PriFi.info

Decred

A hybrid proof-of-work and proof-of-stake cryptocurrency with stakeholder governance and a treasury, whose optional StakeShuffle mixing unlinks coins but leaves amounts public.

LivePrivacy coin

As of 23 October 2026 the network ran dcrd 2.1.6 or later, which fixed the consensus bug exploited in August 2026 without a rollback; 2.1.7 of 14 October added safeguards against unexpected spends.

Market cap
$252.3MDefiLlama, 29 Oct 2026
Launched
8 Feb 2016
Token
DCR
Chains
Decred

Checked on 23 Oct 2026. Information only, not investment advice.

How it works

Decred is a cryptocurrency with its own blockchain, launched on 8 February 2016 by developers from Company 0, that combines proof-of-work and proof-of-stake. Miners produce blocks, and holders who lock DCR in tickets vote on each block and on changes to the consensus rules; since 29 August 2023 the block reward has been split 1% to miners, 89% to stakers and 10% to a treasury, and mining has used the BLAKE3 hash. Treasury spending has needed stakeholder approval since DCP0006, approved on 9 April 2021, and proposals for funding and policy are put to stakeholders on Politeia, launched on 15 October 2018.

Privacy is optional and limited to unlinking coins. Decred's privacy feature, StakeShuffle, mixes coins with a variant of CoinShuffle++, a CoinJoin protocol: wallets that opt in join mixes in which every participant contributes outputs of the same fixed denomination to one transaction, so that neither the other participants nor outside observers can tell which output belongs to whom. Mixing is built into ticket buying; a wallet that enables it keeps separate mixed and unmixed accounts and re-mixes its change into smaller denominations. Mixes went live on 28 August 2019, coordinated by a server, and since dcrd 2.0.0 of 17 May 2024 they have been coordinated over the peer-to-peer network, using a quantum-resistant blinded key exchange and a dining-cryptographers broadcast.

Most of Decred is as public as Bitcoin. Amounts are visible, including the fixed denominations of mixed outputs, and Decred's own design notes say that hiding them would need confidential transactions and a consensus change. Ordinary payments, unmixed coins and the transactions of wallets that have not enabled mixing are fully traceable, and careless handling of change can link mixed and unmixed coins. In the server-coordinated design used from 2019, the server could see which inputs and change addresses belonged to which participant. Mixing adds about twelve times the on-chain storage of an unmixed transaction.

In August 2026 an attacker exploited a consensus bug present since launch, an unhandled edge case in how Decred's regular and stake transaction trees interact, to double spend inputs and create 2,077.97 DCR between 16 and 17 August; the same bug had been reported to the bug bounty four days earlier. Release 2.1.6 on 18 August fixed it without a rollback, and also closed a potential periodic deanonymisation attack on mixing.

Market cap over time

Decred has no TVL: it is a coin with its own blockchain, so the chart shows its market cap. Daily market cap from Coin Metrics Community Data (CC BY-NC 4.0) since 17 May 2016, and the current value from DefiLlama. The latest value is from 29 Oct 2026, 04:53 UTC. The series is in protocol-decred.json, listed on the Data page.

What it hides and what it does not

What it hides

  • Which mixed output belongs to which participant: a StakeShuffle mix combines participants' coins of one fixed denomination in a single CoinJoin transaction, so neither the other participants nor outside observers can link an output to its owner.
  • Which coins funded a ticket, for wallets that buy tickets through mixed split transactions.

What it does not hide

  • Every amount, including the fixed denominations of mixed outputs: hiding amounts would need confidential transactions and a consensus change.
  • Every transaction that is not mixed: mixing is opt-in, so ordinary payments, unmixed coins and change are as traceable as on Bitcoin.
  • Links between mixed and unmixed coins created by careless handling of change, which Decred's documentation warns of.
  • To the mixing server of 2019 to May 2024, which inputs and change addresses belonged to which participant; coordination has been peer-to-peer since dcrd 2.0.0.

