Some of Bitcoin's developers have left the project and are now starting their separate digital currency called Decred, promoting an open governance model, which they say is missing in Bitcoin.

The new cryptocurrency is looking to solve what Company 0 CEO Jacob Yocom-Piatt said is the biggest problem with bitcoin: It’s controlled by a small group of external actors who decide how the service will evolve, often in spite of developer objections and to the detriment of users. To address the problem, former bitcoin developers are opting for a decentralized, community-based governance model. The Decred team also plans to introduce a number of features that include:

- A consenus-based system using proof of work and proof of stake;

- Hashing via the Blake-256 algorithm; Ed25519/secp256k1-Schnorr or secp256k1 signatures to improve software integration;

- Potential bitcoin compatibility.

Simply put, Decred wants to eliminate governance and decision-making issues that plague bitcoin while keeping many of the central functions intact. It makes sense: Bitcoin has garnered enough positive attention and investor confidence that there’s no need to reinvent the wheel. Rather, the cryptocurrency aims to coast along on bitcoin’s momentum with promises of improved security and better collaboration.