DASH - A Payments-Focused Cryptocurrency

Dash is the first cryptocurrency based on the work of Satoshi Nakamoto with built-in privacy functions. We propose a series of improvements to Bitcoin resulting in a decentralized, strongly anonymous cryptocurrency, with tamper-proof instant transactions and a secondary peer-to-peer (P2P) network incentivized to provide services to the Dash Network.

Masternode Network

Full nodes are servers running on a P2P network that allow peers to use them to receive updates about the events on the network. These nodes utilize significant amounts of traffic and other resources that incur a substantial cost. As a result, a steady decrease in the amount of these nodes has been observed for some time on the Bitcoin network and as a result, block propagation times have been upwards of 40 seconds. Many solutions have been proposed such as a new reward scheme by Microsoft Research and the Bitnodes incentive program.

Trustless Quorums

Currently the Dash network has ~4,800 active masternodes [8]. By requiring 1,000DASH collateral to become an active masternode, we create a system in which no one can control the entire network of masternodes. For example, if someone wanted to control 50% of the masternode network, they would have to buy 4,800,000 DASH from the open market. This would raise the price substantially and it would become impossible to acquire the needed DASH.

With the addition of the masternode network and the collateral requirements, we can use this secondary network to do highly sensitive tasks in a trustless way, where no single entity can control the outcome. By selecting N pseudo random masternodes from the total pool to perform the same task, these nodes can act as an oracle, without having the whole network do the task.

PrivateSend

We believe it is important to have a standard trustless implementation for improving the privacy of its users in the reference client that provides a high degree of privacy. Other clients such as Electrum, Android and iOS will also have the same anonymity layer implemented directly and utilize the protocol extensions. This allows users a common experience anonymizing funds using a well understood system.

PrivateSend is an improved and extended version of the CoinJoin. In addition to the core concept of CoinJoin, we employ a series of improvements such as decentralization, strong anonymity by using a chaining approach, denominations and passive ahead-of-time mixing.

The greatest challenge when improving privacy and fungibility of a cryptocurrency is doing it in a way that does not obscure the entire blockchain. In Bitcoin-based cryptocurrencies, one can tell which outputs are unspent and which are not, commonly called UTXO (unspent transaction output). This results in a public ledger that allows any user to act as guarantor of the integrity of transactions. The Bitcoin protocol is designed to function without the participation of trusted counterparties, and in their absence, it is critical that auditing capabilities remain readily accessible to the users through the public blockchain. Our goal is to improve privacy and fungibility without losing these key elements that we believe make a successful currency.

By having a decentralized mixing service within the currency we gain the ability to keep the currency itself perfectly fungible. Fungibility is an attribute of money, that dictates that all units of a currency should remain equal. When you receive money within a currency, it should not come with any history from the previous users of the currency or the users should have an easy way to disassociate themselves from that history, thus keeping all coins equal. At the same time, any user should be able to act as an auditor to guarantee the financial integrity of the public ledger without compromising others privacy.

To improve the fungibility and keep the integrity of the public blockchain, we propose using an ahead-of-time decentralized trustless mixing strategy. To be effective at keeping the currency fungible, this service is directly built into the currency, easy to use and safe for the average user.

Instant Transactions via InstantSend

By utilizing masternode quorums, users are able to send and receive instant irreversible transactions. Once a quorum has been formed, the inputs of the transaction are locked to only be spendable in a specific transaction, a transaction lock takes about four seconds to be set currently on the network. If consensus is reached on a lock by the masternode network, all conflicting transactions or conflicting blocks would be rejected thereafter, unless they matched the exact transaction ID of the lock in place.

This will allow vendors to use mobile devices in place of traditional POS systems for real world commerce and users to quickly settle face-to-face non commercial transactions as with traditional cash. This is done without a central authority.

Mining Supply

A different approach to restricting the inflation of mining is taken in Dash, using a 7% reduction of the supply per year. This is done as opposed to halving implemented by other currencies. In addition supply each block is directly tied to the amount of miners on the network; more miners result in lower mining rewards.

Production of Dash is scheduled to carry on throughout this century and onto the next, slowly grinding down until finally near the year 2150, production will cease.

Roadmap

2019 Q1

DashWallet

• Unlock wallet with fingerprint (Android)
• iOS library integration (iOS)
• InstantSend receiving (iOS)
• Price sourcing alignment

2019 Q2

Dash Core v0.14

• Long Living Masternode Quorums
• ChainLocks against 51% attacks
• Bitcoin backports

2019

Dash Core v1.0

• Username based payments
• Decentralized API (DAPI)
• Decentralized data storage
• Development libraries and SDKs

DashPay Wallet MVP

• Usernames
• Connect with contacts
• Pay and receive payments

DashWallet

• Usernames
• Connect with contacts
• Pay and receive payments