State of the Redd-Nation :: Jan 16, 2016

Announcements
1

Updates

If you have been following the scene this week, it has been quite the eventful time in Crypto

  • Collapse of Cryptsy Exchange
  • Key Bitcoin Developer calling it dead
  • Claims of strategic moves by R3 to influence the industry
  • Several alternate Bitcoin wallet under development looking to improve transactions

If you were so inclined, especially on the first 3 points, you could be lead to believe that the sky is falling in the crypto space. But IMHO this couldnt be further from the truth. There is still a lot of exciting projects going on, and for the most part competition is healthy. I look forward to what new developments this can bring to the scene.

However, as exciting as all that seems, the show must go on and in Reddcoin Land with the New Year kicking in, I have been busy plugging away on the code and getting the first build out for testing.

2nd Anniversary

After staking our 1MM block on Dec 31, 2015 @ 6:54:16 AM I am pleased to say, that we are also approaching our second anniversary when the original Reddcoin genesis block was mined on Jan 21, 2014 @ 5:00am (UTC)

New Wallet

Work has continued on the new wallet over the Christmas/New Year period. And I am happy to say that the first cut of the code has already been compiled and is now being tested on the testnet network. So far, it is all going relatively well with nodes running and staking in Sydney, Singapore and Belgium. And, as with any new release a few bugs have already bubbled to the surface to which I have spent the last week squashing.

I have also spent sometime “debugging” OSx gitian builds. The new method in this branch makes the process much more simple.

This weekend I already kicked off a new build and will be doing some further testing with Linux, Windows and OSx with blockchain downloading and indexing.

Also I have had a few offers for further testing of the wallet once I am ready to move it out of closed beta. Thankyou to those who have offered. The invitation for this is not closed, so if you feel you can contribute, then please reach out and PM me.

OP_Return

The new wallet includes the capability to create OP_RETURN transactions. So what is OP_RETURN?? It is a standard way of attaching extra data to a transaction so that it can be recorded on the blockchain. The output of these transaction are provably unspendable, which reduces their cost to the network.

Originally Bitcoin opted to limit this to 40bytes of data, but later increased this limit to 80bytes. The implementation for Reddcoin will adopt the 80byte limit from the start. This should provide ample space for data into the forseeable future.

The plan is to use OP_RETURN as a foundation for an ID system.

Before I get too much further, I am looking to get a block-explorer up that can decode the OP_RETURN messages.

All these things take time: If you feel you want to get involved and take on a project, let me know. I have plenty that you can get dirty with.

In Closing

Thank you for taking the time to read. I do hope to try to keep these as a regular update which for the moment is rather easy when there is actual stuff happening. I would like to think i can provide these to you once a week with stuff that is happening.

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Gnasher
Thank you for your update :slight_smile:

What’s the plan for the ID system? something like openID, namecoin’s DNS, … ?

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erkan for the ID system, I am planning to base off BlockStack/Onename. I have been following this work for a long time and have already started some preliminary testing (based on the new wallet). I am impressed with their method of integration to the blockchain. The direction they are taking is interesting, and their focus is on the Bitcoin blockchain. There are many subtopics that arise out of an ID system.

Technically, this will NOT be embedded in the wallet software, but will run as a separate service that can be integrated into.

I believe, that we can best use some of the ideas that have been generated, but move to a method that best supports the capability for social tipping. Our advantage is a fast blockchain and supporting microtransactions that verify in a short time and can be done on chain.

Another goal of going this way is to support an economy on ID’s. A market space if you will not only for usernames, but for naming services . This idea is still in its infancy but it has been discussed before (way back)

4

Thx

I don’t know Blockstore/Onename yet,
but I remember this:
2015 September: Redirecting…

economy on ID’s

I hope someone already has thought of ways to prevent squatters reserving all of the IDs and what not. :frowning:

but will run as a separate service that can be integrated into.

+1

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erkan interesting article.
I know there is some ‘history’ between namecoin and blockstack, that caused blockstack developers to move away from Namecoin.
Not having read the article in full (had a quick skim read) it sounds a bit like mis-direction to ‘prove’ Namecoin is a better system and method. I not saying right or wrong, just picking up on the language of the article. Having a quick skim of their other articles on their blog it comes up that a “nameless” identity was not playing according to namecoin rules (questionable practices) and the guess is it refers to Blockstack.

One of the reasons for looking more closely at what Onename/Blockstack is that it is not embedded in the blockchain per se. I really had a long think about this approach and I believe there should be a level of separation between the blockchain, the wallet and services. There is nothing wrong with what Namecoin is doing, They have been at it for a long time now and i don’t believe there is issue with the approach by Blockstack. These are 2 very separate approaches. As you know in the the OSS arena there is a lot of scope to explore ideas. Just as any other crypto forked from Bitcoin, likewise I am doing so with the blockstack code.

As for name squatting, this has been something that is always hard to combat/control. There will always be someone looking to profit from someone else in doing so. The key point I would like to make currently is, that there is a cost to claiming a name. So if you want to squat a name, there will be a cost, and there will be a cost for renewal (and there are a few other ideas floating in my head to help make it more costly to squat rather than someone owning a ID).

There have been various methods/and policy used by different organisations. Nothing is in concrete currently, and i look forward to discussion. Ultimately, this service is for you the user so it should be something that you can live with.

As I mentioned, not all the dynamics have been finalised, and most of my focus has been on the new wallet to get the features needed, namely OP_RETURN, but all in all everything about Bitcoin v0.9 This work is getting close to the point i don’t need to be 100% focussed on the wallet.

I am almost to the point of getting down to biz and putting the details into what is needed in the ID system along with having it up and running for testing