DIP: Locale-based, User-Friendly Significant Digits

dip-aj-significant-locale-digits.md

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+<pre>
+  DIP: aj-locale-decimal-places
+  Title: User-Friendly, Locale-based Significant Digits
+  Authors: coolaj86
+  Special-Thanks: Rion Gull
+  Comments-Summary: No comments yet.
+  Status: Draft
+  Type: Standard
+  Created: 2023-06-30
+  License: CC0-1.0
+</pre>
+
+## Table of Contents
+
+- [Table of Contents](#table-of-contents)
+- [Abstract](#abstract)
+- [Prior Art](#prior-art)
+- [Motivation](#motivation)
+- [Specification](#specification)
+- [Copyright](#copyright)
+
+## Abstract
+
+This DIP proposes to only show DASH in increments that are useful to the end
+user, rounding down excess digits.
+
+Before:
+
+```text
+You've received 0.99999807 DASH
+```
+
+After:
+
+```text
+You've received 0.999 DASH
+```
+
+keywords: denominations denominated floor round down locale
+
+## Motivation
+
+The value of DASH can be quite volatile from one day, hour, or even second to
+next. So much so that showing 8 decimal places of "sats" is not helpful to end
+users. In fact, it probably degrades user experience significantly for most
+people.
+
+Also, there are no delimiters for the right side of a decimal place:
+
+```
+10,000,000.00000000
+```
+
+Although terms such as "mDash" exist, they are not widely used in Dash software
+and, since they don't follow general scientific notation that most people are
+familiar with internationally (DASH uses 8 decimal places, not 9), they can be
+confusing to try to use.
+
+The volatility alone from one (literal) minute to the next make it unreasonable
+to track so many decimal places.
+
+Also, exchanges such as Kraken do not honor DASH coins less than `0.01`.
+
+Other price estimators rarely go to the full 8 decimal places.
+
+In Dash Discord channels this is often associated with the "mental gymnastics"
+necessary to use DASH.
+
+If DASH is to be "Digital Cash", the value shown to the user should be limited
+to "spendable" amounts (ex: how much DASH would I need for a casual, low cost
+commodity such as pack of gum, breath mints, bottle of water, or bread).
+
+## Specification
+
+Due to the volatile nature of DASH a fixed number of decimal places may not
+always apply, but we can apply locale information and a simple set of rules that
+will almost always be correct.
+
+1. Select the lowest, known-cost commodity, priced in DASH.
+2. If the price in DASH is not available, use data based on the user's preferred
+   local currency and convert that value into DASH.
+3. Round up (`ceil`) to the next most significant decimal place.
+4. Divide by 10.
+5. This is the maximum number of decimal places that SHOULD be shown to the
+   user.
+6. DASH shown in this amount should be rounded down. \
+   Ex: if 3 decimal places are used, `0.99999807` MUST be shown as `0.999`
+
+Example:
+
+```text
+Bottle of Water:    $1.19 (USD, my Locale)
+Water in  Dash:     0.031654 DASH (as of the date of this publication)
+Significant Digit:  0.04 DASH
+Divide by 10:       0.004
+Number of Decimals: 3
+```
+
+Caveats:
+
+- The User Agent MUST allow the user to override this in settings
+- The User Agent MUST NOT exceed this by more than 1 decimal place by default
+  ```
+  Algorithm suggests 0.001 as lowest denomination
+  Usage Agent MUST NOT show lower than 0.0001 by default
+  ```
+- In the absence of the appropriate data, the number of decimal places to be
+  shown SHOULD be 3 and MUST NOT be more than 4.
+- When possible the software should warn the user if they are sending an amount
+  to a contact or service that will not honor that number of decimal places
+
+## Copyright
+
+Copyright 2023 AJ ONeal.
+
+Written in 2023 by AJ ONeal <[email protected]> \
+To the extent possible under law, the author(s) have dedicated all copyright \
+and related and neighboring rights to this software to the public domain \
+worldwide. This software is distributed without any warranty. \
+
+You should have received a copy of the CC0 Public Domain Dedication along with \
+this software. If not, see <https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/>.