Since the launch of Bitcoin in 2010, the crypto market has witnessed such a staggering level of growth that its total capitalization went as high as $160 billion in the last year. The immense success of first-gen and second-gen crypto paved the way for the arrival of many competitors such as Dash that offer unique benefits.
If Bitcoins legal in US, so is Dash. Naturally, with the rise of crypto trading, many want to understand the differences between these coins and their underlying tech to find the option that will return the highest value. That’s why in this article, we’re about to answer “how is Dash different from Bitcoin?” We hope that our answer leads you down the right path to get the best value for your money!
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Dash vs. Bitcoin
While Bitcoin’s glaring success in the last decade has earned it a great reputation, it’s still far from perfect. In fact, that’s one of the reasons that Evan Duffield introduced the Dash blockchain back in 2013 to eliminate some of Bitcoin’s shortcomings. That naturally led to certain differences between the two, some of which we’ll mention below.
Mining Algorithm
Perhaps it is the most fundamental distinction between Dash’s X11 and Bitcoin’s PoW mining algorithm. In addition to the X11, Dash uses CoinJoin to mix up and secure every transaction on the blockchain.
All Bitcoin transactions must be verified by the nodes within the network, requiring significant investment infrastructure for full nodes dedicated to mining. Miners need to spend a lot of time to achieve desired results because the network can only process a limited amount of transaction data at a time. Slow processing leads to a backlog of transactions that could increase transaction fees and make Bitcoin unfitting for daily transactions.
However, the presence of master nodes allows Dash’s system to easily verify and validate transactions. Masternodes are a group of dash users responsible for validating transactions from the miner network to the Dash network. They also have a 1,000 Dash in their systems as a starting stake. Since the system only needs a reasonable number of nodes to validate transactions, scalability is no longer an issue.
Transaction Speed
With the continuous growth in the number of crypto transactions, slow systems will become useless and speed will become a necessity, not a bonus. On average, it takes at least 15 minutes to verify and sometimes up to one hour to complete bitcoin transactions. The arrival of Ethereum (ETH) largely solved that problem since users could buy and sell ETH and have the transactions show in five minutes.
To solve that problem, Dash created a decentralized technology called InstantSend to verify transactions in less than ten seconds. With the launch of Dash.014, all transactions operate on InstandSend by default, and it’s supported by a wide range of wallets such as Kraken, Bitrefill, Dash Wallet (in all platforms), among others.
Fees
Another major difference between Dash and Bitcoin is their transaction fees. Block size and time of the order are some of the factors influencing Bitcoin’s transaction fees. As mentioned before, Bitcoin’s scalability issues create a backlog of transactions waiting to be confirmed and processed. Hence, with such a long queue of transactions, the cost goes up because miners put higher fee transactions in priority. That’s why the fees for a single Bitcoin transaction can go as high as a few dollars or more.
However, Dash’s simplicity and speed eliminate waiting times and bring down the cost to pennies. In fact, its average transaction fee is currently less than $0.03, which is insanely lower than Bitcoin’s average transaction fees.
Governance
One of the upsides to crypto is that the government or financial institutions don’t govern them. However, there are still differences in terms of their governance structure. For instance, Bitcoin’s dependence on peer review makes changes and decision-making very time-consuming. Why? Because it requires a consensus among its active contributors, only achievable after lengthy debates.
Unlike Bitcoin, most, if not all, changes or decisions on Dash are approved through a formal voting system that determines the next step within a short period. Masternodes play a critical role in the voting process and receive 45% of Dash’s block rewards. Miners receive another 45%, and the remaining 10% is placed in the treasury to help Dash self-fund its future projects.
Bottom Line
In this article, we tried to answer the question, “how is Dash different from Bitcoin?” As you can see, Dash has certain advantages over Bitcoin, which is only natural because Dash is a newcomer compared to the first-gen crypto. However, it’s not the differences that make one better than the other. Choosing the right coin ultimately depends on your strategy and needs. For instance, if you don’t make many transactions, Bitcoin’s transaction speed and high fees shouldn’t be a problem.
All in all, whether you want to buy Bitcoin, Dash, Ethereum, or any other crypto on the market, you want to do it securely and cheaply without being shackled by deposit and withdrawal limits or low liquidity. That’s just some of the benefits that a reliable OTC desk like Secure Digital Markets can offer and a crypto exchange can’t!
So, don’t hesitate and contact us right now! We’ll get you onboard in no time and take care of everything!
