Cypherpunk Times

Decred and the State of the market is brought to you by Exitus and PhoenixGreen.

We're excited to have Aron Beierschmitt (@abearschmitt) joining us for a deep dive into cryptocurrency governance and emerging technologies.

We'll be exploring Aron's thought-provoking article "The Sovereign Protocol Hiding in Plain Sight" (https://mirror.xyz/0xcodexvc.eth/Ylrhh3NRbTIEzk1ZmQfTkTNmoSysSE7RRU\_BJuWEvO8), where they examine the hidden potential within existing blockchain protocols and what true sovereignty means in the decentralised world.

Additionally, we'll discuss the fascinating intersection of artificial intelligence and blockchain infrastructure, specifically how AI integration could enhance and evolve Decred's ecosystem. From governance optimisation to network security, we'll explore the possibilities and challenges of bringing AI into decentralised autonomous systems.

Get ready for an engaging conversation about the future of decentralised governance, protocol sovereignty, and the role of AI in shaping tomorrow's blockchain landscape!

Decred and the State of the market is brought to you by Exitus and PhoenixGreen.The next big leap for Bison Relay is changing the way we use and engage with microservices. The new Bot Tool Kit for developing AI agents makes it smarter, faster, and more powerful decentralized technology.

Decred and the State of the market is brought to you by Exitus and PhoenixGreen.

In this discussion, we’ll look at the state of the crypto market and why the trajectory we’re currently on doesn’t fulfil the original cypherpunk expectations.

* Bybit exploited for $1.4Bn

* The meme coin super cycle is the ultimate Ponzi scheme

* Why non-cypherpunks are calling for crypto regulation

* Bison wallet $1 million volume per month miles stone

* New release of Bison Relay

* Proposals

Decred and the State of the market is brought to you by Exitus and PhoenixGreen and joined by @matheusd_tech.

In this discussion, we'll be diving into a new proposal created by Matheus and Victor (VCTT). That looks at how Decred could build additional functionality whilst aligning with the core values of the project. Non-Fungible Data Chains.

Decred and the State of the market is brought to you by Exitus and PhoenixGreen and joined by The Crypto Oracle / Ger313.X @ger313.

Bison Wallet’s first 90 days have been nothing short of incredible! In this episode, we’ll unpack the highlights, complete some trades and look at what comes next for the world's first P2P atomic swap exchange.

Decred and the State of the market is brought to you by Exitus and PhoenixGreen. The outcome of the US 2024 election has been confirmed, Donald Trump is the clear winner. But what does this mean for crypto and the wider global economy?

As of today, the election has already made a positive impact on the space and is likely to continue into 2025 - 2026. Also, with a US Bitcoin Strategic Reserve looming it's hard not to be incredibly bullish for the future.

Privacy matters. Privacy should be unstoppable. Privacy is an individuals prerogative.

If you’re interested in coming on the show in future weeks and trying out crypto products like Decrediton, Bison Wallet (aka DCRDEX) or Bison Relay, join us and we’ll get you started.

Livestream Agenda:

Generally, there are three options for privacy:

1. Privacy by default

2. Optional privacy

3. No privacy

Each has its own unique benefits and drawbacks but generally I sit in the camp that says privacy should be optional. This is for a few reasons...

* Default privacy: is good for when you require complete anonymity. But this does come with two possible drawbacks Pruning - the inability to reduce the size of a blockchain by consolidating account and transaction history. And undiscoverable Inflation attacks.

* Optional Privacy: means that you get a good level of privacy without taking on the undesirable drawbacks. It also means you have choices for when to use privacy and when not to. One example of this are mixing protocols like stakeshuffle++ which allow for efficiency and incredibly high levels of privacy.

* No privacy is useful for organisational transparency for things like treasury spending, charity donations, and verifiability. One benefit of no privacy is the reduction of complexity.

## Links News and other community insights:

* DGB Wallet setup for BisonWallet - https://x.com/A\_Jason\_Henson/status/1833965628991971402

* Digibyte and friends, BisonWallet mention - https://x.com/AmoreLoveAmor/status/1833880946057117975

* The Free Market - https://x.com/DecredSociety/status/1834882703356772579

* BisonWallet liquidity providers - https://x.com/decredproject/status/1833487752496624105

* BisonWallet new proposal - https://x.com/BisonWallet/status/1833904124154572812

* Does your crypto let you vote - https://x.com/exitusdcr/status/1835354515614081108

* New Polygon chain - https://x.com/DecredSociety/status/1833761921754968348

## Discovering Decred

* DCRDATA - Blockchain Data

* Politeia - Governance, Proposals, Voting & Ticket action

* Bison Relay insights

* DCRDEX insights

* Timestamply insights

* Social Media & Community discussion

Decred and the State of the market is brought to you by Exitus and PhoenixGreen with featured guests. In this discussion, we’ll be talking about Decred 2.0 which is a major release for the protocol and finalises several key developments discussed in the original roadmap.

