Decred was reportedly formed in 2013 with a focus on protecting cryptocurrency mining and minting from further centralization. For this reason, Decred uses a combination of proof-of-work (PoW) and proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus mechanisms in order to support and secure its blockchain network.

The group behind Decred started in the online Bitcointalk community and supposedly began discussing ideas for a new altcoin that would address some of the issues in crypto at the time. Among those issues was the heavy centralization of blockchain mining and minting protocols.

The group reportedly began writing a whitepaper very soon after this conversation. The coin, originally called MemeCoin2, was later said to have been picked up by Company 0 and launched under the name Decred in 2016. #DCR