Decred shifts to majority Proof of Stake consensus model

Decred (DCR) is now a majority proof-of-stake (PoS) network after stakeholders voted to activate the first of its kind change to its consensus mechanism.

On Monday, the Decred team announced that the subsidy split change to the network’s proof-of-work, proof-of-stake and treasury block reward ratio had been activated. The change modifies the Decred model from 60/30/10 to 10/80/10, making PoS the majority network mechanism.

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The change comes after 92% of Decred stakeholders approved the shift in February, with the driving reason being the need to put off malicious miners. 

Keeping malicious miners off Decred

Jake-Yocom-Piatt, the co-founder and Project Lead of Decred said: 

This subsidy split consensus change is incredibly important to Decred because without it, malicious miners will continue to manipulate our markets unabated.”

The change has thus reduced the subsidy that flows to miners, now from 60% to 10% from every block. Doing this, Yocom-Piatt added, has significantly removed the miners’ “primary means of acquiring inventory and attacking the project.”

Simultaneously, increasing the staking subsidy from 30% to 80% will increase incentive to stake and make Decred a more attractive asset.”

The change to the consensus model is made possible by Decred’s governance system that allows for changes to network consensus rules without leading to a split in the chain to end up with multiple chains.

In 2017, the Decred network went through its first stakeholder-activated hard fork.