Decred (DCR) price, performance and general information

Original posting by Liz Bagot on Matrix

What we’ve been up to the past 2 weeks

• Secured publication of Akin Sawyerr's interview on the Base Layer Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/baselayer/id1445373535

• Secured Crypto Briefing article on market maker proposals https://cryptobriefing.com/decentralized-governance-in-action-decred-debates-market-liquidity/

• Completed messaging refresh: https://github.com/decredcommunity/pr/blob/foundational2/foundational-messaging.md

• Wrote and submitted a proposal for matheusd to speak at The Lightning Conference Berlin

• Secured TV interview for Zubair Zia at the Futurist Conference Toronto

• Coordinated with interested community members in aggregating the best educational resources around the Internet for Decred’s educational resources repository. Please share hidden gems here if you have them

• Continued our work with various community members on engaging in a productive/educational way on Twitter. This included conducting a call with seven community members to discuss social media playbook strategies, feedback, and take questions

What we’re doing in the next 2 weeks

• Continuing to work with the community to aggregate all the best educational resources on Decred across the Internet and fit them into the educational resources repository

• Continuing our work with various community members on best social media practices

• Executing against the master media relations strategy

Original posting by Liz Bagot on Matrix

What we’ve been up to the past 2 weeks

• Secured publication of Akin Sawyerr's interview on the Base Layer Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/baselayer/id1445373535

• Secured Crypto Briefing article on market maker proposals https://cryptobriefing.com/decentralized-governance-in-action-decred-debates-market-liquidity/

• Completed messaging refresh: https://github.com/decredcommunity/pr/blob/foundational2/foundational-messaging.md

• Wrote and submitted a proposal for matheusd to speak at The Lightning Conference Berlin

• Secured TV interview for Zubair Zia at the Futurist Conference Toronto

• Coordinated with interested community members in aggregating the best educational resources around the Internet for Decred’s educational resources repository. Please share hidden gems here if you have them

• Continued our work with various community members on engaging in a productive/educational way on Twitter. This included conducting a call with seven community members to discuss social media playbook strategies, feedback, and take questions

What we’re doing in the next 2 weeks

• Continuing to work with the community to aggregate all the best educational resources on Decred across the Internet and fit them into the educational resources repository

• Continuing our work with various community members on best social media practices

• Executing against the master media relations strategy

I have seen a few people asking questions and looking for the Niche that DCR could service or the reason why anyone would invest in Decred along side of Bitcoin, so I thought I would post my personal opinion and why I'm into the project.

1)I'm into crypto long term and first and foremost am interested in the store of value proposition put forward by these digital assets. I first got very heavily into Decred in the lead up to the BTC/BCH fork. At this time it became very clear to me that BTC has a serious issue with it's consensus algorithm.

When the miners in BTC did not agree, or reach a consensus, on the way to proceed (seg-wit or bigger blocks) there was a huge outcry from the BTC community of token holders to support Seg-wit and a User Activated Hard Fork movement started where holders and supporters of the Seg-wit protocol started hosting nodes that would reject any other "fork" this was a massive undertaking and ultimately we all know that BTC's network still factured.

I don't like the idea of a consensus algorithm which, in the absence of a consensus, simply splits to support several version of the protocol. I don't see a strong store of value in a token I buy today and ten years later I have 30+ versions of this token because of all the forking. That does not strike me as a solid store of value and Decreds inability to be forked this way played a huge part in my fundimental analysis of it's value proposition and I'm still very happy about this.

2) who funds development for other projects? Some have foundations that are funded by wealthy Donors or benefactors who's interests in development progress may or may not be in line with the interests of the average token holder within that network. Others have voluntary developers, and while I absolutely Respect people donating their time and skills to further open source projects, I have a hard time believing that volunteer work attracts the best talent or highest level of work available. Again I have a hard time understanding if the motivation of a volunteer development force is in line with the motivation of an average token holder or user of the protocol.

The funding model Decred has, where the network is self funded by it's block rewards, makes much more sense when you follow the money. The motivations of the development team are in line with the motivations of the project and the average user because the development team itself is paid in DCR, and the value of those units is contingent on quality development. on top of that the ability to vote on development directions through PI makes the process much more transparent than any other project that I have dove into. I know these systems are not yet running in there fully decentralized capacity but I do honestly believe that it is a matter of time.

3) Who actually controls the protocol that maintains the network? In bitcoin it’s the minors, minors don’t necessarily hold any BTC as they’re running a business to make a profit. If that profit margin can be improved by a protocol implementation that benefits mining at the cost of users paying high fees it’s entirely the mining communities prerogative to implement those changes. if the users don’t like it they could fork but risk losing a portion of the total hash rate to the fork that minors who prefer the higher fee structure continue to support.

if you had $1 million and wanted to secure some of that wealth into crypto currency assets, Would you not care that the asset which you now own a sizable financial stake in, is entirely outside of your influence? When I buy traditional equity assets, I have a degree of influence on them proportional to my share of ownership.

Decred solves this issue for me by giving control of validating PoW to the token holders participating in PoS voting. This ensures that I have a say and real, on chain, influence over the direction of the protocol directly proportionate to my stake in the network. I'm more likely to make decisions that benefit Decred holders because I am one.

In my opinion this model makes the most sense for a system who's goals are to be a decentralized store of value. Beyond that I could dare to imagine Decred existing as a decentralized digital state in the future, fully governed by it's stake holders and sovereign in every sense, but that's a dream.

TL;DR

I wanted to make a quick opinion post about why I like Decred.

These are my opinions:

1) it's a superior store of value network because it cannot be fractured into Oblivion through countless forks which both convolute the token space and weaken the network hash rate as a whole. 2) the funding for development in other projects is less than transparent and it's not clear if the interests of theses financiers are aligned with the interests of the respective communities and projects. 3) most store of value protocols are controlled by the miners who maintain them, those miners are not necessarily the token holders or users of the networks they maintain. I find it difficult to pitch a large investment into one of these networks to any institution or individual who wants a proportional share of influence in return for their financial stake. Decred does not have that issue as the stake holders validate the actions of the miners.

Once again these are just my opinions definitely tell me why I'm wrong or where I'm misunderstanding, I'm here to learn.