The currency was launched in January 2014 as "Xcoin" by Evan Duffield, as a
fork
In cutlery or kitchenware, a fork (from la, furca 'pitchfork') is a utensil, now usually made of metal, whose long handle terminates in a head that branches into several narrow and often slightly curved tine (structural), tines with which one ...
of the Bitcoin protocol. It is an altcoin and in its early days it was subject to
pump and dump
Pump and dump (P&D) is a form of securities fraud that involves artificially inflating the price of an owned stock through false and misleading positive statements, in order to sell the cheaply purchased stock at a higher price. Once the operat ...
speculation. It was rebranded as Darkcoin, which received press for being used in dark net markets. In March 2015, it rebranded again with the name Dash as a
portmanteau
A portmanteau word, or portmanteau (, ) is a blend of words
In early 2017 Duffield, who lived in the Phoenix area, and some other people working on Dash took space in a
business incubator
Business incubator is an organization that helps startup companies and individual entrepreneurs to develop their businesses by providing a fullscale range of services starting with management training and office space and ending with venture c ...
at Arizona State University. The Dash DAO later funded a blockchain research lab at ASU.
, Dash's market capitalization was around $4.3 billion and it was one of the top 12 cryptocurrencies.
, Dash was the most popular cryptocurrency in Venezuela according to Der Spiegel.
In October 2022 Dash had a valued market capitalisation of 450 million USD.
Design and governance
Dash was designed to allow transactions quickly and to have a swift governance structure in order to overcome shortfalls in Bitcoin. What makes Dash different from Bitcoin is that it splits its rewards into three categories: 45% goes to miners, 45% goes to masternodes (these are computers that additional services in the network and have a significant investment in Dash tokens), and 10% goes towards its decentralized governance budget.
node
In general, a node is a localized swelling (a "knot") or a point of intersection (a vertex).
Node may refer to:
In mathematics
* Vertex (graph theory), a vertex in a mathematical graph
*Vertex (geometry), a point where two or more curves, lines ...
functions like hosting a copy of the blockchain, relaying messages, and validating transactions on the network, and in addition act as shareholders, voting on proposals for improving Dash's ecosystem. Anyone with 1,000 Dash Coins (DASH), the protocols native cryptocurrency, can become a masternode owner. Along with masternodes, the system includes standard nodes and
miners
A miner is a person who extracts ore, coal, chalk, clay, or other minerals from the earth through mining. There are two senses in which the term is used. In its narrowest sense, a miner is someone who works at the rock face; cutting, blasting, ...
.
The system's decentralization has been criticized due to a mishap, which allowed too many coins to be distributed at release. This concentrated the wealth in a small group, giving them disproportionate power in decisions over the currency’s future.
Consensus
As of 2018, coins were mined using a
proof of work
Proof of work (PoW) is a form of cryptographic proof in which one party (the ''prover'') proves to others (the ''verifiers'') that a certain amount of a specific computational effort has been expended. Verifiers can subsequently confirm this expe ...
algorithm with a
hash function
A hash function is any function that can be used to map data of arbitrary size to fixed-size values. The values returned by a hash function are called ''hash values'', ''hash codes'', ''digests'', or simply ''hashes''. The values are usually ...
called "X11", with eleven rounds of hashing, and the average time to mine a coin was around two and a half minutes.
Masternodes provide two additional kinds of transactions. "InstantSend" bypasses mining and instead requires a consensus of masternodes to validate a transaction, speeding transactions. "PrivateSend" is intended to give users optional consumer-grade privacy; it mixes participating users' unspent Dash before executing a transaction.