Dash digital currency: project, mining and future predictions
What is Dash Cryptocurrency?
Dash is an open source cryptocurrency and an alternative currency that is a fork of Bitcoin. Dash is also an independent decentralized organization, run by a group of its users, known as Masternodes. The currency was launched in 2014 by Evan Duffield, and was known at the time as Xcoin, then changed its name to Darkcoin, and in March of the year 2018 it was renamed again to Dash Coin, which is the name it is currently famous for.
Just as with various cryptocurrencies, Dash is based on Blockchain technology, and mainly aims to provide a global payment network that is fast, cheap, and better in terms of privacy. The currency also indicates in its white paper that it has overcome some of the problems of Bitcoin, which has earned it the confidence of investors, and its prices have grown in a short period, to become at the forefront of the crypto market, in addition to that, it was considered the most popular currency in Venezuela in the year 2019.
What is Dash Coin Project?
Dash is an open source project, which includes a decentralized payment network, which has been designed in a way that ensures user privacy and anonymity. Dash also aims to become a medium for everyday transactions, which can be used in the form of cash, credit cards, or even PayPal transactions. The currency has achieved remarkable success, specifically in the country of Venezuela, which suffers from high economic inflation, where it is used as a substitute for the official currency (the Bolivar), which has lost its value to a large extent.
Dash coin is very similar to bitcoin, both are used as alternative currencies for online financial transactions, they also adopt blockchain technology and decentralized payment systems. The main differences between them appear in several things, including the techniques used in mining. Whereas Dash uses the X11 algorithm (a modification of the PoS algorithm), Bitcoin uses the PoW algorithm.
Dash differs from Bitcoin also in transaction handling systems. In the case of Bitcoin, transactions on the Blockchain must be validated by all nodes within the network, the process takes longer, and costs become higher. In contrast, Dash Coin uses a different system, where transactions are verified by a subset of users called masternodes. This system contributes to solving the problem of scalability, and the process of verifying transactions takes place in a relatively shorter period, and its cost is lower.
Features of Dash Coin
There are many advantages to Dash currency, which contributed to attracting more investors to it, and which also had a role in maintaining the currency in the forefront of the cryptocurrency market throughout the previous years. We mention these features as follows:
Supported by a distinguished team of developers: Dash coin has been able to continue throughout the previous period, thanks to the team of developers based on it, who from time to time introduce more improvements to its project. There are four strong teams behind the ongoing (promotion, use, and development) of Dash and Cryptocurrency. These teams are (Dash Investment Foundation, Dash Roots and Dash Core Group).
Maintain privacy: Dash coin has a unique privacy feature within the blockchain networks, thanks to its technology called PrivateSend. This feature has brought many investors to it, especially those who do not want others to know the features of their online activities.
Security and Resiliency: The dash protocol includes a dual mining network that includes (minors, a maintenance system). This protocol allows a great deal of security and flexibility. In addition, Dash Coin uses the X11 mining algorithm which also plays an important role in securing the network, which is why we haven’t heard of hacking cases as many cryptocurrencies have.
Relatively fast: As mentioned earlier, Dash Coin relies on Masternodes to verify its transactions, which means that verification is done by a subset of users, not all nodes on the network. This means that transactions will be executed faster and their costs will be lower. Dash processes 30 to 56 transactions per second.
It has good trading volume, maximum supply: At the time of writing this article (August 2021), Dash is ranked #59 by market capitalization, which is close to one billion and 700 thousand dollars. In the same context, there is a maximum supply, which is 18 million and 900 thousand units. Accordingly, experts believe that the currency has potential for further growth in the future.
Also learn about a number of other digital currencies, such as: CHZ currency, Link currency, and VET currency
Disadvantages of Dash Cryptocurrency
With the emergence of many new cryptocurrencies, Dash’s ranking has declined, due to a number of flaws, which can be illustrated as follows:
Endless fierce competition: Dash Coin is facing intense and endless competition, from giant projects with similar ideas, such as the Bitcoin project, the Bitcoin Cash project, and the Litecoin project. The aforementioned currencies are better in terms of trading volume, market share, and availability of liquidity, and they are being adopted by more companies around the world. If Dash cannot provide more value, it may continue to lose a portion of its market share to competitors.
Affected by what is happening in the crypto market: Dash is not far from what is happening in the cryptocurrency market, it often follows the movements of Bitcoin, so we find that its value increases with the rise of Bitcoin and vice versa. Unlike some other currencies, which succeeded in overcoming this obstacle, for example, the Matic and Cardano coins, which succeeded in achieving more growth at a time when the crypto market was bleeding, in the shock that it suffered in May 2021.
Most of the masternodes are concentrated in the hands of a few: there are strong indications that the bulk of the masternodes, are run by the protocol development team, and this in turn puts a question mark about the decentralized role of the coin.
