dnscrypt-proxy provides local service which can be used directly as your local resolver or as a DNS forwarder,
encrypting and authenticating requests using the DNSCrypt protocol and passing them to an upstream server,
by default Cisco who run this on their resolvers. (It used to be OpenDNS.)

The DNSCrypt protocol uses high-speed high-security elliptic-curve cryptography and is very similar to
DNSCurve, but focuses on securing communications between a client and its first-level resolver.

While not providing end-to-end security, it protects the local network, which is often the weakest point
of the chain, against man-in-the-middle attacks. It also provides some confidentiality to DNS queries.