DemocraticCoin, or DCoin for short, is a project seemingly born of necessity.

Dmitry Kharitonov, DCoin's developer, lives in Russia. You know – the Russia where state actors are making it harder and scarier for people like Dmitry to use the currency of their choice. He says:

“I couldn’t help thinking that if DCoin ever becomes popular, it might become a target of governmental authorities, who would start imposing sanctions against exchanges (which already happens in Russia, where we’re struggling under a dictatorial regime). There was a need for a DCoin to exist without exchanges, banks and other intermediaries.”

And so Dmitry worked on DCoin's development for 3.5 years. During the process, he formulated 10 tips for other developers wanting to do the same, and shared them with Cointelegraph:

  1. Define the benefit for end users – specifically. Does your new coin provide increased convenience, new thrills, or the ability to profit without much investment? Whatever the benefits are, articulate them precisely.
  2. Establish a global goal and keep it in mind. As the corny but wise ones say, “If you shoot for the moon and miss, you'll still end up among the stars.”
  3. Write the code yourself. But before writing it, think carefully think about the choice of programming language. Make sure the choice in language aligns with your numbers one and two.
  4. Don’t seek for approval until you have a prototype to show. It's too easy to be misunderstood by others.
  5. You don't need to be a people-person. You don’t necessarily need to team up with others to create your project. Just write the code.
  6. Don’t search for investors. If your creation is good, they will come.
  7. Don't beat yourself up if you miss your personal deadlines. The coding and refining process may take a lot longer than you thought it would.
  8. Relentlessly search for vulnerabilities. Think like a hacker who wants to break into your cryptocurrency, and start there. Show your project to IT experts as soon as possible so they can point out the weak spots that you miss.
  9. Kill the perfectionist within. It's more important to deliver a workable product in a timely manner than a perfect product in the far and hypothetical future. If your code succeeds, it will likely be rewritten from scratch by a professional team anyway!
  10. Be able to explain the nature of your project in 60 seconds. It's called an “elevator pitch,” and you need to have one.

Dmitry's tools for making DemocraticCoin into an exchange-less currency are complex, and his overall goal is to transform “national currencies [into] their decentralized analogues.”

Whether or not either of these goals matches yours (or whether you're a “Bitcoin maximalist” who believes that one coin must rule them all), this much is sure: oppressed Russians creating nimble new currencies is a good sign. And it's all the better when they share their pro tips.

Did you enjoy this article? You may also be interested in reading these ones: