## What Is Dero (DERO)?

[Dero](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/dero/) is the first crypto project to combine a [proof-of-work](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/proof-of-work-pow) blockchain with a [DAG](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/directed-acyclic-graph-dag) block structure and wholly anonymous transactions. It aims to be a revolutionary improvement from existing privacy coins like [Monero (XMR)](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/monero/) or [Z-Cash (ZEC)](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/zcash/). Dero intends to do that by combining the best of both [consensus mechanisms](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/consensus-mechanism). 

Its implementation builds out a main chain from the DAG network of blocks, which refers to main blocks and side blocks. Side blocks contribute to chain proof-of-work security, making traditional 51% attacks impossible. In contrast to traditional blockchains, Dero considers the transaction as the smallest unit of computation, not the block. Therefore, blocks on Dero can contain duplicate or double-spend transactions, but these are filtered by the client protocol and ignored by the network. 

In plain English, Dero supposedly manages to combine the security and decentralization of a proof-of-work blockchain with the scalability and transaction speed of DAG technology. Dero’s goal is a blockchain network that can serve businesses and individuals worldwide and support secure, fast, and anonymous transactions and [smart contract](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/smart-contract) execution. 


## Who Are the Founders of Dero?

Dero was launched in December 2017 by a team of three full-time developers. Its team is anonymous but claims to have over a decade of experience in cryptography each, with multiple years of experience in blockchain development on top. Given the project’s complexity and the milestones the team reached — it basically designed an entirely new consensus mechanism in Golang, a programming language with a high degree of immunity to security vulnerabilities — it’s safe to assume that Dero was created by people with long hands-on experience in cryptography.


## What Makes Dero Unique?

Dero was developed from scratch to support millions of users with enhanced reliability, privacy, security and usability. It followed a “build it and they will come” approach in the sense that the team focused on designing working technology first, before focusing on marketing.

One of its key features is the utilization of CryptoNote, a protocol that conceals the sender and receiver of a transaction, protecting the identity of all parties involved and ensuring privacy. It is also the first blockchain to have complete SSL in the peer-to-peer layer. This encrypts all its network traffic and conceals it from internet service providers wishing to analyze the traffic.

Dero is also the first CryptoNote blockchain to have 75 transactions per second on its native blockchain, not using any scaling solutions like [lightning networks](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/lightning-network). Notably, this is significantly above the roughly five transactions per second Bitcoin achieves. Furthermore, it has ten times faster Bulletproof than normal. Bulletproofs is a cryptographic technique that reduces the space needed for zero-knowledge range proofs.

As such, Dero might address use cases that require privacy such as voting services, escrow services, and address certification/verification. Given the team's progress made so far, it established a minimum viable product in August 2018 and plans to launch smart contracts on the mainnet in Q3 2021; Dero can lay a legitimate claim on being one of the top privacy coins on the market.


#### Related Pages:

Check out [Iota](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/iota/) — another project built on directed acyclic graph technology.

Check out [Monero (XMR)](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/monero/) — the most popular privacy coin. 

Check out [Z-Cash (ZEC)](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/zcash/) — another privacy coin. 

Learn more about privacy coins in our [detailed guide to privacy coins](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/article/what-are-privacy-coins).

Get the latest crypto news and latest trading insights with CoinMarketCap’s education portal — [Alexandria](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/).


## How Many Dero (DERO) Coins Are There in Circulation?

Dero has a maximum supply of 18.4 million. An initial pre-mine of two million DERO was established on network launch but is not part of the circulating supply. It will be used to finance development and marketing. Dero has a submission rate of 157,000 DERO/year with a smoothly varying block reward. Its block time is at 27 seconds, significantly faster than that of other proof-of-work blockchains, with confirmation time being 4.5 minutes. 


## How Is the Dero Network Secured?

Dero designed its unique and powerful security mechanism. Besides the outlined features, Dero implemented a new mining algorithm called AstroBWT, an open-source proof-of-work consensus mechanism based on one-CPU-one-vote. This consensus mechanism reduces the performance advantage of specialized hardware, preventing the sort of miner oligopoly that Bitcoin suffers from, with miners using [ASICs](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/asic) to mine Bitcoin. This distributes mining rewards more fairly and a consensus is reached by a majority decision via CPU power of its network of nodes. 

By combining the CryptoNote protocol with DAG, Dero is resistant to hash rate attacks and soft forks without suffering downtime. It is also the fastest CryptoNote-based blockchain deployed. 


## Where Can You Buy Dero (DERO)?

DERO is available on [KuCoin](https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/kucoin/), [TradeOgre](https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/tradeogre/), [CoinEx](https://coinmarketcap.com/de/exchanges/coinex/) and [ViteX](https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/vitex/). If you want to learn more about cryptocurrencies and how to start buying them, you can read more here in our education portal — [Alexandria](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/).


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