The Decred Drive (Mar 12)

Welcome to The Decred Drive. Every Thursday this brief newsletter highlights top-notch Decred content from the previous week.

Wow! This week was WILD... Just about everything is cancelled. Period. Including my Thursday night pick-up soccer games. Everything shut down. In one month, the fragile, thin piece of glass that is the US/world economy, is broken. More QE/money printing coming... Stonk market collapsing... Banks and the financial system will likely be severely challenged soon during this downturn. But know what keeps chugging along? The Decred blockchain — secure and reliable as ever — the start of a new system... Decred can’t be shut down. Coronavirus can’t take down Decred (just like Covid19 can’t take down the internet). But, coronavirus can (and will imo) be the first domino to fall as we witness the collapse of our legacy financial system. Be warned folks — very good chance that your US dollars will be worth a lot less when this is all done… How do you protect against that? You buy robust, secure, proven digital assets with predictable inflation schedules — assets outside the system.

Let’s dive in to the happenings this week:

1. Decred community member Dustin Lefebvre put forth the US Market & Project Release Cooridnation 2020 proposal. This is one of the motherships of funding proposals that drives the Decred ecosystem forward. In order to make the Decred ecosystem well-known and gain adoption on a global scale, we need to fund the people that have been spending time and grinding to bring Decred into existence, to make the Decred vision a reality. This is an important proposal —your vote counts.
2. New issue of the Decred Journal was published this week. Can’t imagine the Decred community without the Decred Journal. So much depth, and detail. Good data too —for example tracking community stats can help us pinpoint which modes of communication are most effective. Reading through DJ issues always provide me with a sense for progress across the major software repositories — which is crucial to track and follow.
3. Let it be known: Jake Yocom-Piatt has not sold any $BTC or $DCR. Not to judge others, but 1) that stands in stark contrast to the founder of Litecoin, Charlie Lee, who somehow sold (all of?) his LTC at the top of the 2017 bubble vs LTC prices at $370–380. Gee whiz. Isn’t that interesting. And 2) it’s just nice to hear… creates good energy within the DCR community to know that not only do core community members (who’ve been in the game since inception) still have skin in the game, but also they’re deeply passionate about building something that makes a more fair world, that fundamentally changes the game at the ground-level… why we are here.
4. Speaking to the many ways that one may interact with the Decred community, our friends at DCRComic put together a guide for people to navigate to Matrix. Tbh, this is awesome. For years to come, little guides like this can be the gateways for newcomers to get involved. Share this guide with your friends and get them in the community. The Decred community is available on Matrix 24/7 (as we are a global community).
5. Raedah Group (one of Decred development contractors) continues to make significant and swift progress on the Decred mobile app — crucial to the adoption of Decred, as just about everything is mobile for the common person. Great work Raedah Group! Amazing that Decred core wallets are to be available on iOS and Android. Keep up the great work guys.
6. Decred core developer, Dave Collins, tweeted that Block Header Commitments (DCP0005) are now active. “Decred now supports one of, if not the, most privacy preserving and secure decentralized lightweight client (SPV) implementations in crypto.” Blows my mind... people do not understand the value of the technology that Decred developers and community is building. Truly forward-thinking, piece-by-piece Decred is proving to be a permanent L1 blockchain for the future.
7. When Dave Collins tweets, you listen — to emphasize the importance of activating Block Header Commitments (DCP0005), we have quality comments from community members like Checkmate — it is revolutionary the way Decred upgrades… the value is in the neutral nature of the processes to implement change. “No chain split, risk minimized and explicitly approved upgrade mechanism.”
8. Decred Brazil Marketing and Events Proposal was posted by emiliomann. Brazil and Decred have been two peas in a pod for a long time. Some of our most active developers and community members are Brazilian and have done a wonderful job. Important to cast your vote on this one folks.
9. On the on-chain analytics side, it’s crucial to follow ticket funding rates with Permabull Nino. I’ve been keeping an eye on this visual. Permabull Nino is really good at noticing different trends and indicators related to Decred valuation metrics and frameworks. It’s hard to value cryptoassets fundamentally, as it is early days — just as it was hard to value early internet companies, but Permabull Nino is helping us make progress.
10. If you haven’t already, highly recommend Rough Consensus. New episode just came out this past week, check it out — Rough Consensus 2: Distributed Consensus. Agree with a lot of points made by Checkmate here. Imo, the unparalleled security and strength of the Decred blockchain is vastly under-the-radar… Just this week, with the financial downturn, we’ve seen community’s like MakerDAO consider emergency shutdowns. But Decred keeps humming along soundly… built to last.

That’s all for now — another productive week in the world of Decred.

Have a good weekend everyone.

~
Dragon
@DecredDragon on Twitter