Dash (formerly known as Darkcoin and XCoin) is an open source peer-to-peer cryptocurrency that uses a system called Darksend to add privacy to transactions.[1] It was rebranded from “Darkcoin” to “Dash” on March 25, 2015, a portmanteau of “Digital Cash”.[2]
One of the features of Dash is decentralized governance, making it a decentralized autonomous organization.[3] Token fungibility and user transaction privacy is another feature,[4] which is provided by a service called Darksend, a decentralized coin-mixing service provided by the network.
Dash uses a chained hashing algorithm approach called X11 for the proof-of-work. Instead of using the SHA-256 (from well-known Secure Hash Algorithm family) or scrypt it uses 11 rounds of different hashing functions.[5] The main reason for X11, was to duplicate the maturation cycle of the mining economy, which was originally important to Evan Duffield.