Crypto Academy Week 16 - Homework Post for @levycore – Exploring The DASH Privacy Coin
I’m glad to have been in your class this week, @levycore. I have learn so much about privacy coin and I just discovered that most of the coins I have heard of are privacy coins.
In my homework this week, I will be talking about a privacy coin named DASH. To give a detailed fundamental analysis and more, I will be looking at the following sub-titles:
Introduction to DASH – What it is
Steps in Creating a DASH wallet
Why I choose DASH-Advantages and Disadvantages
Conclusion
Introduction to DASH – What it is
DASH is a digital currency launched in 2014. With a total market capitalization of $920 million, DASH has been an attractive investment coin cutting across different levels of investors’ interest.
DASH has the following pros and cons:
Pros
1.It is one of the highly private cryptocurrency in the market.
2.It employs fast transaction speed.
3.It’s masternodes are built to ensure transaction anonymity.
4.It employs high-end security.
Cons
1.It is prone to abuse in some illegal transactions.
2.It has suffered some bugs upon release.
3.It is not completely decentralized.
What is Dash?
Just like Bitcoin, DASH is a cryptocurrency that enables the sending and receiving of funds. But unlike Bitcoin, it offers a higher privacy and greater transaction speed. It is built on its own blockchain and has significant improvement compared to the Bitcoin blockchain.
The DASH coin has gained much popularity through its use of unique model that involves masternodes to ensure its privacy and speed in all transactions.
Apart from these benefits, DASH also operates on a self-governing and self-funding model. This means DASH network have the capacity to fund itself for the purpose of creating more improvement on its technology.
History of DASH
The word DASH is a combination of the words Digital and Cash, thus DASH means digital cash. It was released on January 18, 2014 as Xcoin. The founder of DASH is Evan Duffield. Its name was changed from Xcoin to Darkcoin and a further change of the name was done on 25th March, 2015 to the name DASH.
DASH coin was forked from Litcoin. The introduction of a bug during the launch of DASH resulted in the mining of 1.9 million DASH coins within the first two days. The 1.9 million DASH coin is 10% of the total coin that will ever exist.
After the bug, Evan Duffield proposed a relaunch of the coin, but the proposal was disapproved by the DASH community and as such the project has remained as it was.
In terms of market value, the DASH coin was priced below $10 since its launch in 2014 until December, 2016. At the beginning of 2017, the price of DASH began to increase and got to an all time high (ATH) of $1540 in 20th December, 2017.
How Dash Can Be Used
DASH has an edge over other digital assets because of its unique features. The more private and speedy transactions on DASH network can be traced to these three features: *Masternodes, Privatesend and Instantsend. We look into each of these in details.
Masternodes
In DASH blockchain, there are miners. The mining system are divided into two parts: Masternodes and Miners. In order to become a masternode, a user must deposit at least 1000 DASH coins
The Masternodes are special servers that perform critical functions in the DASH network. They carry out private transactions (Privatesend), Instant transactions (Instantsend), coupled with governance and treasury system.
The Masternodes network, which has a strong growth within the ecosystem, is responsible for the improvement of the security of the blockchain and ensure quick transactions within the network. These responsibilities costs some money to implement and as such the Masternodes are rewarded by the DASH network.
It should be noted that a masternode receives 45% of the amount of DASH mined as reward. This means that for every 1 DASH mines, the Masternodes receive 0.45 DASH.
Privatesend
DASH offers a service called privatesend which means that privacy is added to its transactions to ensure that the details of transactions are not open for everyone to see, like in the case of Bitcoin.
Thus, DASH transactions can’t be traced and the identity of the senders and receivers are not open for the world to know. This privacy on transactions are made possible by Masternodes.
Instantsend
Through the use of instantsend, DASH transactions are almost instantly confirmed by the Masternodes. This has solved the problem of scalability experienced in Bitcoin where transactions takes about 10 minutes to be confirmed.
Although a normal DASH transaction takes 2.5 minutes to be confirmed, with the use of Masternodes it is done in split seconds. This has boost the confidence of DASH users around the world.
Steps in Creating a DASH wallet
For this, I choose the Dash Wallet. Here are the steps to creating a Dash Wallet using an android device:
1.Open your google play store and type Dash Wallet on the search icon. When it shows the name on the list, click on it and you will see install.
2.After intalling in your phone, click on open and the app will open with the option of create a new wallet. Click on it.
3.You will be required to set a four digits pin. When you set it, you will be asked to confirm it.
4.Next you need to secure your wallet. When you click on secure now and a page opens that gives an important message on why your seed phrase is important to secure. Click on show recovery phrase.
5.When the phrase opens, you will be required to write it down. It is a set of 12 words. After writing it down, click the icon beside I wrote it down and when it changes to green the next step comes.
6.On this step, you will be required to click on each word according the number they appear on the 12 words you wrote down. Immediately you complete doing that, your wallet will be open and ready for transactions.
Why I choose DASH-Advantages and Disadvantages
I choose DASH because it is highly secured and the network is organized. It becomes difficult to hack into it. The use of Masternodes gives it a hedge over other blockchains, making it possible to enjoy speed with transactions through the provision of Instantsend.
The privatesend is also a privacy boost that also attracted me. Apart from these, let’s look at some advantages and disadvantages.
Advantages of DASH
1.A highly private cryptocurrency.
2.High transactions speed.
3.Transaction anonymity through the use of Masternodes.
4.High-end Security.
Disadvantages
1.Pron to abuse through illegal transactions because of the anonymity of users.
2.Not truly decentralized.
Conclusion
DASH is a great platform that has all it takes to make the world of cryptocurrency better. It is important to note that the privacy provided and the speed of transaction is a great improvement upon what early Bitcoin network could offer.
Through this improved technology in the DASH blockchain, DASH is considered to be more scalable and it competes effectively in a global stage where different protocols seeks to bring more advanced comfort to users.
Thank you for stopping by.
Cc:
@levycore
@steemitblog
@steemcurator01
@steemcurator02
Conclusion