Drawn from how it works, above; the sources are listed at the end of the page. Where privacy still leaks explains the patterns, such as timing and amounts, that can give users of any design away.

Audits

None found when this profile was checked on 23 Oct 2026.

Incidents

Eight incidents, oldest first: flaws, exploits, sanctions, prosecutions and other events that affected the project or its users.

  1. Upbit in South Korea ended DCR trading on its KRW, BTC and USDT markets after the Decred team said it had no plan to change its privacy function, having designated DCR an investment-warning asset after a privacy feature update and stopped deposits on 18 December 2020.

    Sources: [Market] Termination of trading support for Decred(DCR) (notice 1706) Upbit, 28 Dec 2020; 디지털 자산 유의종목 지정 안내 디크레드(DCR) (Investment warning designation: Decred, notice 1679) Upbit, 18 Dec 2020

  2. Bitfinex ended DCR trading at 11:00 UTC; its help centre gives no reason.

    Source: Decred (DCR): Delisted Bitfinex

  3. Huobi Global delisted DCR with DASH, FIRO, XMR, XVG, ZEC and ZEN, having ended trading on 6 September and closed deposits on 12 September 2022; HTX's API gives 22 December 2022 as the trade-open time of a new DCR/USDT market.

    Sources: Huobi Global to Delist DASH, DCR, FIRO, XMR, XVG, ZEC, and ZEN (Internet Archive copy of 2022-09-13) Huobi Global, 12 Sep 2022; HTX spot API: all supported trading symbols (v2) HTX, 13 Oct 2026

  4. OKX delisted its DCR/USDT and DCR/ETH spot pairs, saying they did not meet its listing criteria, under a notice of 17 July 2024.

    Source: OKX to delist CEL, OMG, SPELL, APM, LHINU, POLS, and DCR spot trading pairs OKX, 17 Jul 2024

  5. Bybit ended DCR/USDT spot trading after 08:00 UTC, under a notice of 15 November 2024 that also covered OMNICAT, SRM, CO and STRM.

    Source: Delisting of OMNICAT, DCR, SRM, CO and STRM Bybit, 15 Nov 2024

  6. Binance began moving Dubai users to Binance Dubai (FZE), which does not support privacy tokens under VARA listing requirements, so those users could no longer trade DCR or ZEC; DCR still trades for other Binance users.

    Source: Binance FZE Will Not Support Certain Assets on the Dubai Local Exchange Binance, 9 Apr 2025

  7. Exploit

    An attacker double spent inputs through a consensus bug present since launch, an unhandled edge case between the regular and stake transaction trees, creating 2,077.96933695 DCR between 12:20 UTC on 16 August and 19:44 UTC on 17 August, after exploiting it on testnet on 14 August. The bug had been reported to the bug bounty at 03:12 UTC on 12 August. Mandatory release 2.1.6, published at 15:25 UTC on 18 August, fixed it without a rollback; Decred said the extra coins do not affect the 21 million cap, and release 2.1.7 of 14 October 2026 added safeguards that halt a node on unexpected spends.

    Sources: Decred Consensus Vulnerability: Post-Incident Report Decred Blog, 25 Aug 2026; dcrd v2.1.6 Decred (GitHub), 18 Aug 2026; dcrd v2.1.7 Decred (GitHub), 14 Oct 2026

  8. The same mandatory release, dcrd 2.1.6, also prevented a potential periodic deanonymisation attack on StakeShuffle mixing and improved mixing session expiry; the release notes do not say whether the attack was ever used.

    Source: dcrd v2.1.6 Decred (GitHub), 18 Aug 2026

Milestones

Nine milestones, oldest first.

  1. Decred's mainnet launched, with a premine of 1.68 million DCR, 8% of the 21 million supply.

    Sources: Project history Decred Docs, 23 Oct 2026; Premine Decred Docs, 23 Oct 2026

  2. Politeia, the proposal system on which stakeholders vote on funding and policy, launched.

    Source: Project history Decred Docs, 23 Oct 2026

  3. CoinShuffle++ mixes went live on mainnet, first as a command-line dcrwallet feature for solo stakers and non-staking wallets, coordinated by a server.

