Pretty sure that once MTP is out the situation will improve. We're hammering out some bugs on testnet in relation to block propagation but mining and verification is working on both CPU and Nvidia GPU. Will keep you posted. We're aiming at a release in mid/late September but of course depending on testnet results.

Thanks for your continued interest and support in the project!

There's a detailed summary here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/zcoin/comments/8vg9jk/an_open_letter_to_the_zcoin_team/e1nb27i/

Zcoin team answers questions from the community!
https://youtu.be/SdM83aQUjlg

Poramin, Reuben, Sebastian and Sandra were in Bangkok for a Zcoin $XZC team meeting and strategy session. We thought it would be a good opportunity to answer some questions from the community that ranged from Sandra's relationship status, development updates to serious ones about team funding and expenditure.

0:36 When are we going to see a mobile wallet with Zerocoin functions
1:52 Are there any meetups in China?
2:42 What is the reward from Znodes?
3:45 How protected is the team in terms of funding from market dips?
5:02 Are atomic swaps the future of exchanges?
6:10 Is Zcoin going to be used on the darknet?
10:20 When are we going to see Dandelion?
11:20 What is Dandelion
12:08 What are your plans to hire more developers? Any apps coming?
13:25 Comments on concerns raised in an open Reddit letter to the team
20:39 How is MTP testing progressing?
23:30 Is Sandra single? Telegram user challenge to 5k for Wonder Sandra!
24:45 Why do you need 1,000 XZC to run a Znode?
27:58 When will the new GUI be available?
29:08 Do you plan to introduce a tail emission at some point?
31:17 What is your office and legal structure?
33:11 If you're interested to be part of the Zcoin team in Thailand...
34:08 Is your team efficiently using its funds (for e.g. compared to Dash)
37:45 Comparison of Zcoin funding to ICO funding
38:39 How transparent is Zcoin's codebase?

Zcoin aims to bring back fair and inclusive mining through the launch of ASIC resistant algorithm MTPv1.2 on its testnet.

MTP v1.2 launched on Zcoin Testnet

https://zcoin.io/mtp-launched-on-zcoin-testnet/



We are happy to announce that we have a working version of MTP v1.2 on our testnet. This will give users an early preview of MTP and we are opening our MTP codebase in Github.

With funding from the Zcoin project, Version 1.2 of MTP was published in January 2018 that strengthened the algorithm against attacks discovered through both academic peer review and a Zcoin funded MTP bounty program.

This is an important milestone in MTP as we refine the code base and do further testing and bug fixes. We will also be launching bounties for miner and pool development soon.
Users who wish to participate in the MTP testnet can do so by downloading the binaries below (Windows and Mac binary coming soon):

Linux

or compile from our Github.

If you wish to try and send some transactions you can go to our testnet faucet to obtain some testnet Zcoins. As this testnet is purely to test MTP, testnet Znodes are disabled.

Mining can be tested through the inbuilt miner by opening up the console by going to Menu > Help > Debug Window > Console and then typing

setgenerate true 1

This command uses one core and 4GB of RAM. If you wish to use all available cores:

setgenerate true -1

Further Reading
MTP was created by Alex Biryukov and Dmitry Khovratovich in June 2016 to address the problem of miner centralisation caused by ASICs and to allow commodity hardware such as CPUs and GPUs to participate in the security of the network with the general principle that a certain cost will yield approximately the same performance. It accomplishes this by using memory-hard computing where every task is amalgamated with a certain procedure requiring intensive access to RAM both in terms of size and (very importantly) bandwidth, so that transferring the computation to GPU, FPGA, and even ASIC brings little or no cost reduction.

What is MTP and why is it important

Zcoin’s Stance on the ASIC Resistance Wars

Bitcoin Magazine Coverage

Press Release
 

Zcoin "French Drop" v0.13.6.2

Instructions

Mandatory upgrade from 13.6.1 for Znodes and mining pools and local wallets with Znodes. Failure to update may result in inconsistent Znode information/status/payouts.

Highly recommended update for exchange wallets or wallets without Znodes but not compulsory.

Before anything, backup your wallet.dat (File > Backup Wallet), ideally in a different drive.

