Decred Report | Hackers Congress, Paralelni Polis-HCPP19

The Hackers Congress is one of a kind event where great minds come together to discuss various topics and share the knowledge that they have gained with others. This years topic was “OPT-OUT”, and as such, I decided to put together a list of ways that people can opt-out of the existing system, whether it is through the use of cryptocurrencies, decentralized systems, or services that can help people move away from the traditional / legacy systems.
My name is Amin Rafiee. I attended the 6th Hackers Congress hosted by Paralelni Polis in the city of Prague.
“I am grateful to have been attending the Hackers Congress, hosted by Paralelni Polis, since 2015. Much has changed in those 5 years, though I am proud to say that the core values and vision have not shifted. It is the only place in the world operating purely on cryptocurrencies in its 6 years of operation. This is mostly due to the dedicated and well informed individuals who founded the concept, as well as all the people who keep on supporting and contributing to its growth, without sacrificing integrity. Paralelni Polis has become my home and the gold standard of cryptoanarchy and crypto-related events.” — A Review of the Hackers Congress in Prague, Decentralize.Today, 2019
Why Decred?
I have been monitoring the Decred environment and progress since 2017. Due to my extensive experience in this space and the number of projects which have failed to stand for the principles of decentralization, I wanted to wait and see how the project and overall community function. The more time I spent analyzing the Decred environment, the more I came to see the benefits and strengths in all aspects.
The decentralized nature of the community, services, and tools were the first to grab my attention. Thereafter, the successful implementation of Atomic Swaps, the launch of the Politeia system, and the decentralized exchange all came together to help me see the vision. Although there are some aspects that require further work (e.g Decred Treasury is currently centralized). I believe the community and team have a strong stance on decentralization, and as such, these issues will be resolved in time.
Furthermore, in an attempt to learn more about the limitations and benefits of the Politeia system, embedded within the Decred system, I decided to go through the process of submitting a proposal. I will provide a feedback report for that procedure at a later stage.
Moving forward, due to my interest in the system design behind Decred, I decided that it would be great to include this in my talk.
The presentation covered various aspects of the Decred system. These include:
- Decentralized Governance
- Decred DEX
- Atomic Swaps
- Decentralized Funding — Politeia
- Decred Privacy Feature
- Tickets
I believe it is important for people to grasp the concept and the impact of having a decentralized governance system. As is the case with Bitcoin, most cryptocurrency platforms rely on outside investors — decentralized funding models were introduced in the more recent years after Bitcoin’s birth.
It has been my experience that unless you are surrounded by people who understand the project, in which case you are preaching to the choir, the basics must be covered in showing people why governance and funding are important. This is the approach that I decided to go with in order to give people some foundation, and thereafter the reasoning of why these tools are important.
People were impressed by the decentralized governance and funding model. Some wanted to know whether such a system could be manipulated by the ticket holders, who may come to acquire a great number of tickets. In such a case, they would have their skin in the game and as such, it would be in their interest to preserve the network. However, this requires further testing and analysis.

After the presentation, I spoke about Decred during the interview with the World Crypto Network. One member from the show showed an interest, commenting that he likes it. Another, I assume due to the market conditions and overall history within the space, referred to it as a “another alt-coin”.
The final member said that a currency should not have the governance model directly applied to it, rather it should be done as a external layer. He proposed that the coin in itself should be neutral. I would have to guess that it would like having Aragon on top of Ethereum. This could be interesting, though having governance directly on the chain is a powerful approach, whether it is fully successful is something we will have to wait and see.
Decred was brought up in another conversation with Smuggler and Frank, who are both highly reputable members of the cryptoanarchy community. During the conversation, Frank noticed that I was promoting Decred. He mentioned that they are both fans of it and that the codebase is impressively clean. I believe such comments from highly reputable coders is something to take notice of.
I spoke about Decred in personal conversations with people in an attempt to explain the governance and funding model. Overall, I believe this project has been able to successfully demonstrate how decentralized governance can be implemented, backed by a sustainable funding model. If you would like to see the segment speaking about Decred, see the below video.
If you enjoyed the scope of this article and my work, please consider rewarding my efforts.
DCR: DsWdLmF6wjiAS4yJVqPM8nWso6vG7hPbbUS
