In our last article, we outlined some of the promising developments that Dash has planned for 2022. To give some background, we briefly described Dash Platform, knowing that we’d want to expand on it later. And with that, we wanted to explain in more detail what Dash Platform is and why you should know more about it.

What Is Dash Platform?

Dash Platform offers application developers a platform to use the Dash masternode network and blockchain. It transforms the Dash peer-to-peer network into a cloud where developers can integrate applications.

Using Layer 1 blockchain for data storage is expensive and inefficient. To optimize performance, Dash Platform’s Drive is a Layer 2 component that provides decentralized storage hosted by masternodes. Drive stores records of the current state of each item as data changes. Another efficiency with Dash is its decentralized API (DAPI). It uses Dash’s masternode layer to provide an API for accessing the network. DAPI allows integrating with Layer 1 (Core blockchain) and Layer 2 (Platform) functionality.

Resources & Benefits for Dash Platform Apps

Payments Infrastructure

Developers can tap into the financial power of Dash cryptocurrency. Dash’s proven payments infrastructure is fast, secure, inexpensive, and supported by Dash’s decentralized cloud.

Application Data Storage

Developers can use the Dash blockchain to store financial application data in a document-oriented database.

High Availability Network

Unlike centralized platforms, Platform provides highly available data distributed across the Dash network. It’s secure, verifiable, and resilient.

Key Features of Dash Platform

Dash Platform Name Service (DPNS)

DPNS is a data contract and supporting logic for name registration. It enables friendly naming in place of highly-technical addressing like public key hashes.

Identities

Dash Platform supports the creation of identities in support of DPNS. They provide a way for users to interact and identify other users using easy to use IDs.

Names

Names provide the link between DPNS names and identities.

Data Contracts

Platform enables creating data contracts to define schema (structure) of data to be stored. Contract schema belong to their originating identity.

Documents

Documents store data associated with data contracts. Data can be updated or deleted.

Timeline

Dash Platform is currently only available on Testnet. Its official launch is slated for Q2 of 2022. Developers have been actively using Testnet (and before that Evonet) for the past couple of years.