Crypto Academy Week 16 , Homework post for [ @levycore]..Privacy Coins.

drqamu (74)Beginner[1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10]in SteemitCryptoAcademy • 3 years ago

Hello friends, hope your are all doing well. Today i am writing homework task for @levycore which is about privacy coins. Let's go straight to task.

World of cryptosphere is expanding every second . The foundation stone laid by Bitcoin was so attractive and loaded with features that it gave rise to numerous digital coins later. Bitcoin launched by mysterious satoshi nakamoto is famous for its transparency, anonymity , auditability, and non repatriable nature . Transparency of the Bitcoin waa seen by some people as threat to security especially in the regions were cryptocurrency trading is not legalised officially. So to emhance the security , concept of privacy coin came into being that promises to keep user identity anonymous by multiple means like hiding user address, wallet balance, conjoin etc.

Choose a Privacy Coin and perform a fundamental analysis of the coin in detail .

The privacy coin that I am going to discuss today is "DASH" coin.

Source

DASH Coin

DASH coin was launched in 2014 by Evan Duffield, as a fork of the Bitcoin protocol to provide an alternative payment system. One thing to be noted here is that, it was launched by the name of "Xxoin" . But later its privacy was illegally used by miscreants to make paymemts on dark net and therefore came into limelight as *Darkcoin* . But later in 2015 , it was renamed as DASH coin ( Digital cASH coin) . DASH is based on X11 hashing algorithms while BTC uses SHA-256. The attractive feature of DASH is that, it had dual set up to choose from. Being Bitcoin forked you can let it work like bitcoin that's user address remains visible to all blockchain users . The other set up being "PrivateSend" , in which user can keep identity anonymous. If transactions are performed under PrivateSend banner , than it makes DASH a private coin and keeps user identity anonymous.

Another interesting featurr of DASH is "InstantSend". In this feature, DASH transactions are performed faster than BTC because of involvement of "Masternodes". Masternodes represent a special group of nodes that play role in governance of DASH as these nodes are controlled by large stake holders (1000 DASH) with superior hardware like capacious disk space, RAM , computation power of nodes. The transactions verified by masternodes need not be verified by other nodes , so standard nodes are bypassed and therefore perform transactions faster. Least but not the last point to mention about masternodes is that, they run on "proof of stake" and also allow low transaction fee in addition to faster transaction speed. However, the standard nodes run on "proof of work" consensus algorithm like Bitcoin.

Of the many methods utilized by different private coins , the DASH coin uses Conjoin or coin mixer. Let me tell you what happen in conjoin. In conjoin, transactions from multiple users are mixed together and a new address is created for each user to make it untraceable.

As for Rank by market cap is concerned, it stands at 60th position which is a good rank. The price of each DASH coin is 187.3 USD this time .

The coingecko provides following data about DASH.

Market Cap
1,902,115,590

24 Hour Trading Vol
741,423,410

24h Low / 24h High
185 / 199

Circulating Supply
10,167,690 / 18,920,000

Enough of theory, let me share few more details of DASH via images

Source

So from the above figures, we conclude it has a good user base.

Describe the steps in creating a wallet for the Privacy Coin of your choice. (Screenshot required)

Let's see how to create a wallet for DASH COIN. For DASH coin I'll use DASH wallet pre installed on my Android phone. If not, you can download APK from official website of DASH or from google play store. Once installed, open the app. Click on create a new wallet.

* Next set a pin for your wallet and proceed.

Next it will ask to secure your wallet , click on secure now.
Next it will show recovery phrase , write it down amd secure it by storing confidentiality.
To confirm, we will have to enter the phrase in same order in which it was shown. Once done, you will land in main page of the wallet amd it is ready to to be used.

Explain the reason you chose the Privacy Coin. (State the advantages and disadvantages)

I choose DASH coin for the following advantages that it offer :

Option to choose whether to keep transaction private or public.
Instantsend function that allows speedy transaction.
Masternodes allowing users to have governance rights.
Being an effective and low cost payment option with practical utilities.
Being open source and decentralized payment nework with the aim of serving as cash payments in daily transactions .
An inherent system to finance future decelopment projects by spending 10% block rewards on it .

Disadvantages

Being private coin, ir has potential of being misused for illegal purposes.
Even in privacy, some other privacy coins like Monero offer better and multiple modalities of protection.
Being unregulated, its legal status is suspicious.
Masternodes make it prone to censorship so the basic frmaework of decentralization is at risk.
Tools to seprate the transactions mixed by conjoin or coin mixer can distort the basic structure of privacy utilized by DASH.

Conclusion.

Privacy coins came to limelight for offering better security. In addition to betrer security, DASH coin is also able to offer faster transactions and low transaction fee and also fund research products to bring further changes in working or DAasH network As nothing is absolute, so is DASH. Where as it has been able to solve some problems but its legal status is still doubtful and has high illegal potential.