Dash (DASH)
Dash stands for "Digital Cash." It was built on the Bitcoin feature set (as a fork of Litecoin) and was originally called XCoin. It then changed temporarily to DarkCoin before eventually being rebranded as Dash. Dash is designed purely as a cryptocurrency.
Mining/Staking
Dash, like Bitcoin, uses a Proof of Work mining system. However, it goes beyond that as a two-tier network. Certain network functions, such as creating new blocks, are handled by the miners. The second tier of the Dash network consists of "masternodes" which perform PrivateSend, InstantSend, and governance functions.
Development Team
The creator of Dash was Evan Duffield. The project now has a large development and advisory team.
Criticisms, Caveats, and Competitors
During the first two days of existence of the project, 1.9 million coins were mined very rapidly, and went to the early holders. This basically turned out to be a massive pre-mine, whether it was intentional or not, and represents about ten percent of the total maximum coin supply for the project.
Additional Resources
The project's main website: https://www.dash.org
Link to Wikipedia Page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dash_(cryptocurrency)
Link to Reddit Community: https://www.reddit.com/r/dashpay
Link to Twitter account: https://twitter.com/dashpay
Link to Team information: https://www.dash.org/team
Link to data on Live Coin Watch: https://www.livecoinwatch.com/coins/DASH
Whitepaper: https://github.com/dashpay/dash/wiki/Whitepaper