Suspicions about its use in illegal activities: Some reports indicated the possibility of using the currency in illegal activities, but this matter has not been proven. It is also noted that many digital currencies have been talked about in the same way, especially in the absence of oversight from central or government agencies over these transactions.
Dash coin mining
Just as with many blockchains, validation of transactions on the Dash network is done using PoW mining. During this process computer processors search for solutions to very complex and difficult computational problems, which are determined by the X11 hash algorithm.
The X11 hash algorithm reduces power consumption during the online mining process, as well as ensuring a fair distribution of Dash during the early years of the network. Dash can be mined individually, or through mining pools in what is known as (cloud mining), and ASIC processors are among the best devices used in mining.
We, in the trading school, prefer cloud mining to personal mining, because its cost is lower, and the possibility of obtaining the reward is higher, although it will be distributed to all participants in the pool. Nicehash and hashshiny are among the best mining pools.
How to buy Dash Coin
Dash can be purchased through a number of cryptocurrency exchanges, the most famous of which is the Binance platform, which is the largest in the world in terms of the number of participants, in terms of trading volume, in addition to being the best and cheapest in terms of commission. In addition, the Binance platform also provides a mining service for a number of the most famous digital currencies, and it has its own currency, in addition to the fact that it offers many offers and periodic rewards.
The Binance platform also offers many advantages, the most important of which is that it shortens all the steps of buying cryptocurrencies in one step, as it works as a wallet and an exchange at the same time, with which it is also possible to purchase with Visa and MasterCard. In addition, it offers a service known as Binance B2B, which is a pool of buyers and sellers of cryptocurrencies, categorized by several options, such as country and payment method. Meaning that through this service, you can buy digital currency from a citizen in your country, using a number of payment methods such as bank transfers and PayPal.
Dash coin future
The outlook for the Dash coin from our trading school point of view is neutral, without being overly optimistic or pessimistic. On the one hand, the currency succeeded in maintaining an advanced position in the forefront of the cryptocurrency market over the past seven years, while other currencies appeared after them, and quickly disappeared without achieving any significant successes. On the other hand, the Dash project introduced a number of significant improvements to the Bitcoin project, adding value in terms of scalability, faster transactions, lower cost, and privacy.
On the other hand, Dash Coin faces a number of important challenges, most notably the strong competition from Bitcoin, Litecoin, and many other currencies. Moreover, the currency does not support smart contracts, which contributed to the decline of its ranking, in terms of trading volume and market share, to 59th place in 2021, after it was ranked 9th a few years ago. Therefore, expectations around it are always related to the general trend of the crypto market, specifically Bitcoin, rising with its rise and falling with its decline.
Dash Coin Forecast 2022–2023
In the trading school, we have collected the most important expectations of experts regarding the Dash Coin currency, for the years 2021 and 2022, which we explain below:
Forecast issued by Digital Coin Price: The authors of this forecast see that the coin will move in an upward direction until the end of 2022, affected by the state of growth in the cryptocurrency market as a whole, to close the year around the levels of $244. The same applies to the year 2023, when they expect prices to continue to achieve more growth, rising towards levels ($302).
Forecast issued by Coin Price Forecast: This forecast is also dominated by an optimistic outlook, as those behind it expect prices to continue rising in 2021, closing the year around levels (209). Also, from their point of view, the rise will continue in 2023, when prices are expected to reach levels in the middle of the year ($238), while at the end of the year they are expected to be near levels ($309).
DASH Price Live Data
The live Dash price today is $114.01 USD with a 24-hour trading volume of $255,627,041 USD. We update our DASH to USD price in real-time. Dash is up 6.29% in the last 24 hours. The current CoinMarketCap ranking is #79, with a live market cap of $1,206,533,330 USD. It has a circulating supply of 10,582,577 DASH coins and a max. supply of 18,900,000 DASH coins.
If you would like to know where to buy Dash, the top cryptocurrency exchanges for trading in Dash stock are currently Binance, OKX, CoinFLEX, CoinTiger, and Bybit. You can find others listed on our crypto exchanges page.
What Is Dash (DASH)?
Dash is an open-source blockchain and cryptocurrency focused on offering a fast, cheap global payments network that is decentralized in nature. According to the project’s white paper, Dash seeks to improve upon Bitcoin (BTC) by providing stronger privacy and faster transactions.
Dash, whose name comes from “digital cash,” was launched in January 2014 as a fork of Litecoin (LTC). Since going live, Dash has grown to include features such as a two-tier network with incentivized nodes, including “masternodes,” and decentralized project governance; InstantSend, which allows for instantly settled payments; ChainLocks, which makes the Dash blockchain instantly immutable; and PrivateSend, which offers additional optional privacy for transactions.
Who Are the Founders of Dash?