    Sources: Iterating Privacy Decred Blog, 28 Aug 2019; Project history Decred Docs, 23 Oct 2026

  4. Decred described mixed ticket buying, in which the split transactions that fund tickets are mixed with CoinShuffle++.

    Sources: A More Private Way to Stake Decred Blog, 2 Jun 2020; How to use CSPP Decred Docs, 23 Oct 2026

  5. Stakeholders approved DCP0006, under which every treasury spend needs their approval; the first such payment was made on 28 December 2021.

    Sources: Project history Decred Docs, 23 Oct 2026; Consensus vote archive Decred Docs, 23 Oct 2026

  6. The block reward split changed from 60/30/10 to 10/80/10 between miners, stakers and the treasury, the first stakeholder-activated change of its kind.

    Sources: Decred shifts to majority proof-of-stake Decred, 9 May 2022; Project history Decred Docs, 23 Oct 2026

  7. Proof-of-work moved to BLAKE3 with ASERT difficulty, and the split became 1% to miners, 89% to stakers and 10% to the treasury, after stakeholders approved DCP0011 and DCP0012 on 1 August 2023.

    Sources: Project history Decred Docs, 23 Oct 2026; Consensus vote archive Decred Docs, 23 Oct 2026

  8. dcrd 2.0.0 made StakeShuffle mixing fully decentralised, coordinated through new peer-to-peer messages instead of a server.

    Source: dcrd v2.0.0 Decred (GitHub), 17 May 2024

  9. dcrd 2.1.0 added a consensus vote on a new maximum treasury expenditure policy (DCP0013) and exclusion timeouts for disruptive mixing participants.

    Source: dcrd v2.1.0 Decred (GitHub), 26 Nov 2025

Funding

Two sources of funding, oldest first. Amounts are in US dollars; a dash means the sources give no US dollar figure.

DateRoundAmountInvestors

Premine: 840,000 DCR (4% of supply) to Company 0 and its developers, bought at USD 0.49 per coin or exchanged for work at that rate against about USD 415,000 of bring-up costs, and 840,000 DCR airdropped to 2,972 participants

Source: Premine Decred Docs, 23 Oct 2026

 – –

Treasury: 10% of every block reward since launch, spent since DCP0006 in 2021 only with stakeholder approval (paid in DCR, so no fixed US dollar amount)

Sources: Decred shifts to majority proof-of-stake Decred, 9 May 2022; Consensus vote archive Decred Docs, 23 Oct 2026

 – –

Risks

Decred's privacy is narrow: mixing is optional, amounts are always public, and only coins that pass through StakeShuffle mixes are unlinked, so a user's privacy depends on enabling mixing, handling change carefully and how many others mix at the same time. Its node software has had serious flaws: in August 2026 a consensus bug present since 2016 let an attacker create 2,077.97 DCR four days after the same bug was reported to the bug bounty, and the same mandatory release closed a potential periodic deanonymisation attack on mixing. No third-party audit of the node or the mixing code was found. Governance rests with ticket holders, whose votes change consensus rules and release treasury funds, and since August 2023 89% of each block reward has gone to stakers. Access through large exchanges has narrowed: Upbit delisted DCR in 2020 over its privacy function, and Bitfinex, Huobi, OKX and Bybit have also delisted it, though Binance, Kraken, KuCoin, Gate, HTX and MEXC listed it on 13 October 2026. From 10 July 2027 the EU's Anti-Money Laundering Regulation will bar crypto-asset service providers from keeping accounts that allow transactions to be anonymised or obscured, including through anonymity-enhancing coins, which it defines as crypto-assets with built-in features designed to make transfer information anonymous.

Sources

The documents this profile rests on. Each audit, incident, milestone and funding round above also links its own sources.

Checked on 23 Oct 2026. Confidence: confirmed. Information only, not investment, legal or tax advice.

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