Decred launched in February 2016. There was no ICO or venture capital funding-Company 0 self-funded Decred’s development for two years. At launch, 8% of the total supply was pre-mined, with 4% used to compensate the developers (at a rate of $0.49 per DCR), and 4% air-dropped to 2,972 people who signed up (each received 282.63795424 DCR).

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Secure
Network security is the foundation to any financial system. Agreement on transactions and account balances, also known as consensus, is vital to confidence in the currency and can be measured by both longevity and analysis of its resistance to various attack vectors.

• Imperfect Systems
  In peer-to-peer financial systems, Proof-of-Work (PoW) solved the double spending problem. It has proved its worth for more than a decade, but is energy intensive and susceptible to majority attacks. Proof-of-Stake (PoS) was developed to avoid those issues through alignment of interests, but it came with its own shortcomings, most notably the nothing-at-stake problem.
• Decred’s Hybrid Solution
  Decred employs a combination of PoW and PoS to yield the best of both systems, mitigate their weaknesses, and deliver a layered consensus mechanism that makes it far more secure than other cryptocurrencies. Decred uses conventional PoW with a BLAKE-256 hash algorithm, and it is mined exclusively by ASICs. Decred holders time-lock their funds to purchase tickets in a lottery. Those tickets are added to a pool of roughly 41,000 tickets, and five tickets are pseudorandomly selected to validate the Proof-of-Work for the previous block. If at least 50% of the tickets approve the work of the miner, the miner’s reward is approved and the block is added to the blockchain.
• Resistance to Attacks
  Because a block must include 3 or more ticket votes to be valid, blocks must be broadcast on the network as they are mined for the chain to proceed, so miners cannot mine in secret. The result is that an attacker must have a considerable combination of hashpower and stake to successfully execute a majority attack. Decred voters are also set to reject a re-org of greater than 6 blocks, so any attack involving a deep re-org is unlikely to be accepted by the network. When comparing the cost of an attack on Decred to that of a pure PoW cryptocurrency, the cost to attack Decred is an order of magnitude greater, plus any attacker with stake would be taking actions counter to their interests.

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Adaptable
At some point, contentious decisions will need to be made about the protocol. Decred has built-in formal systems that ensure order and fairness in the process.

• No Need to Fork Off
  Change applies to cryptocurrencies in response to new technology and new threats. Real people mean real disputes, and even with the same outcome in mind, approaches may differ. In order to evolve and endure in the long-term, Decred has engineered a means to continuously adapt. Whether an emergency, conflict, bug fix or new technology, Decred facilitates formal agreement, helping to avoid contentious hard forks and maintain a unified community during the process.
• Empowering the Currency Holders
  Decred grants those who opt-in to the governance system with direct sovereignty over their money. In exchange for time-locking their coins, stakeholders acquire tickets that allow them to vote to approve blocks, make changes to the consensus rules, and to determine the policy and budget of the Decred decentralized autonomous organization (DAO).
  Stakeholders interact directly with the blockchain by voting to approve each mined block, giving them power over miners and adding security against majority attacks. Five tickets are pseudorandomly selected from the ticket pool to approve the previous block, ensuring good mining behavior and earning the ticket holder part of the block reward. Ticket holders also vote on-chain on changes to the consensus rules, giving stakeholders direct control over the future of Decred.
• Politeia - The Proposal System
  The Politeia Proposal System plays a vital role within the Decred DAO, empowering stakeholders to manage Decredʼs treasury expenditures and policies. Proposals to date include new software features, marketing expenditures, partner integrations, bug bounty, and research. Politeia is a governance platform that uses timestamping and cryptographic attestation to record all activity related to the submission, discussion and voting of proposals. Once a proposal passes, the owner is authorized to begin work, knowing their efforts are supported by the community and financed by the Treasury.
• To Delegate is to Trust
  Decred believes in the power of the collective intelligence of its decentralized community. It’s diverse range of active contributors do their own research and directly determine the future of Decred. With formal governance systems built-in from the beginning, the Decred DAO is able to adapt and become a superior long term store of value.

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Sustainable
Remaking the financial system in a fairer and inclusive way mandates that Decred and its community operate on a long time horizon. To realize Decred as a superior long-term store of value, every effort and expenditure needs to serve its long term goals.

• The Tragedy of the Commons
  Digital currencies and open source projects typically fall victim to the tragedy of the commons, where individuals who share a resource act in their own self-interest, depleting or spoiling that resource. Numerous methods have been used to solve the funding issue across cryptocurrencies, including donations, founders funds, venture capital funding, and various forms of ICO/IEO. All of these methods come with shortcomings, including agency problems, conflicts of interest, and a lack of ongoing funding.
• Decred’s Self-Funding Solution
  Decred has solved the funding problem by directing 10% of every block reward into a Project Treasury. This ongoing solution funds Decred for generations to come. To this point, the Treasury has been managed conservatively with a long-term perspective in mind and cognizant of the release of Politeia in 2018, which transitioned control of funds to the Decred stakeholders. Through Politiea, stakeholders vote on budgets, policies, and the direction of the project as a Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO).
• A New Work Paradigm
  The DAO ushers in a new work paradigm, one in which anyone with valuable skills can contribute to the project and be compensated by the stakeholders per proposals and voting on Politeia. In Decred, community members develop, market, and represent Decred, and they are judged on their contributions, not their pedigree or CV. The conventional work world and hierarchical structure goes out the door as contributors are free to work on what they want, when they want.
  Most contributors have full time jobs and perform their work with passion in their free time. This enables a risk-minimized on-ramp for people to test the waters before deciding to join Decred as a full-time contractor and leave the legacy corporate world behind.
• Contractors and Proposals
  Decred is a community of self-starters and autonomous workers who relish adversity and know how to chart their own path. They can identify their own skills and examine the current state of Decred within the domains of development, marketing, research, or community to determine where and how they can contribute. They follow the path laid forth by previous contractors and contribute first to demonstrate the quality of their work product. When their work is recognized by other Contractors and funded by a Politeia proposal, they too, can become a contractor. The first place to explore is the Matrix chat rooms, which are bridged to the other communications platforms.