last snapshot of the website was made in January.
  • dcrstats.com is offline since around early April, it was a network stats dashboard popular in the early years of Decred.

Other news:

  • Bittrex has been charged by U.S. SEC for operating unregistered securities exchange. This came shortly after the March announcement that Bittrex is leaving U.S. markets. So far we have not seen information suggesting it may impact non-U.S. users of Bittrex Global.

Coming changes to Decred's chat platforms:

  • All chat bridges are being taken down except for the bridge between Matrix and Bison Relay.
  • Discord is likely going to be shut down completely. Without the bridged content it may become a ghost town, and without enough moderators watching it will be taken over by spammers or scammers.
  • Decred Telegram will continue to function as usual with the same rules but without the bridge (it was disabled in 2021 due to high amount of spam).
  • Decred Trading Telegram was renamed to Bison Time and Decred branding has been removed.
  • Decred Support Telegram has been unbridged, locked, and now just redirects to Matrix #support.
  • #trading on Matrix will become subject to same moderation rules as the other chat rooms.
  • #support on Matrix becomes the only chat that is actively monitored by developers. All support requests will be redirected to this Matrix chat.

Join our #ecosystem chat to get more news about Decred services.

Warning: the authors of the Decred Journal have no idea about the trustworthiness of any of the services above. Please do your own research before trusting your personal information or assets to any entity.

Outreach

Monde PR's achievements:

  • Pitched 1 news announcement
  • Pitched 6 media opportunities

Secured the following media placements:

  • An article in Invezz about the launch of DCRDEX 0.6. The article was syndicated to 5 publications including Bitcoin Insider.
  • An article in CoinJournal about the launch of DCRDEX 0.6. The article was syndicated to 3 publications including Crypto News BTC.
  • @jy-p appeared on the Entangled Things Podcast talking about the threat of quantum computing to cryptocurrencies.
  • @jy-p appeared on the MineYourBiz Show talking about the current state of the Decred project and its new privacy features.

Events

Upcoming:

  • @arij and @khalidesi are going to GITEX AFRICA as both visitors and Decred representatives. This is a large tech event held in Marrakech, Morocco, from May 31 to June 2. If anyone plans to attend or has suggestions please join Matrix #events chat.

Media

Selected articles:

Whatever the outcome, the next year or so will be an interesting ride. If you're here for cypherpunk ideals (innovation, decentralisation, non-custodial solution and development), it's hard not to be enthusiastic for the future. [@OfficialCryptos]

Decred Magazine engagement Stats for April:

  • Total number of articles on DM: 444
  • Newsletter subscribers: 96
  • New DM posts and newsletters sent: 16
  • Active social media campaigns: 46
  • Completed social media campaigns: 38
  • Social media posts: 212
  • Likes: 1,230
  • Re-tweets: 260
  • Social media followers across all platforms and accounts (including @DecredSociety): 1300

Videos:

With Bison Relay, you are no longer the product. Your content and opinions have always had monetary value, but the main difference here is the value belongs to the creator, not the platform. [@phoenixgreen]

Livestream:

Audio:

Translations:

Non-English content:

Discussions:

  • Bison Relay post about how junk follower accounts on Twitter can be used to reduce visibility of the targeted account
  • A convo about coin centralization
  • Decred pitch by 0x69b9

Other:

Markets

In April DCR was trading between USDT 17.91-25.18 and BTC 0.00061-0.00089. The average daily rate was $20.22.

Image: DCRDEX monthly volume in USD

Relevant External

Bitcoin Ordinals continued to grow, with over 2.5 million being minted so far, with a peak of 223K in a single day, increasing the number of daily Bitcoin transactions to levels not seen since 2017. Much of the recent Ordinals activity is around a new BRC-20 standard for minting fungible tokens in a series.

Ethereum's Shapella upgrade was activated on mainnet, allowing ETH holders who have been staking their ETH, some of it for years, to finally withdraw it from the staking contract.

The issuer of USDC stablecoin, Circle, has released details of a new method for transferring the asset between blockchains without "lock-and-mint" bridges which have proven to be a great target for hackers - they're calling it "Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol" or CCTP.

Crypto exchange Bittrex has been charged with violating securities laws by the SEC. The charge names 6 tokens as securities which Bittrex should have registered to trade: OMG Network (OMG), Dash (DASH), Algorand (ALGO), Monolith (TKN), NAGA (NGC), and IHT Real Estate Protocol (IHT). The naming of DASH as a security has been viewed as reflecting a particularly aggressive stance, Dash development is funded by block rewards and it had no (official) pre-mine.

Coinbase has continued in its efforts to engage with the SEC and seek clarity on how they define crypto securities by suing the SEC in an attempt to force it to make its criteria public and clarify its decisions.

Gary Gensler has appeared in a congressional hearing in which he answered some questions about the SEC's approach, but not whether ETH is classified as a security. He also released a new video comparing crypto securities to dogs impersonating goldfish, in his signature condescending style.

The European Parliament has voted in favor of the Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) licensing regime with 90% Yes votes and turnout of 97%, paving the way for it to become law across the EU in 2024. While the regulations have been welcomed by the industry for the clarity they will bring, many crypto privacy enthusiasts are disappointed that use of mixing services will lead to funds being flagged as high risk. At the same time the parliament voted in favor of Transfer of Funds regulation which will require crypto operators to identify their customers as an anti-money-laundering step - final voting figures were 92% Yes votes with 98% of eligible MEPs voting.

James Zhong, the man who was found to have over 50,000 BTC which he fraudulently obtained from the Silk Road by making simultaneous withdrawal requests, was sentenced to one year and one day in prison, and forfeiture orders were granted for all of the BTC and associated assets he had bought with it, including an LLC real estate holding company, gold, silver and Casascius coins.

That's all for April. Share your updates for the next issue in our #journal chat room.

About

This is issue 58 of Decred Journal. Index of all issues, mirrors, and translations is available here.

Most information from third parties is relayed directly from the source after a minimal sanity check. The authors of the Decred Journal cannot verify all claims. Please beware of scams and do your own research.

Credits (alphabetical order):

  • writing, editing, publishing: bee, bochinchero, Exitus, jz, karamble, l1ndseymm, phoenixgreen, richardred
  • reviews and feedback: chappjc, davecgh
  • title image: Exitus
  • funding: Decred stakeholders

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