Names for smaller units

[xaur]

Two questions:

1. Which units we try to name: 1 DCR, 1e-6 DCR, 1e-8 DCR ('atom' currently)?
2. How to name each specific unit?

Pool of names collected from discussions: decreds, creds, credits, bits, tacos, tacs, tacatoms, tacobits, dbits, dits, dats, mDCs.

Discussions:

• 2018-01-05: atoms, lots of name ideas
• 2019-03-19: more visibility to "decentralized credits", tacos, making Decred simpler for wider audience, sci-fi

[anshawblack]

1 = Decentralized Credit / Decred / DCR

Splits/breaks into

100,000,000 = DCRs

Its our ticker and its familiar, I feel the name doesnt have to be different since our project is still young. These arent dollars and cents which are physically different.

“Ill send over 855,750 DCRs” The magnitude will naturally create the separation.

DCRs is elegant and remains familiar

Thats my 2 DCRs ;)

[artikozel]

So 1 DCR is 1 DCR and 0.00000001 DCR? Won't this be confusing with the biggest and smallest denomination called the same?

[anshawblack]

1 - Decentralized Credit / Decred / DCR

100,000,000 = DCR(s) < Plural

[xaur]

@anshawblack using "DCR" for more than 1 unit will lead to nothing but confusion.

Currently we have 1 DCR = 100,000,000 atoms, atom being the smallest unit which aligns with its name.

If 'atom' doesn't gain traction beyond technical context (like code and documentation), I see no problem adding another name for 0.00000001 (1e-8) DCR.

Introducing a name for other unit is a possibility, e.g. calling 1/1000th DCR a 'taco', although we need to be careful to not add more UI mess as it was noted in chat.

[anshawblack]

Im not married to it, just a suggestion. Politeia Polls would be great for issues like this.

[buck54321]

Not to be too obvious, but what about

1 = credit 1e-3 = millicredit 1e-6 = microcredit 1e-8 = atom

[xaur]

Not sure if "average joes" would appreciate SI prefixes, but I like millicredit/microcredit - it's straightforward and intuitive.

[xaur]

Interesting argument here: Decred's atoms may be confused with Cosmos' $ATOM.

[xaur]

Poll and discussion here.

Arguments for/against "atoms":

• • "credit" is better than "atom" for mass adoption
• • Atoms are the basic building blocks of matter. They are also the smallest recognized division of a chemical element. When applied to currency, it can be argued that atoms are a good name for the smallest particle.
• • bonus: tacotime = atom etic
• • "atom" refers to atomic swaps
• • there is already an emoji ⚛️
• • "atom" is used as ticker by Cosmos
• • there are plenty of smaller particles (protons, neutrons, electrons, photons, etc.)

Arguments for/against "creds":

• • Satoshi=Sats, Credit=Cred's
• • "cred" sounds like "crud" => "credit" is better
• • if smallest unit is called "credit", people may organically start to shorten it to "cred" (but this wouldn't work the other way round)
• • "credit" is bad for marketing because it associates with debt

New ideas: decs, tics (short for ticket)

[noahpierau]

Let's replace atoms with credits!

Decred stands for decentralized credits, thus naming the most fundamental unit "credit" seems logical.

1 DCR = 100M credits

In daily operations 1 credit is too small, so the word would mainly be used in the plural from (eliminating the associations with credit card debt).

People generally find it easy to calculate money in thousands (K) and millions (M) as opposed to fractions (milli or micro) of a unit. Perhaps because it gives a positive feeling: everyone who owns >0.01 DCR is suddenly a millionaire!

Credits are widely used to refer to money in futuristic science fiction settings - for example in Star Wars - so it will be more intuitive to understand the Decred project (money for the future). These sci-fi works may also provide great meme material.

Last but not least, satoshis are often called sats in daily use. When we replace atoms with credits, Decred will have creds. This gives us #collectingcreds as equivalent of the widely used #stackingsats meme.

---

There are many more arguments to make (for example why "atoms" is a less suitable naming convention for monetary units), but for now I will keep it brief. It should be clear that "credits" is my personal preference, but I'm willing to align with the stakeholder majority if there are convincing alternatives.

[Tsunekazu]

Satoshi => Sats ... Tacotime => Tacs I unironically support this. It's silly but so is "sats". Silly things sometimes stick more than professional/elegant solutions. Also, my mental association when I think of "credit" is "debt". Most Europeans associate that word with debt. (I know the intended association is the 'cyberpunk' one, but I'm not sure whether most people get that association.)

[lukebp]

One thing that people might not be taking into consideration is the terminology used throughout the Decred codebases. Whenever you're dealing with a DCR value, you're typically going to reference the value in atoms so that you don't have to deal with floats. For example, a quick search of the term "atom" turned up 2,858 hits in the dcrwallet codebase alone.

The point that I want to get across is that changing terminology like this is not as simple as it may appear. I'm personally not in favor of any terminology changes for this reason.

