On the 2nd birthday of Dash, CoinTelegraph spoke to Evan Duffield, the founder and lead developer of the Dash Project (
formerly Darkcoin), to talk about the 2 years of this dashing journey.
CoinTelegraph: Evan, congratulations on Dash completing two years.
Evan Duffield: Thank you, it’s been a very exciting two years. So much has happened during the two years, it seems pretty amazing. We managed to develop the masternode concept, along with instant transactions, privacy, funding and governance. I’m pretty happy with the progress that we’ve made.
CT: What was your vision for Dash when you founded it? Now two years later, do you think you have achieved what you set out to do with Dash?
ED: When I originally discovered Bitcoin in early 2010, one of my original concerns was that the platform of cryptocurrency is giant and the Bitcoin developers were only focusing in a very small area of what was possible. My first thought was to add some core-features to the Dash client, such as anonymity, then to explore the potential of the cryptographic currency platform and see what other kinds of features could be created.
Since then, we’ve managed to implement a new kind of peer-to-peer network known as a two-tier network, which fully incentivizes full-node operators. Using the masternode network concept (also known as a two-tier network), we’ve been able to implement a great feature set for our users such as instant double-spend proof transactions, transactional privacy, decentralized funding and decentralized governance. The project has been a great success over the past couple of years and I’m quite happy with the progress we’ve made.
CT: In the two years since you founded Dash, what do you think has changed in the cryptocurrency market- both for the better and the worse?
ED: During the past two years, there has been a great awakening of the general public to the power of cryptographic currency for solving many of the problems with the legacy banking system, along with an understanding that this technology is not a fad. This is quite important because Bitcoin defies some principles in classic economic theory, mainly concerning where the value of money comes from. The longer that Bitcoin and other cryptographic currencies survive, the more merit we have of disproving this old theory and possibly replacing it with another theory that is better suited for explaining the value of money and why a network such as the Bitcoin network can maintain its value when many originally thought it wouldn’t. This is great for long term adoption, as it will take a shift in the academic mindset in order to convince the general population that these technologies are safe to use.