This Week In Dash: November 12th

This week has been another fabulous week for Dash with some awesome news developments! Continue reading to get a summary of the week!

Dash Developments of the Week:

Dash Breaks Record with 3 Million Transactions: On November 11th, the Dash network handled over 3 million transactions within a 24 hour period, which broke the previous record of 2.1 million transactions on the Bitcoin Cash network. The stress test validated earlier research conducted by the ASU Blockchain Lab and showed that Dash could easily handle more transactions than the Bitcoin network when it was under its heaviest stress in late 2017. While a couple masternodes and sites went down during the test, overall the network functioned as desired and the median transaction fee during the event remained largely the same at $0.03 USD.
Dash Text Increases Ease of Use with New POS Integration: Dash Text, the Venezuelan platform that allows consumers to send and receive Dash via SMS text, recently integrated a new POS send feature to make it easy for non-smartphone users to send Dash. Now, at the bottom of the merchant’s screen, “Compra XXXXX” will appear allowing the consumer to simply text Dash via a simple number and code rather than a long alphanumeric address. This stands to make Dash more easily available and usable by the over 60% of Venezuelans that do not own smartphones.
Dash 0.13.0 Hits the Testnet with Historic Updates: Dash version 0.13.0 was recently released to the testnet and has an outlined series of testing steps required before full release. The upgrade includes Deterministic Masternode Lists to allow delegation of masternode tasks, Automatic InstantSend to bring near-instant transactions to the wider Dash network for no increase in fees, and upgrades to improve the speed and cost of PrivateSend.
Dash Core Team Q3 2018 Conference Call: Joël broke down his biggest takeaways from the most recent Dash Core Group’s quarterly call. One of the biggest updates was the addition of 0.14.0 between 0.13.0 and 1.0 to integrate long-living masternode quorums (LLMQs) without delaying the release of 0.13.0 due to the scope of its development. Second, the team is still finalizing the process of how usernames for Evolution will be registered. They also discussed how Evolution’s features will be integrated into new and old wallets and the discontinuation of the CoPay wallet unless the community continues the project. Third, due to the discontinuation of the “What’s Going On At Dash” posts, Dash Core Group will release their quarterly slides with additional information. Also, due to the bear market, Dash Core Group has reduced salaries and budget so assets are up to $1.79 million, up from $1.31 million at the end of Q2. Lastly, Dash Ventures is planned to be ready in a month or two, the SEC no-action letter is still in the works, and the new Dash.org website is planned for late November/early December.

Dash Research of the Week:

Scalability of Dash InstantSend Paves Way for Network-Wide Application: Dr. Darren Tapp, Dash Core Group researcher has made a few posts on reddit that discussed how InstantSend can currently easily scale on the network and thus makes a stress test for InstantSend unnecessary. This paves the way for Automatic InstantSend in the next 0.13.0 release for Dash transactions under 4 inputs. However, Dr. Tapp also highlighted that 0.13.0 will change the way that InstanSend works by using BLS signatures to make the transactions more efficient with Masternode quorums.

Dash Community Outreach of the Week:

Dash Embassy D-A-CH presents at GENOhackahon: Recently the team attended and participated in the GENOhackathon, where attendees develop solutions to the future of banking and heard presentations on potential solutions and progress towards these ends. Jan Heinrich Meyer, also known as essra in the Dash community, discussed the potential of cryptocurrencies to revolutionize the banking industry. He emphasized how adoption is key and how Dash is focusing on this topic by being able to fund outreach groups through its DAO Treasury funds.

General News of the Week:

New Privacy Wallets Resemble Dash PrivateSend: Two new wallets, Wasabi Wallet for Bitcoin and CashShuffle for Bitcoin Cash, implement their own form of CoinJoin to grant users extra privacy and they resemble Dash’s PrivateSend. However, PrivateSend utilizes multiple rounds of mixing whereas Wasabi and CashShuffle only have an enhanced single round. PrivateSend also relies on the much larger and more decentralized Masternode network rather than centralized servers like Wasabi and CashShuffle. The contrast demonstrates how Dash is able to achieve usability and transparency without sacrificing user privacy.
Venezuelan Petro Push Provides Opportunity and Drawback for Dash: The Venezuelan government continues to push the Petro with plans to introduce and use the Petro with OPEC, The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. There have also been reports of the Petro appearing as a denomination currency in checking accounts. Thus far, the government has been relatively friendly to cryptocurrencies; Dash has already set up over 2,200 merchants with Dash and countless more users. However, many have called into question the Petro’s legitimacy and the fact that the Petro has been revealed to be a near copy of Dash could yield negative results as individuals may, incorrectly, tie Dash’s potential to that of the Petro.
New Mining Approaches Provide Hedge As Hash War Progresses: Zcash recently announced that their next protocol upgrade will feature dual proof-of-work to allow two different mining algorithms, one optimized for ASICs and one optimized for GPUs. This diversification of mining algorithms, along with other coins pursuing similar pursuits, will hopefully make miners less concentrated, which could prevent a consolidation of power that led to the current Bitcoin Cash Hash War. Evan Duffield, creator of Dash previously laid out a plan for collateralize mining to mitigate this threat, but this plan may no longer be in development. However, the Dash community has recognized the importance of finding a sustainable solution.

Dash Media of the Week:

Three Amigos Kick It Old School: Are you ready for a blast from the past?! On this week’s episode, the guys deferred interviewing a guest to instead bring back the classic chat between themselves to discuss the biggest news of the week. Make sure to tune in to hear about Dash’s latest and record-breaking stress test, Dash Core Group updates, Hash War news, and more! You do not want to miss this fun time!

Dashgiving is quickly approaching and has bestowed the community with fantastic developments, announcements, integrations, and outreach! Stay tuned into our site and social media networks to see all the upcoming Dash News! We hope that our content and coverage was very informative and enjoyable this week and we cannot wait to see what awesome Dash News awaits us next week!