DERO is a new blockchain protocol and smart contract platform, using an account model with homomorphically encrypted balances. This means that tokens issued by smart contracts inherit all the privacy and fungibility properties of the native DERO token. Because it has an account model, wallets synchronize instantly, and nodes can run in "light" mode, pruning their history.
It is a proof-of-work chain, using a variant of the BWT algorithm for hashing, which is bottlenecked by cache/memory bandwidth, which helps to minimize the performance difference between different device types. Together with the fact that each node can act as a mining pool, this helps to increase egalitarianism and decentralization of supply, access, and control.
Finally, the DERO blockchain is implemented as a directed acyclic graph, rather than a pure chain. Transactions can be included in multiple blocks (which induces the graph structure), without being counted twice. These "side blocks" help to increase the network throughput: on test net, the DERO DAG has achieved >750 transactions per second.