Blockchain technology can be represented as being slow, inefficient, and inconsistent. Many would argue, this preserves the highest levels of security whilst aiming to maintain a peer to peer decentralised network. The question is, can this be improved to give users the best of both worlds, A fast, efficient blockchain that is also a secure, decentralised, and peer to peer network?

Let’s explore blockchain scaling and the methods used to increase transaction volume and speed, whilst decreasing congestion and cost. We’ll also discuss the trade-offs being introduced by various solutions. Understanding the long-term implications will also help evaluate the path a project is likely to follow and the overall outcomes.

The crypto news from March 2024 and why Mimble Wimble is changing privacy.

If you have read the Harry Potter books the name Mimblewimble may be familiar. It's the name of a spell that ties the target's tongue to keep them from spreading secrets or casting other spells. In the real world, this funny word was chosen by an anonymous developer who used the name Tom Elvis Jedusor, to name a privacy protocol. This protocol can be described as a cloak of invisibility for crypto transactions, ensuring that user information remains hidden.

Is Decred's Lightning Network non-custodial? Addressing the misconceptions and misinformation surrounding the non-custodial nature of the Lightning Network.

Is Decred's Lightning Network non-custodial? This question comes up frequently. The short answer is “yes”, but to be more specific we’ll need to look into some general misconceptions, which are plenty. For this discussion, we’ll focus on how Bison Relay has implemented the Lightning Network.

Cryptocurrencies normally have a predetermined supply schedule or a fixed issuance rate encoded into their code. This finite supply creates scarcity, making each unit of the cryptocurrency more valuable as demand increases.

Will Bitcoin Succumb to Corporate Hegemony, or Will Decentralization Prevail?

Cypherpunk Time author spaces - cypherpunktimes.com

The big question, What can you do with microtransactions, and why could they be the number one use-case for all blockchains? In many respects, this is a significant step for blockchain technology. It’s the area of the tech that has completely failed to this point.

When people discuss blockchain scaling, they normally allude to the problem of getting a transaction confirmed quickly, cheaply and having enough block space to process plenty of transactions per second. This is indeed an issue, and is definitely one factor that has hindered mainstream and merchant adoption. No one enjoys services that are unpredictable, slow, and expensive.

Microtransactions are an intense reaction to this issue. Which basically says, “I want to take the smallest unit available on the network and send it to someone else on the network. The cost for this transaction should also be equal to or less than the smallest unit on the network. This should also happen instantly and have the capacity for hundreds of thousands of transactions per second!”.

find out more on:

• decred.org
• bisonrelay.org
• cypherpunktimes.com

A global peer to peer digital currency is a massive ledger of every transaction ever created from the genesis to the present day. For a network to remain peer to peer, solutions need to be found that reduce the burden of running the network and also allow for frictionless payments of the smallest quantities.

Most individuals can’t comprehend the amount of storage and computing power it takes to achieve the goal of producing 1000s of small transactions per second. The aim of this discussion is to shine a bright light on transaction scaling, with a specific focus on micro transactions.

cypherpunktimes.com

Decentralized Identity (DID) is a concept within the Cypherpunk movement that revolves around individuals having control over their own identity without relying on centralized authorities.

Cypherpunk Time author spaces - cypherpunktimes.com

Part of the scaling debate is the knowledge that at some point in the near future, a large majority of all transactions conducted on blockchains will be micro transactions. These will likely be in the hundreds of thousands per second, this is in direct comparison to what is already being achieved by traditional banking services like Visa, and Mastercard.

## What are micro transactions, and why do they matter?

A micro transaction is an amount that can be as low as a single unit, for instance, on Decred and Bitcoin this is a single atom or satoshi 0.00000001.

When you consider that most on-chain transactions have a mining fee greater than 1000 units, this is extremely difficult to achieve. For instance, if I sent one unit on the Decred blockchain, it would cost me approximately 2000 units to process this transaction.

This fact alone makes on-chain micro transactions undesirable. Paying a 2000% markup for a single transaction is unacceptable. When you start to factor in other trade-offs including blockchain bloat, you’d be forgiven for thinking, this doesn’t work!

Visit:

* decred.org

* cypherpunktimes.com

The Lightning Network (LN) has achieved the monumental target of processing thousands of transactions per second at the cost of a single atom per transaction (0.00000001 DCR). But is it to have this functionality in a lightweight non-custodial wallet?

The answer is yes, it’s already been built and is functioning as intended. Checkout Bison Relay to learn more.

But what about the anti-Lightning Network narratives? Popular voices in the crypto space are suggesting that the Lightning Network doesn’t work, can’t achieve its goals, and only has full functionality when used through custodial wallet providers. Is this false information?

