On the 31st of October 2022, the Decred project announced the adoption of Decred’s time-stamping feature by Brazil’s newly elected president to combat misinformation and fake news.
Decred News Update – Brazil's future President uses Decred time-stamping, LTC markets on DCRDEX, dcrd v1.7.5 & more!https://t.co/zFtSc60Gfu
— Decred (@decredproject) October 31, 2022
Following the recent election battles between Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil saw firsthand the havoc of misinformation and attacks which ranged from accusations of cannibalism, corruption, and deforestation just to name a few, the president-elect, Lula da Silva has announced intentions to use Decentralized credit or Decred, in his fight against misinformation.
This is not a surprise, as Brazil has been at the forefront of utilizing crypto projects. In June this year, Deputy Paulo Martins introduced a bill that would legalize the use of crypto assets as alternative means of payment while limiting the court’s power over the wallets of citizens.
This means that though the assets are utilizable to pay personal debts, they are not to be forcefully conscripted to pay public bills like taxes. And the adoption of Decred is a welcome development.
Decred is a project built to be truly centralized. It was built at the heels of bitcoin, to address voting and decentralization issues, and it would seem that they have been able to achieve its goals. This is because every holder of the DCR coin has full voting rights regardless of the amount of DCR assets they own.
Unlike other crypto projects that give priority to users with higher token amounts, Decred has successfully avoided the “on-chain plutocracy”.
The adoption of Decred would allow citizens to vote not for politicians, but for policies of import. This would also timestamp policies, making it transparent and available for general consumption and confirmation.
Decred achieves this with their Politeia voting solution which is completely independent of any central authority. Politeia is the system currently used by the Decred community to vote on funding proposals. With the voting system, time stamping, and compatibility with other blockchains, Decred would be capable of providing Referendums as a service.
In the near future, Politeia, combined with smart contract capacity would allow citizens to vote for real-world applications of policies, and laws.
