Decred (DCR) is a cryptocurrency created to facilitate open governance, community interaction, and sustainable funding policies. The project was introduced to an open-source development corporation led by Jake Yocom-Piatt called Company 0 (C0), who helped launch its mainnet in February 2016. His vision was focused on a community-driven cryptocurrency that provides an alternative to money that is not only decentralized but fair and sovereign.

Decred's core implements a hybridized proof-of-work proof-of-stake (PoW/PoS) consensus system. Its goal is to strike a balance between PoW miners and PoS voters to create a strong construction of consensus with the PoW miners verifying transactions and the PoS stakers proposing and voting on network upgrades. Stakers who are randomly chosen possess ‘tickets’, a non-transferable asset specifically made for the Decred network in order to participate in votes regarding validating blocks and governance.

In addition, Decred has implemented a governance system that aims to create an open environment for new ideas and a voting system for their acceptance and implementation. In this case, users wishing to offer potential upgrades or policy changes can use the Politeia proposal web platform that facilitates the submission, tracking, and discussions for suggested changes to Decred governance.

DCR is the native coin of the Decred ecosystem. Similar to Bitcoin, there is a maximum supply cap of 21 million DCR coins. Decred's block-time is 5 minutes.