Dash was founded by software developers Evan Duffield and Kyle Hagan. The project was originally called XCoin, changing its name to Darkcoin two weeks later before rebranding again to Dash in March 2015 in an effort to positively change its image.
Before launching Dash, Duffield was a software developer with experience in finance, from his time working at Hawk Financial Group, as well as in public relations, having developed machine learning algorithms and search engines. He first conceived of Dash in 2012 as a way to add more anonymity to Bitcoin — hence, originally calling it Darkcoin. Duffield has claimed that he started it as a hobby, coding it in just one weekend. Duffield served as CEO of Dash Core Group — the company that supports the continued development, integrations and other activities of Dash — until December 2017 when he stepped down to focus on other strategic initiatives.
Hagan co-authored the original Darkcoin whitepaper alongside Duffield. However, he left the project early on in December 2014.
What Makes Dash Unique?
According to its website, the goal of Dash is “to be the most user-friendly and scalable payments-focused cryptocurrency in the world.” To accomplish this, the project relies on a network of masternodes, which are servers backed by collateral held in Dash that are designed to provide advanced services securely and governance over Dash’s proposal system. In exchange for part of the block rewards, masternodes provide a second layer of services to the network. They facilitate functions such as InstantSend, PrivateSend and ChainLocks.
Dash is marketed to both individual users and institutions, including merchants, financial services, traders and those who need to send international remittances. In October 2020, Dash Core Group reported that its strategic objectives moving forward include building its ecosystem and brand, ensuring that users are satisfied and further advancing the technology behind the network.
Dash’s governance system, or treasury, distributes 10% of the block rewards for the development of the project in a competitive and decentralized way. This has allowed the creation of many funded organizations, including Dash Core Group. In addition, the Dash Foundation, which advocates for the adoption of the cryptocurrency, receives donations and offers paid individual and institutional memberships.
Related Pages:
Learn more about Litecoin, the cryptocurrency from which Dash was forked.
Learn about XRP, another cryptocurrency offering a near-instant payments network
Want tips on keeping your Dash safe? Read an in-depth crypto safety guide on Alexandria, CoinMarketCap’s online educational resource.
Stay up to date on the latest cryptocurrency news with the CoinMarketCap Blog.
How Many Dash (DASH) Coins Are There in Circulation?
The maximum number of Dash tokens that can be issued is 18,921,005. However, this figure ultimately depends on how the governance decides to allocate the 10% of block rewards reserved for budget proposals. If none were ever allocated, only 17,742,696 DASH would ever be emitted. New Dash tokens are created through a proof-of-work mining algorithm in which the token emission rate is decreased by one-fourteenth, or approximately 7%, every 210,240 blocks, or about every 383 days.
Approximately 45% of new DASH is awarded to miners, 45% to masternodes and 10% to fund future proposals. In August 2020, a proposal was approved that will, once in effect, change the ratio of coins awarded to miners and masternodes from 50/50 to 40/60, respectively.
Within the first 48 hours of Dash’s launch, approximately 2 million coins were mined, which significantly exceeded the planned emission schedule. Dash was originally forked from Litecoin, which suffered a similar issue at its launch due to a bug in its difficulty adjustment algorithm. While it is well-documented that Dash inherited the bug from Litecoin, there has, nonetheless, been widespread speculation about whether the resulting fastmine was intentional to benefit early miners.
How Is the Dash Network Secured?
Dash uses a two-tier network to secure its transactions. The first tier consists of nodes that carry out mining operations under a proof-of-work consensus protocol, meaning that they compete to solve complex cryptographic problems and at least 51% of nodes must approve a transaction for it to be added to the blockchain.
The PoW algorithm used by Dash is called “X11” — a custom hashing algorithm developed by Dash founder Duffield that uses a sequence of 11 hashing algorithms. According to Dash’s documentation, X11 is “one of the safest and more sophisticated cryptographic hashes in use by modern cryptocurrencies.”
The second tier consists of masternodes operating under a proof-of-service consensus algorithm in which masternodes are rated based on their history of providing good services to the network. Masternodes oversee the network and have the power to reject new blocks added by nodes if they were approved improperly. They also enable Dash’s ChainLocks feature, which increases security because every 12 hours, a rotating group of masternodes observe and confirm all new blocks added to the blockchain. Dash’s developers have stated that this protects the network against 51% attacks.
Where Can You Buy Dash (DASH)?
As one of the more popular altcoins, Dash can be purchased on most major cryptocurrency exchanges, including Binance, Coinbase Pro, Huobi Global, Kraken and OKEx. It can be traded against fiat currencies, cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ether (ETH), and stablecoins such as Tether (USDT) and USD Coin (USDC). It can be bought and sold on both spot and derivatives markets.
Are you interested in buying Dash or other cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin? CoinMarketCap has a simple, step-by-step guide to teach you all about crypto and how to buy your first coins.
