DCR is the native cryptocurrency of Decred, a forked version of the Bitcoin protocol designed to improve the organization and decentralization of the cryptocurrency. It uses a hybrid consensus mechanism to focus on sustainability, decentralization and self-ruling. It also has an on-chain proposal system for stakers to vote on project funding, initiatives and network upgrades.

The Decred price has seen a strong uptrend since early 2021 after an extended period of sideways trading.

The Decred price hit an all-time high of $249.55 in April 2021 and all-time low of $0.43 in December 2016.

Decred has a total supply of about 21 million DCRs, although they are not all in circulation. Some 60% of the block reward goes to proof-of-work miners when a new block is found, 30% goes to proof-of-stake voters, and 10% goes to the Decred treasury. Decred has a decreasing block reward that adjusts every 6,144 blocks. You can find its official issuance schedule here.

Decred developers distributed 1.68 million tokens, which was 8% of the supply, before the project was launched. Coins were distributed to the overarching company and its developers, with another portion airdropped to eligible participants.

In early January 2018, DCR surged to $122, but three months later, sellers drove the price down to $40. Then, Decred’s currency mounted a comeback to $109.65 in May 2018.

By the end of 2018, however, DCR retraced to $15.15 with no real changes until November 2020. The DCR value has gone from the low $13 range to its all-time high of $249.55 in April 2021. Buyers weren’t able to hold that level for long, though, and Decred dropped to $113 by mid-July 2021. A brief push to $178 in August 2021 also proved to be short-lived, and the price fell to the $110-$115 range in the months after that.

The price tends to follow the broader crypto market.

The Decred team forked bitcoin to enable a hybrid consensus system combining proof-of-work (PoW) and proof-of-stake (PoS) into the novel proof-of-activity (PoA). The goal was to better organize the development and decentralization of a cryptocurrency.

Decred’s blockchain is compatible with Lightning Network technology and lets users perform atomic swaps (direct peer-to-peer trades) of cryptocurrencies including bitcoin, bitcoin cash, litecoin and viacoin.

The Decred project was started in 2016 by Company 0 and launched its network soon afterward. Decred founders include Dave Collins, David Hill, Josh Rickmar, John Vernaleo and Alex and Jacob Yocom-Piatt. They were all still working on the project as of October 2021.

The project has received funding from BlueYard Capital and Placeholder.

Decred’s network had one layer 2 upgrade as of October 2021. The integration of Lightning Network is based on Bitcoin’s version and was activated in May 2019.