The features below are implemented in Decred and will be available in full at launch. For a deeper description, please consult the Decred Technical Brief.

• Novel hybridized proof-of-work/proof-of-stake (PoW/PoS) consensus system - A decentralized lottery is used to select PoS miners to vote on PoW blocks. The PoW and PoS subsidies account for 60% and 30% of each total block subsidy, respectively. This system is based on that of MC2, which is very similar to, but developed independently from, Proof-of-Activity (PoA) by Iddo Bentov, Charles Lee, Alex Mizrahi and Meni Rosenfeld.
• Cold staking and decentralized stake pooling - The ability to generate new coins without the risk of having your coins online when PoS mining. The PoS mining system has also been engineered with distributed, decentralized stake pooling in mind, so that even those with small amounts of stake can participate in network validation.
• Internal voting system for the addition of new features and hard or soft fork selection - Both PoW and PoS miners can vote for features and issues through bit flags, providing a sensible mechanism for resolving disputes about the features of the blockchain.
• Immutable transaction hashes ("transaction IDs") by separating transaction signatures from the rest of the transaction data - A permanent fix for transaction hash malleability has been implemented that prevents mutability of the transaction hash by separating it from its input signatures. This allows more efficient SPV validation. Fraud proofs have also been added.
• Elliptic curve cryptography over secp256k1 with optional Curve25519 support - The Bitcoin scripting system has been modified to allow for simple, drop-in addition of new elliptical curve digital signature algorithms.
• Schnorr signatures with threshold n-of-n support - In addition to supporting Schnorr signatures, groups of signers can now jointly sign transactions off-chain in constant size signatures, ensuring higher privacy and less blockchain bloat.
• Script enhancements and new OP codes - New OP codes have been added to the existing Bitcoin scripting engine, and extensions for the plug-in use of future scripting engines have been added.
• PoW mining using BLAKE256 hash algorithm - Inspired by Bernstein's Chacha stream cipher, SHA3 finalist BLAKE256 offers speed as well as high security.
• Compatibility with Bitcoin transaction scripting system - Decred's scripting system has been derived from Bitcoin's with care in ensuring that all future updates to the Bitcoin transaction script will be easily extensible to Decred. Further, any newly created functionalities will also be devised with backwards compatibility with Bitcoin in mind.
• Modularized, easy-to-use Golang btcsuite codebase - Thanks the to the codebase inherited from btcsuite, adding new features to the daemon or wallet will be facile. Decred will episodically sync updates from btcsuite, so that it benefits from the latest developments in Bitcoin.
• Hierarchical deterministic (HD) wallets - Wallets use a seed to deterministically generate addresses, so your wallet can be restored from a single BIP0032 seed.
• Transaction expiration - Transactions have a new expiration field to prevent inclusion into the blockchain after a certain height.
• Patches for intrinsic Bitcoin bugs - Extra push for multisignature scripts has been removed, SIGHASH_SINGLE behavior has been corrected.
• Approximately 21 million coins - Exponential decay in subsidy or the number of coins generated per year.
• Self-funded development via block subsidy - In order to have an ongoing source of funding for development work, a consensus rule has been added to allocate 10% of each block subsidy to a development organization. This entity is transparent and responsible for funding development work performed by current and new developers so that the project remains sustainable without a funding dependence on outside forces in the future. Decred therefore improves with growth in a sustainable way and is accountable only to its users.

In addition to the technical features that make up the technology, Decred as a project introduces several development and governance features and proposals to ensure and steer long-term growth. We encourage participants to discuss these topics earnestly, as we want to ensure the system of development and governance is built on a solid foundation.

• A multi-stakeholder development ecosystem that welcomes and empowers participants who want to build new functionality and improve on existing features.
• Any party can submit feature proposals and developers are paid for work to fulfill requirements. This is done in full view of the community in a system designed to fight against ingroup-outgroup dynamics.
• The initial contributors are the developers responsible for btcsuite (est. early 2013 - present).
• A proposal for a layered form of transparent meritocratic governance that extends beyond proof-of-work and proof-of-stake mechanisms to bring forward and represent insider and outsider voices in the community.
• A proposal for bottom-up decision-making through the Decred Assembly, an evolving and inclusive list of community members who make non-financial contributions to the project through their work and effort.
• The project is bound by the Decred Constitution on the core principles of finite issuance, privacy, security, fungibility, inclusivity, and progressive development of the technology that keeps these principles together.