Dash is an

open source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...

cryptocurrency A cryptocurrency (colloquially crypto) is a digital currency designed to work through a computer network that is not reliant on any central authority, such as a government or bank, to uphold or maintain it. Individual coin ownership record ...

. It is an altcoin that was forked from the

Bitcoin Bitcoin (abbreviation: BTC; Currency symbol, sign: ₿) is the first Decentralized application, decentralized cryptocurrency. Based on a free-market ideology, bitcoin was invented in 2008 when an unknown entity published a white paper under ...

protocol. It is also a

decentralized autonomous organization A decentralized autonomous organization (DAO), sometimes called a decentralized autonomous corporation (DAC), is an organization managed in whole or in part by decentralized computer programs, with voting and finances handled through a decent ...

(DAO) run by a subset of its users. It was previously known as Xcoin and Darkcoin.

History

The currency was launched in January 2014 as "Xcoin" by Evan Duffield, as a

fork In cutlery or kitchenware, a fork (from '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 tines with which one can spear foods either to h ...

of the

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 (pump), in order to sell the cheaply purchased stock at a higher price (dump). O ...

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 In linguistics, a blend—also known as a blend word, lexical blend, or portmanteau—is a word formed by combining the meanings, and parts of the sounds, of two or more words together.

of 'digital cash'. As of August 2016, Dash is no longer used in any major dark net markets. In early 2017 Duffield, who lived in the Phoenix area, and some other people working on Dash took space in a

business incubator A 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 ...

Arizona State University Arizona State University (Arizona State or ASU) is a public university, public research university in Tempe, Arizona, United States. Founded in 1885 as Territorial Normal School by the 13th Arizona Territorial Legislature, the university is o ...

. The Dash DAO later funded a blockchain research lab at ASU. , Dash's

market capitalization Market capitalization, sometimes referred to as market cap, is the total value of a publicly traded company's outstanding common shares owned by stockholders. Market capitalization is equal to the market price per common share multiplied by ...

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 (, , stylized in all caps) is a German weekly news magazine published in Hamburg. With a weekly circulation of about 724,000 copies in 2022, it is one of the largest such publications in Europe. It was founded in 1947 by John Seymour Chaloner ...

''. In Venezuela, it was often used alongside

and Petro, with Petro basing much of its technology from Dash. On 1 October 2018, Petro switched to an X11 algorithm-based design, which was copied from Dash.

Design

Dash was designed to allow transactions to occur quickly and to implement a governance structure that addresses perceived shortcomings in

. Governance is managed through a form of

in which decisions are made via a

blockchain The blockchain is a distributed ledger with growing lists of Record (computer science), records (''blocks'') that are securely linked together via Cryptographic hash function, cryptographic hashes. Each block contains a cryptographic hash of th ...

. 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 (mining), face; cutt ...

. The system's decentralization has been criticized due to a mishap during its initial coin distribution, which allowed too many coins to be distributed at release. This concentrated wealth within a small group of early adopters, giving them disproportionate power in decisions regarding the currency’s future. As of 2018, coins were mined using a

proof of work Proof of work (also written as proof-of-work, an abbreviated 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 ...

algorithm with a

hash function A hash function is any Function (mathematics), function that can be used to map data (computing), data of arbitrary size to fixed-size values, though there are some hash functions that support variable-length output. The values returned by a ...

called "X11," which involves eleven rounds of hashing. The average time to mine a block was around two and a half minutes.

References

External links

* {{Authority control Cryptocurrency projects 2014 software Internet properties established in 2014 Decentralized autonomous organizations