Although, this is certainly the case with a lot of popular wallet providers, it doesn’t have to be this way. As said previously, Bison Relay is a good example of this.

Decred and the State of the market is brought to you by Exitus and PhoenixGreen with featured guest Peter Zen.

Decred’s proposal platform is fully integrated into the protocol and combines off-chain and on-chain mechanisms for both discussion and voting. Coin holders get the final say on every decision made.

In this discussion, we’ll look at the proposals currently up for discussion and the goals aiming to be reached.

If you’ve ever used a multi-chain SPV (Simplified Payment Verification) wallet like DCRDEX, a few questions might pop to mind when comparing Decred against Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash and Litecoin. Firstly, how does Decred’s SPV mode synchronise, so quickly when compared to the others? And secondly, why does Decred seem to have more available nodes to synchronise to?

Let’s focus on the second point, “why does Decred have more available nodes to synchronise to?”. In many ways, this seems like an odd scenario, especially when you compare the number of full nodes running those networks. So why do these platforms encounter issues when trying to find full nodes to serve SPV wallets?

cypherpunktimes.com

We went LIVE – Sunday, January 7th 2024 – 3pm UK TIME

Decred and the State of the market is brought to you by Exitus and PhoenixGreen.

In this episode, we’ll look at the development surrounding crypto privacy restrictions, the CEX monitor tag and the inevitable delistings of non-compliant projects. And could DEXs offer a better solution for a decentralised crypto market?

For more visit - decred.org

People need mobile wallets that are fast to set up, easy to use and very secure. All too often, mobile wallets make extreme security sacrifices in order to slightly improve ease of use. One example of a bad security practice is when a wallet has to trust a centralised node. This is a trust model that processes all wallet information, sent and received, through a single point of failure. A wallet using Simplified Payment Verification (SPV) challenges this convention by providing a high level of security whilst improving the user experience.

## Fast and Small

If you're looking for a non-custodial mobile wallet, the ideal solution is one that uses the SPV model. SPV wallets are designed to be intentionally lightweight, as it interacts with the blockchain by only fetching and downloading the data, that is absolutely necessary. This includes block headers, block filters, and the full blocks that contain transaction information directly associated with the wallet. As you can imagine, this reduces the size, setup, and sync times considerably from hours to minutes. In Decred’s case, the required storage space of a fully validating node is approximately 12 GB, while its SPV counterpart is approximately 0.2 GB.

Visit:

* cypherpunktimes.com

* decred.org

Twitter Space hosted by Tivra @WasPraxis and included members from the crypto space.

* Decred

* Digibyte

* ZCash

* Dash

When it comes to passive income, why should the miners have all the fun and rewards!? If you offer something valuable to a project, you should be incentivised. Holding and hoping the coin will go up in value shouldn’t be the only incentive. I consider long-term holdings like a traditional saver account, if you’re holding you should be earning interest.

**Rewards & Income:**

+ Mining rewards

+ Staking / Interest

+ NGU reward

+ DAO earnings

When you stop and think about it, coin holders are the backbone of most crypto projects, sometimes referred to as hodlers (Hold On For Dear Life). This is because they have a long-term conviction, incentivising people for holding should be a core mechanism.

Decred built its project around the belief that coin holders should have the final say on every decision made. These are the people who have the most to lose, so they should be the ones signing off on every advancement to the protocol — proposals, consensus changes and spending.

cypherpunktimes.com

One of the questions that I’m constantly asking myself is, what’s the point of working in crypto if you are not earning crypto? From my perspective, if a project is paying its contractors in fiat currencies, it shows low confidence in the projects' native coin or token. “If it works, you should want to be paid in it!”

Decred solved this problem from day one. And only pays its contractors in DCR. This is made possible by the tools that have been built to facilitate it. Including Politeia which is the Decred proposal system, Decred’s Contractor Management System (CMS) and Decred’s decentralised treasury.

All of these elements are systemised to form a layer 1 Decentralised Autonomous Organisation (DAO). Although some elements of the system require manual input, like invoice review and on-boarding contractors to CMS. Most elements are already fully decentralised, including proposal voting and treasury spending.

cypherpunktimes.com

Decred and the State of the market is brought to you by Exitus and PhoenixGreen.

In this episode, we’ll have a look back at what’s happened in 2023, the events that are bringing this year to a close and all the exciting developments in progress for 2024.

This year has been dominated by US and European regulators aiming to close down on and off ramps to the crypto world “Choke Point 2.0”. Interestingly, other areas of the world like South America seem to be ramping up their adoption and embracing this new technology. Will this leave citizens of western countries disadvantaged going forward?

Bittrex is closing down “Monday 4th December 2023”. Shortly after announcing this news, they disabled DCR withdrawals on the platform, sending the price on the platform below $5, creating a possible arbitrage opportunity for any trader brave enough.

