GoodBye 2015 - Hello 2016
I want to take the opportunity to thank everyone who has been a part of the community and supported the Reddcoin Project over this last year. It would be fair to say that 2015 was quite an eventful year in the life of Reddcoin. Unfortunately most of it was probably not the type of activity that helps promote a coins growth. I dont want to dwell on it too much now as it is history, but rather use this as an opportunity to finally close the door on this chapter and put closure to the events of the last year.
Trading wise, as the fireworks burst overhead on NYE the price of Reddcoin was still sitting sub 10 satoshis (trading between 4-6) after declining from a high of 13 satoshi in the early half of the year. The price has somewhat stablised throughout the year as it has bumped along in a downward trend. I am not going to make any speculation on the price for the coming year.
That said, it was not all doom and gloom and I am looking forward into 2016 as an eventful year.
I am excited!!
So as the year 2015 was coming to a close, you may have noticed my communication drop off considerably in the last couple of months. I have had a number of personal activities on my plate that diverted my attention to act socially.
- Birth of Son - Jacob
- Research and Studies
- Christmas Holiday break
Suffice to say, I have still been checking in as regularly as possible and when I have had some spare time. I have also used any other available time to be productive in the crypto space. Behind the scenes, I have been busy coding and researching and in the coming months you should start to see some of these activities coming into the lime-light.
I still believe in the legacy ideals of what Reddcoin was based and the social currency. We have been left with a coin that is technically stable and PoSV has proven to be a reliable staking algorithm. The blockchain is solid (although having some more staking (full) nodes would be nice) and overall it is behaving exactly the way it should. The blockchain parameters give a coin that has attributes that allow for fast transfers between users and in the âcointextâ of social tipping this is desirable. Coins such as Reddcoin lend themselves far better to these âmicroâ transactions.
Small, Fast and Reliable
So what have I been doing lately?
Throughout the year I have shared with you on the forums some of the things I have been doing. This list is by no means exhaustive, consider it more of a recap
- Brought online 2 new Reddcoin electrum server nodes
- Modified the code and created 2 new Reddcoin DNSseed nodes to improve discovery
- Created a new Reddcoin testnet (the old one disappeared??) which required resetting and building a new genesis for testnet.
- Creating a few patches for the current Reddcoin wallet version (exploit that caused peercoin to fork).
- Build a bunch of virtual machines for different platform testing scenarios (Mac, Linux, Windows) VMWare and VirtualBox
- Learnt about the gitian build process and done a number of trial runs.
- Researching and experimenting on the concept of âRedd-IDâ and sandboxing some code ideas.
- NodeBB forum upgrade testing
Whats in store for 2016??
New Wallet
The biggest news off the bat was mentioned in the latest December Readhead newsletter is that I have just finished a beta of a new wallet version that is based directly of Bitcoin (v0.9). This release was in the Reddcoin repository parly finished, but non-functional as far as i could tell. The principle Reddcoin functionality is now there, along with several features from Bitcoin that I need for my other activities. Currently, this is a closed beta test release and far from ready for public offering.
That said, I will be looking for technical adept people to help QA and provide feedback. PM me if your interested.
As for new features, I think it is important to watch what new ideas do come along. Most of them are technical in nature, such as handling block size, or block features like OP_RETURN and CHECKLOCKTIMEVERIFY (CTLV).
Redd ID (or what-ever name it eventually gets)??
This is the feature I will be directing a lot more of my time, effort and energy this year. I have already made a considerable start on the architecture and performed some tests. Of all features, it is the most desirable to deliver. And I will be sharing more details as I progress.
Forum Software Update
I hope to get this back on my focus as the new versions of NodeBB have some cool features. I see the forum as a possible tool that could used as a launchpad for Redd ID
Economics
One of the âcomplaintsâ presented of POS coins from other circles, is their ânothing at stakeâ and coin hoarding attributes. One of the things I will be looking at this year is how to build and promote an economy and encourage coin movement between users. Afterall isnât this watch we should be doing?
I have lots of ideas to explore on this topic.
In December, I was encouraged to see a drop in the overall percentage of coins held by the Top 100 addresses (51% down from 57%) This could have been due to a number of reasons, but all in all it is good to see this percentage moving lower.
Communication and Collaboration
It may interest you that I regularly discuss topics with like minded developers outside of Reddcoin. I think there is room to collaborate with others on ideas, while also maintaining ones own individuality. In this space, particularly OSS, I like the idea of being able to share different ideas and arrive at solutions.
During 2016, I hope to be able to expand on these contacts and also attend some conferences (will need to wait and see).
I also want to reach out to prior members of the community and bring back some of the excitement we previously had and invite ongoing development.
These are some of the key elements for the year ahead
Milestones
Very close to NYE, we celebrated the arrival of Block 1000000. I celebrated this achievement by donating 1000000 RDD to the staking wallet. Suffice to say, it moved that address into the Top 100.
Although a few other blockchains have gone before us, it is still no less an achievement to reach this milestone.
