{% comment %} This file is licensed under the MIT License (MIT) available on http://opensource.org/licenses/MIT. {% endcomment %} {% assign filename="_includes/devdoc/ref_intro.md" %} {% autocrossref %} The Developer Reference aims to provide technical details and API information to help you start building Dash-based applications, but it is [not a specification][]. To make the best use of this documentation, you may want to install the current version of Dash Core, either from [source][core git] or from a [pre-compiled executable][core executable]. Questions about Dash development are best asked in one of the [Dash development communities][dev communities]. Errors or suggestions related to documentation on {Dash.org} can be [submitted as an issue][docs issue] or posted to the [bitcoin-documentation mailing list][]. In the following documentation, some strings have been shortened or wrapped: "[...]" indicates extra data was removed, and lines ending in a single backslash "\\" are continued below. If you hover your mouse over a paragraph, cross-reference links will be shown in blue. If you hover over a cross-reference link, a brief definition of the term will be displayed in a tooltip. {% endautocrossref %} #### Not A Specification {:.no_toc} {% include helpers/subhead-links.md %} {% autocrossref %} The {Dash.org} Developer Documentation describes how Dash works to help educate new Dash developers, but it is not a specification---and it never will be. Dash security depends on consensus. Should your program diverge from consensus, its security is weakened or destroyed. The cause of the divergence doesn't matter: it could be a bug in your program, it could be an [error in this documentation][errors in docs] which you implemented as described, or it could be you do everything right but other software on the network [behaves unexpectedly][v0.8 chain fork] as in the case of Bitcoin's v0.8 chain fork. The specific cause will not matter to the users of your software whose wealth is lost. The only correct specification of consensus behavior is the actual behavior of programs on the network which maintain consensus. As that behavior is subject to arbitrary inputs in a large variety of unique environments, it cannot ever be fully documented here or anywhere else. In addition, we also warn you that this documentation has not been extensively reviewed by Dash experts and so likely contains numerous errors. At the bottom of the menu on the left, you will find links that allow you to report an issue or to edit the documentation on GitHub. Please use those links if you find any errors or important missing information. {% endautocrossref %}