This leaves Decred with just two main markets, Binance and DCRDEX. With Bitcoin BTC and Tether USDT being the main pairs. DCRDEX could be perfectly positioned based on the version 1 release, just weeks away. The New Polygon USDC pairs to rival USDT. And more privacy with the release of Firo pairs.

What are your thoughts on Polygon and the USDC pairs coming to DCRDEX?

Bitcoin has been a roller coster this year. It’s impressive that the price has gone up so high but using the chain has become a ridiculously bad experience which has also impacted platforms like DCRDEX that conduct permissionless on-chain transactions.

The Vanguard and the video proposals are just about to come up for renewal. What have been the positives, negatives and learning experiences for these proposals? What are we aiming to achieve in 2024?

• New video content?
• New people to deliver content?
• Ads on Twitter?
• In-video adds on tech content creator YT channels
• What about the possibility of YouTube ads?
• Hackathons?
• Trading contests on DCRDEX?
• Explore partnerships and integrations?
• Rare sats on DCRDEX?

Live stream agenda:

The process of building a Decred block is actually pretty interesting and is the area that gives the project its security and efficiency.

It’s important to note that Decred’s block construction is based on a hybrid mechanism of proof of work and proof of stake. A lot of the earlier blockchains rely on one mechanism or the other, but Decred takes advantage of the best bits of both of these mechanisms.

For example, Proof of stake is used for its coin holder voting and verification properties and proof of work is used for its block production properties. Both of which combine to amplify the security and cost of attacking the platform.

For more, visit cypherpunktimes.com

Crypto as an industry is over 14 years old. And as we know, one of its original premises was to be money. One aspect of being decentralised money is being able to earn it, preferably in a permissionless way.

This is an area that Decred excels in, and is one of the few cryptocurrencies to build a DAO structure as part of its core design. Decred is a layer 1 “Decentralised Autonomous Organisation”, that facilitates a “protocol to peer” work paradigm.

• Decentralised Treasury
• Consensus Upgrade Voting
• Proposal Voting
• Treasury Spending Voting

Learn more at decred.org

The scaling debate is an interesting topic that has got extremely heated over the last few months. With advocates for both sides putting forward valid points. Personally, I don’t think it’s a binary decision, “one way is not always better than the other”. In each example, there are trade-offs, and depending on your position, you will likely decide in favour of one or the other.

In this podcast, we’ll have a look at some of these arguments and identify why Decred has taken its scaling route.

Join us @ cypherpunktimes.com

I’ve heard debate about Decred not offering anything new to the cryptocurrency space or not having a specific utility. Although to the outsider this may seem like the case, in fact, Decred offers so much utility that it’s often hard to describe in a punchy one-liner.

So let’s have a look at some of the utility that Decred has to offer.

This is an interesting question which is currently evolving. But the short answer is Bitcoin BTC. At the time of writing, pretty much every alternative coin has a BTC pair. This has typically been the coin that generates the highest liquidity in and out of a project like Decred.

But let's investigate some of our options and future prospects.

Join us @ cypherpunktimes.com

Crypto is over 14 years old and has seen its fair share of game theory and manipulation play out. Throughout this process, a few obvious centralising entities have fully established, organised and been allowed to thrive. Although early development could never have preemptively solved for each of these entities, it remains important to course correct at every opportunity.

Let’s dive into three of these centralising entities and the efforts Decred has gone to, not only to remove these middlemen, but also to not insert another one in their place.

cypherpunktimes.com

Cryptocurrencies and digital internet money are extremely young and, as such, the ability to adapt to the changing environment will be critical. Principles, ideals, and theory that were once valid and seen as the immovable cornerstones of the space have mostly all been proven fragile when put to the test.

The idea that a piece of software or hardware will be as strong in the long term as it is today is a flagrant lie. Without the ability to formally change when needed, it will lead projects to be manipulated and exploited at the will of those who seek to game the system and profit.

Decred and the State of the market is brought to you by Exitus, Tivra and PhoenixGreen.

In this episode, we’ll be talking about the change to CPU mining and the initial mining difficulty which had to be overcome to find the first block, after the consensus change. We’ll also look at the current active proposals on Politeia and other participation opportunities.

Simple swaps are a great way of buying or selling small amounts of crypto, as they are super flexible, mobile-friendly, crazy simple to use and have a large array of coins that can be swapped between. The main downside with simple swaps is their custodial nature, meaning that a middleman takes control of your funds to complete the exchange between coins. You should be aware of this risk, as it could lead to loss of funds.

Simple Swaps are not the same as AtomicSwaps. AtomicSwaps, as in the case of DCRDEX, are completed fully peer to peer and do not require any middlemen or third-party services.

Find out more about DCRDEX at dex.decred.org