Crypto Investor’s Guide: Dash Edition

History

Dash was created in 2015 by a developer named Evan Duffield, Duffield originally forked Bitcoin in 2014 to create a cryptocurrency called Xcoin. However, this cryptocurrency had issues with pumping and dumping. To distance the coin from these problems, it was first rebranded as Dark Coin. However, the named was changed to Dash in 2015.

It was named “Dash” as an abbreviation for “digital cash.” Although Dash has only been around for a few years, it has risen to become one of the largest cryptocurrencies in the world by overall market capitalization. Dash is currently the 11th largest cryptocurrency, with a market cap of around $1.5 billion.

Technology

Dash relies on a proof of work algorithm for consensus. This algorithm has a hash function that is called X11. X11 has eleven rounds of hashing. A new Dash coin is typically mined every two and a half minutes. The total supply of Dash that will ever exist is 18 million.

Dash is designed to be faster and more private than Bitcoin. It is similar to cryptocurrencies like Litecoin and Bitcoin Cash which are intended to serve as digital cash as opposed to having other purposes such as being a smart contract/decentralized app platform like Ethereum and NEO.

An interesting feature of Dash is that its block rewards are divided amongst miners, masternodes, and grants. 45 percent of the rewards go to the miners, 45 percent go to the masternodes, and 10 percent goes to grants which fund projects that help the Dash network. People who run masternodes get to vote on who gets the grants. In order to run a masternode, a person must be in position of at least 1000 Dash coins. 1000 Dash coins allows a person to run one masternode and to get one vote for the grants.

The reason why people who run masternodes get to do the voting for the grant money is because they are the people who have the most at stake. This makes a lot of sense and is an intelligent system design.

Projections

Dash is currently doing very well. It has gained a lot of popularity due to its logical block rewarding system, its grants, its speed, and its privacy. However, it is yet to replace Litecoin and Bitcoin Cash as the top payments coin. Both Litecoin and Bitcoin Cash have market capitalizations that are far larger than Dash’s. So it has a ways to go if it wants to move up into the top few cryptos in terms of size. However, Dash has proven itself to be a very solid and popular cryptocurrency. So, there is a very good chance it will stay in the top 15 cryptocurrencies by market cap for some time.