Cypherpunk Times

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?

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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.

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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.

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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?

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

To kick off our commonly asked questions series, let’s start with the barrier to entry for every new person to crypto and those with minimal familiarity. How do I buy my first Decred?

This is difficult to answer because ideally, you’ll be using the DCRDEX P2P exchange and holding your coins in its self-custody wallets. But for new users, there are probably too many steps, which can be very daunting.

From recent surveys, it would also appear, the majority of new crypto users prefer to buy crypto using mobile exchanges and wallets. For this reason, if I was new to the space and wanted to buy my first Decred, I would likely use the Binance app. Then self-custody the coins in a Decred wallet. As a rule of thumb, mobile wallets are good for small holdings and the Decrediton desktop wallet is best for large, long-term holdings.

Decred and the State of the market is brought to you by Exitus and PhoenixGreen with special guest Dave Collins.

In this episode, we’ll be talking about what to expect from the upcoming consensus change and what it means for the project going forward.

Behind the scenes there’s been a conscious effort to bring Decred to the wider crypto space. One area that is likely to be a barrier to entry is its availability on popular mobile wallets and apps. In this live stream we’ll be talking to Vik Sharma @vikrantnyc and Justin Ehrenhofer @JEhrenhofer about Cake Wallet and a possible integration for Decred. Cake wallet is considered an excellent mobile wallet that has an extensive user base and many advanced and interesting features.

Anxiety or optimism? The future of cryptocurrency is stirring up mixed feelings these days. In this episode we talk about the direction of the space and wether we are purely speculative or if we can get back to the roots of sound money.

Conversation Topics:

* Where does crypto go from here?

* Ionia's gift card service DashDirect / CakePay is shutting down.

* Optimism for cryptocurrencies building services and utility including Litecoin, Monero, ZCash, Dash, Dogecoin and Decred

* We are all experts! Initiatives for onboarding new users

* Peer to peer services including Bitrefil, DCRDEX

We are stronger together. Can blockchain projects overcome their differences and work together for the greater good?

In this show, we’ll be hosting our first multi-chain discussion and looking at the potential for projects to work together and benefit from each other's innovation, research, technology and communities. 

The State of the market is brought to you by Exitus and Phoenixgreen and aims to look at current social, economic, and crypto news and how it relates to Decred.

In this show we’ll be joined by:

• Tivra @WasPraxis - From the Decred community
• johnnylaw.dgb @JohnnyLaw2021 - From the Digibyte community
• Jason @ZecHub - From the ZCash community
• Łitecoin UndergrounĐ @LTCUnderground - From the Litecoin community

Crypto and the ideals of the space are under attack in a variety of ways. It’s for this reason we’ve started several initiatives to bring communities together and begin a coordinated effort to grow a positive narrative.