Dash or Decred: what is the difference?

Decred and Dash are two digital currencies that seem similar on the surface. Both are focused on blockchain governance and both have used Bitcoin’s code to create hybrid consensus systems. So, how are they different?

This article describes some fundamental differences between these two well known projects with references to trustworthy information sources.

BACKGROUND

Historical perspective and launch

Announcement of the project

• Dash: XCoin in January 2014 (1)
  rebranded in March 2015 (2)
• Decred: Memcoin2 in April 2013 (3)
  announced in December 2015 (4)

Genesis block

• Dash: mined 19 January 2014 (5)
• Decred: mined 8 February 2016 (6)

Initial distribution of coins

• Dash: 10% - 15% instamine (7)
• Decred: 4% airdrop, 4% premine (8)

HYBRID CONSENSUS

Details of the PoW and PoS components

Proof-of-Work mining

• Dash: X11 (9, 10)
• Decred: Blake-256 14r (11, 12)

Proof-of-Stake voting

• Dash: masternodes (13)
• Decred: tickets (14)

GOVERNANCE

Aspects of how the projects are governed

Funding development

• Dash: superblocks; allocation via on-chain budget votes (15)
• Decred: treasury address; allocation via off-chain proposal votes (16)

Who makes protocol upgrades?

• Dash: Dash Core Group (17)
• Decred: PoS voters (17)

CONCLUSION

While there are certainly similarities between Decred and Dash, this article has shown that the two projects are very different.

If you want to add more fundamental differences or correct information in this article, you are welcome to open a pull request via GitHub.

Sources:

1. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=421615.0
2. https://cointelegraph.com/news/dash-young-cryptocurrency-with-an-interesting-story
3. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=169204.0
4. https://thedecreddigest.com/2017/06/10/decred-where-did-it-all-begin/
5. https://explorer.dash.org/block/00000ffd590b1485b3caadc19b22e6379c733355108f107a430458cdf3407ab6
6. https://explorer.dcrdata.org/block/298e5cc3d985bfe7f81dc135f360abe089edd4396b86d2de66b0cef42b21d980
7. https://dashpay.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/OC/pages/19759164/Dash+Instamine+Issue+Clarification
8. https://docs.decred.org/faq/general/#3-how-was-the-decred-premine-distributed
9. https://dash-docs.readthedocs.io/en/stable/mining/
10. https://whattomine.com/coins/34-dash-x11
11. https://docs.decred.org/mining/proof-of-work/
12. https://whattomine.com/coins/152-dcr-blake-14r
13. https://dash-docs.readthedocs.io/en/stable/masternodes/
14. https://docs.decred.org/proof-of-stake/proof-of-stake/
15. https://docs.dash.org/en/stable/governance/understanding.html
16. https://docs.decred.org/governance/introduction-to-decred-governance/
17. https://cointelegraph.com/news/governing-decentralization-how-on-chain-voting-protocols-operate-and-vary