Principle and design goals

Technology implementation

Consensus mechanism

Masternode Locking Authority and Consensus

By utilizing the masternode network, we can gain a degree of certainty that the transaction in question is valid and will be accepted into the blockchain after that. Immediately after the propagation of a lock, the selected masternodes will begin to vote on the validity of the
transaction lock. If consensus is reached on a lock by the Masternode network, all conflicting transactions would be rejected thereafter, unless they matched the exact transaction ID of the lock in place. Clients would be tasked with clearing out conflicting locks and possibly reversing attacker transactions. This would only happen in a case where an attacker submitted multiple locks to the network at
once and the network formed consensus on one but not the other. If no consensus is reached, standard confirmation will be required to assure that a transaction is valid.

Multiple Consensus Messages

If attackers gain control of the 10 Masternodes for a given block and propagate multiple conflicting messages, the network must appropriately handle the conflict. For example, an attacker that controls a large portion of masternodes might propagate a message to Merchant B and nowhere else ,while propagating a messages to many other nodes spending the inputs back to himself. In this case it is suggested that conflicting messages will cancel each other out and clients wait for normal block confirmation.

Proof­Of­Work Utilizing X11

Darkcoin uses a new chained hashing algorithm approach, with many new scientific hashing algorithms for the proof­of­work. X11 consists of blake, bmw, groestl, jh, keccak, skein, luffa,cubehash, shavite, simd, and echo.Because it is more complicated than a SHA 256 ASIC implementation, the use of X11 will prevent the use of ASIC miners for the short term to mid ­term future. It will also allow for a longer period of mining for CPU/GPU users.GPU miners that mine with the X11 algorithm are currently experiencing reduced power usage (up to 50%) and reduced heat generation compared to scrypt.

Accounts and transactions

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 berejected 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 al central authority. An extensive overview of this feature can be found in the InstantSend white paper.

Smart contract system

Cryptography

Distributed storage protocol

Cross-chain and exchange technology

Cryptocurrency exchanges exist to convert national currency, also known as fiat money, into cryptocurrency. Many exchanges do not accept fiat money, and exchange between various cryptocurrencies only. Trades are handled on markets, and trades are created between pairs of currencies, identified by their ticker codes. Dash is widely accepted on exchanges and many pairs exist against both fiat money and cryptocurrency. This means it is possible to exchange EUR for DASH, or DASH for BTC, for example. The volume traded on an exchange provides a good indication of how quickly a buy or sell order you place will be filled. This section introduces some of the most popular exchanges for trading Dash.

Special technology

Economic model and incentive

Governance mechanism

Decentralized Governance by Blockchain, or DGBB, is Dash’s attempt to solve two important problems in cryptocurrency: governance and funding. Governance in a decentralized project is difficult, because by definition there are no central authorities to make decisions for the project. In Dash, such decisions are made by the network, that is, by the owners of masternodes. The DGBB system allows each masternode to vote once (yes/no/abstain) for each proposal. If a proposal passes, it can then be implemented (or not) by Dash’s developers. A key example is early in 2016, when Dash’s Core Team submitted a proposal to the network asking whether the blocksize should be increased to 2 MB. Within 24 hours, consensus had been reached to approve this change. Compare this to Bitcoin, where debate on the blocksize has been raging for nearly three years and has resulted in serious splits within the community and even forks to the Bitcoin blockchain.
The DGBB also provides a means for Dash to fund its own development. While other projects have to depend on donations or premined endowments, Dash uses 10% of the block reward to fund its own development. Every time a block is mined, 45% of the reward goes to the miner, 45% goes to a masternode, and the remaining 10% is not created until the end of the month. During the month, anybody can make a budget proposal to the network. If that proposal earns the net approval of at least 10% of the masternode network, then at the end of the month the requested amount will be paid out in a “superblock”. At that time, the block rewards that were not paid out (10% of each block) will be used to fund approved proposals. The network thus funds itself by reserving 10% of the block reward for budget projects.

Applications