[RichardRed0x]

That's a good point, I have been thinking of "atoms" as a fairly obscure term that doesn't appear in many places. If it is prevalent in the codebase that's a good reason to leave it alone. Something like @buck54321 suggestion of popularizing use of levels greater than atoms could be a better approach.

[anshawblack]

Im with Luke, I suggested a name change at first. After being made aware of its significance in the code its a non starter. I would vote no if a proposal is launched. Our devs have more important issues to resolve.

[CP4Cloud2]

The use of “atom” in the code is irrelevant. This is a marketing thing, and developers can handle both names being interchangeable (in the code they can use atom, but everywhere else they can use creds). I support the switch to credits or “creds” for short.

[ghost]

i think the argument against are all logical, measurable and pragmatic while arguments for are mostly nebulous, emotional and superficial. Still i love the credits theory and i think this is more than a name change proposal. This can be a good test proposal for testing how much a social media spectacle of a topic can influence the stakeholder vote especially when coming from within the community. I would encourage proposal submitter to use all the tricks of social manipulation and sock puppetry they can employ to make this as close to a real social attack via trivial emotion based issue.

[noahpierau]

Most developers don't think from a mass adoption point of view. They mainly see the technical perspective, while the average person cares about stories and ideas rather than technology. Most people just want a story that makes sense or an idea they can get behind. The social aspect of Decred has been overlooked for a long time (and this could very well be the reason why DCR is undervalued by the market right now).

If you agree with me that DCR will one day be a top 5 blockchain project, small units matter. The Lighting Network will speed this process up since LN fees are extremely low.

The prevalence of "atom" in Decred's code (spread across >4 repositories, thousands of mentions) is definitely a factor to take into account. I'm not a developer but I think this should be approached with care. I also think using "atom" in code and "credits" in the user interface is a bad idea since it can cause confusion. We should try to build consensus around one naming convention.

For now I have seen arguments why we should change to "credits" and I have seen arguments why we should keep "atoms" but one perspective is lacking: why was "atoms" selected in the first place? What was the idea behind using "atoms" to refer to monetary units? How can we use it to tell Decred's story? Do you see the sentence "the price for your coffee is 4.86K atoms" become a daily reality?

Another approach is to define an additional unit of account in Decred, for example:

1 DCR = 1M credits 1 atom = 0.01 credits

The final question that I want to ask: why do people care so much about names? This is a discussion that resurfaces every now and then and it attracts a lot of social media activity. I wonder why that is? And is it possible to settle it once and for all?

[Tsunekazu]

@QuadraQ1 makes a good point. A name change doesn't need to be 'official'. Just like we call dollars "bucks", people can call decred units whatever they like... let it emerge naturally and see what sticks. There's no need to make a big deal out of this.

probably better to use 'credits' for 10 or 100 atoms though, per @noahpierau post

[xaur]

@noahpierau

why was "atoms" selected in the first place? What was the idea behind using "atoms" to refer to monetary units?

I don't know the original reasoning but I always thought that "atom" is used because the original meaning of this word was "indivisible" or something. Perhaps from ancient Greece, to which Decred seems to have some connection (Politeia). Atoms in physics were broken down further and it looks like they called "atom" a wrong particle. Unlike that, in Decred 1/100,000,000 DCR is truly the smallest "indivisible" unit so the name is fully justified (whether it is a good everyday name is another question).

1 DCR = 1M credits
1 atom = 0.01 credits

Fun idea. 1 credit = 100 atoms would then be similar to 1 dollar = 100 cents. Whether such "credit" will be a useful unit in everyday communications is a separate question:

Do you see the sentence "the price for your coffee is 4.86K atoms" become a daily reality?

The problem is we can't pick a unit that will stay useful forefer. Assuming $2 coffee and $28.5 DCR, 1 coffee is currently:

• 0.07 DCR => inconvenient
• 7 million atoms => inconvenient
• 70 thousand credits (1e-6 DCR) => inconvenient
• 70 of 1e-3 DCR => not too bad

Following buck54321's idea, 1e-6 is "microcredit" and 1e-3 is "millicredit". A coffe for 70 millicredits? I can tolerate that, although it's not the best.

If 1 DCR becomes 10,000 USD then "credits" will suddenly become usable and a coffee would be 200 credits.

why do people care so much about names?

A belief that Decred's adoption and market performance can be made smoother and greater with a "simple" fix of something that none of the tech heads ever thought of, like a name change or a rebrand? Just one of many guesses.

What I do know is that this topic keeps coming up (unlike something I feel is settled for now - #75), people have interest and generate ideas. Unlike being rehashed and overlapping with other topics in chat, I'm glad all ideas for this one (and none other) are collected in one place.

[buck54321]

How about restyling the currency units as D-Credits, with milli-D, micro-D, and atoms for smaller denominations? It removes the first e from decred, which destroys the negating de prefix, and says the full credits, adding clarity. The name is fully compatible with the project name Decred = "decentralized credits".

The notation would be 1 D = 10³ mD = 10⁶ μD = 10⁸ Å.

[xaur]

https://www.reddit.com/r/decred/comments/kq0uh2/names_of_the_units_of_decred/