Reddcoin Weekly Development Update
Welcome again Reddheads to another weekly update of Reddcoin Development.
This past week has achieved quite a few updates.
- Testing of the wallet for network switching to v4 blocks on testnet
- Translations continue to be submitted to Transiflex
- Further analysis of wallet recovery tools with another large corrupt wallet.dat
- Further investigating of micro transactions in the last weeks
- Investigating the performance and behaviour of PoSV
New v2.0 Wallet and testing progress
During this last week, I have been performing testing on the switch-over logic from v3 to v4 blocks on testnet using both the version 1.4.1 wallet and version 2.0.0.0 wallet. Results have been better than expected and I am very happy with the progress so far.
Network Testing with Super-Majority
The recent testing with testnet was performed by setting the super-majority to 510/1000 blocks (51%). That is, when there have been 510 v4 blocks created in the last 1000 blocks, the rules for v4 blocks are enabled (Enforce DER Signatures). v3 blocks will then be rejected by the network.
On mainnet, the setting will be updated to be a Super-Majority 85%
Staking with different versions
| Wallet Staking | Block Ver | Accepted by v1.4.1 | Accepted by v2.0.0 | Rejected by v2.0.0 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ver 1.4.1 | YES | v3 | YES | NO | YES |
| Ver 2.0.0 | YES | v4 | YES | YES | NO |
SOME NOTES: After the switch of Super-Majority completes, version 1.4.1 nodes will continue to stake however, the network will reject those blocks. This is expected behaviour.
Transferring between versions
| v1.4.1 | v2.0.0 | |
|---|---|---|
| v1.4.1 | YES | YES |
| v2.0.0 | YES | YES |
SOME NOTES Current testing of transferring coins between different wallet versions has been successful. Current indications are that if you are not staking, you will be able to continue to use v1.4.1 wallets. More testing to be done.
If you have any questions, or would like to know more on this, please let me know.
Translations
Translations continue to be updated which is great to see. Thank you to all those who are contributing their time and effort.
Serkan34 continues to dominate on the European languages.
This is the running list of desired languages, and if you like you can also check the overall running list on transiflex here.
- French (100% completed
- Spanish (100% completed)
- Dutch (100% completed)
- German (99% completed)
- Chinese (99% completed)
- Turkish (99% completed)
- Danish (98% completed)
- Swedish (98% completed)
- Russian (97% completed)
- Portuguese (96% completed)
- Icelandic (88% completed)
- Romanian (82% completed)
- Hungarian (71% completed)
- Ukrainian (44% completed)
- Tagalog (15% completed)
- Hindi (0% completed)
Wallet Recovery
As mentioned last week, wallet recover is no easy task. There are a few tools around on the net that can help, but it is no way guaranteed to provide 100% recovery.
So, it is important that you get in the habit of routinely backing up your wallet.dat file
For the second time in as many weeks, I have used the utility called pywallet that in my case has done a reasonable job to recover broken wallets. It is a python based tool that allows some low level manipulation of wallet files.
In this second case, it involved recovering the private keys from a testnet wallet (100K keys in total). The wallet.dat would load into Reddcoin-Qt, but then the application would sit spinning its wheels, without error, and no way to dump. Running the QT application with -salvage wallet would truncate the number of addresses that should have been available ion the wallet.
So, using the pywallet, I was able to load up read the available privatekeys in the wallet and dump the keys to a text file. This essentially was the same as last week. 100% of the privkeys were salvageable
I still have some problems importing those directly into a new wallet using the pywallet tool, and with such a large number of private keys, manual input was not an option.
I wrote a little script to pull the private keys from a text file and send a importprivatekey RPC command to the wallet. A little slower, but none the less it was effective and successful.
After starting the wallet with -rescan, it brought everything upto date with those associated addresses and their tx’s into the wallet.
Large number of Micro Transactions on mainnet
Over the course of several weeks, there have been a number of instances where a large number of small transactions were broadcast onto the network.
It was brought up in a couple of forum messages on reddit and reddcointalk, so I thought it might be worthwhile just to touch on it again here.
Firstly, I would like to say, this is similar to reports that occurred on Bitcoin network where small transactions were sent to fill blocks. So I was interested to monitor just how such behaviours would occur on Reddcoins Mainnet and what the effects might be.
Reddcoin mainnet has in effect a 10x larger capacity that Bitcoin. The blocksize for Reddcoin is 1M, and the block generation time is targeted every minute (Bitcoin is 1M blocks every 10 minutes).
In the ‘worst’ case the maximum capacity that these transactions took on the network, was to occupy less than 25% of each block (about 230K in total)
With the number of transactions that were occurring, there were at times excesses of transactions that spilled over into subsequent blocks (again, only filling each of those to 25% capacity). When this occurred,e there were runs of up to 10-12 blocks that were filled.
In the current state of the network, where volume of transactions generally is low, it has been a good exercise to monitor the behaviour of sudden peak demand. I didnt hear of nay cases where normal transactions or staking were affected.
Thats is not to say, we are immune,
If the normal operating capacity of a block was 50% or more, this would be more a concern and there could be an impact to the time of confirmation of a transaction.
Suffice to say, the current side effect is, a number of you may have a lot of small transactions sitting in your addresses. I would not be too concerned at this point, and would suggest to let the PoSV staking take care of those in due course (it will take a while to get selected due to the size), or in your next transfer, manually select a few to send them on their way.
Performance of PoSV
One of the things that has interested me for a long time with Reddcoin is how the POS mechanism behaves over time.
PoSV is unique amongst the POS crypto-currencies in the way that the weighting mechanism works, and in the way the stake reward is weighted depending on how long the coins have had to age.
A lot of things can influence the amount for each of your stake rewards,
- The number of coins held online
- The number of addresses the coins are spread over
- the number of network nodes staking
- the overall network weight(how many total coins are staking)
Working with deadpool, and reddibrek, they have been trying to define it is simple to understand terms
But I am also studying the network in much greater detail in relation to a post on the ReddcoinTalk forum regarding PoSV v2.
- “PoSV 2.0, implements a much needed enhanced version of PoSV inside Reddcoin blockchain that rewards active stakers with interests of the total money supply. For example, if only 50% of the Reddcoin are staked, those Reddcoins will generate 2x interests, i.e. 10-12%. This will be implemented in the full-node Qt wallet first.” {laudney}
This was the original statement made about 1 year ago, and I believe there is merit in re-visiting this PoSV v2 proposal. It provides and extra incentive to everyone who continues to stake, and in doing so get a bigger percentage of return.
So in my spare time I have been extracting information about the current network, the blockchain and the metrics of how it is functioning, what returns stakers currently get and whether this remains a viable option.
Getting involved
We are a global community, and cross many borders but boundaries do not need to hinder us.
The crypto currency world has not reached its tipping point yet, but when it does, it is sure to escalate at an amazing rate. There are going to be many ups and downs, and an interesting ride for sure.
If you would like to get involved and dont know where to start, reach out and we will see where you can jump in Deadpool has a great Trello site going with activities that need looking at.
In Closing
There is still plenty to do, but we are getting closer and I look forward to another productive week.
So where ever you are, enjoy your week ahead
Keep on staking!