When upgrading to this version from the 13.4 branch, it will prompt for a one time reindex (approximately 30-80 minutes). A typical 1 CPU VPS will take about 1 hour 15 minutes. If you are upgrading your Znodes, as long as upgrade is completed within 3 hours, you won't need to issue a znode start command and you won't lose your queue status.

If you are upgrading from 13.5, no reindex is required unless you are stuck on a block on which a reindex is required. Follow this guide on how to reindex.

Changelog

• Mandatory upgrade for Znodes, mining pools and local wallets with Znodes.
• Removes the need for local wallet to reissue Znode start_alias command after hard fork date.
• Hard fork block 89300 Update by May 28

Version: v0.13.6.2- SHA256 Hashes:

Windows: c870cc9b8b607f53178410818e5f888e7a5983d44efb7dd2d072e3a060855ae5
Windows installer: 7398bc3e2f2e10fe2676410d11a65733c86bf66b9a7162ad9b579651f1ec1506
Linux: 27e6d36a460ea70ecdfd646f6e1f1f2ff6925d41391cfdf8412b25a56d96b0e7
Mac: e0113461ab98bcefda5550cb8ce63a8ec26442d29e907ff21db9db456c1babed

https://github.com/zcoinofficial/zcoin/releases/tag/v0.13.6.2

There is a bug that caused some wallets and Znodes to get stuck on an earlier block.

Check the current block height by going to https://explorer.zcoin.io or https://chainz.cryptoid.info/xzc/

If the block height does not match, please follow the instructions here to apply the fix:
https://zcoinkb.wordpress.com/2018/03/28/znode-stuck-on-block-80421/

We apologize for the inconvenience caused and have identified the problem and will be putting out a new release soon that fixes this.

A mobile wallet based off Breadwallet is underway.

The ledger nano hardware we actually had it working via sideload but because of their firmware update this broke it. See here (https://github.com/zcoinofficial/blue-app-btc)

We are still seeking official support but during the last crypto run up, people were throwing insane amounts of money to get Ledger support and their integration team was totally packed for several months. During this more quiet period, they are more responsive so we are hopeful.

We are aware of about 20-30% hashrate on some unaccounted pools. We knew this because when we were trying to notify our pools to hard fork, we couldn't find these guys.

Btw, we are aware of some of the concerns of miners that our hashrate is being dominated by botnets. Ocminer from Suprnova mentioned that previously there were some schools etc who complained to him and he identified them from many small hashrates. He does have a point.

I spoke to miningpoolhub on this and he mentioned that this could be CPU miners as well and he brought up that on other coins, there are single entities with much bigger hashing power as well.

So, both sides have valid points.

Regardless of this, MTP is now an absolute priority and coding is well underway. We will post updates as soon as they are available and a more accurate timeframe can be estimated but tentatively should be by the end of Q2 2018 and hence we won't be doing a another transition algorithm since it's not that far off.

We previously had some concerns of pool software as none of our coders are experienced pool coders but we believe that even if we have to launch with solo mining to start with and then organizing a bounty for an open sourced nomp or yiimp pool for MTP, this would be acceptable. A period of solo mining isn't bad and is true decentralization.

Zcoin $XZC hard fork to new Zerocoin scheme has been completed. If your wallet isn't syncing, make sure you are on French Drop v13.5.7

https://zcoin.io/get-zcoin

Zcoin "French Drop" v0.13.5.7

Download Here

Mandatory upgrade with hard fork on block 78500 (roughly 14-15 March 2018). You are highly recommended to spend any unspent Zerocoin mints in your wallet so that they can be moved to the new Zerocoin scheme.

If you are already on13.5.5 or 13.5.6, it is still highly recommended to upgrade to 13.5.7 to avoid nodes getting stuck.

Before anything, backup your wallet.dat (File > Backup Wallet), ideally in a different drive.

When upgrading to this version from the 13.4 branch, it will prompt for a one time reindex (approximately 30-80 minutes). A typical 1 CPU VPS will take about 1 hour 15 minutes. If you are upgrading your Znodes, as long as upgrade is completed within 3 hours, you won't need to issue a znode start command and you won't lose your queue status.

If you are upgrading from 13.5, no reindex is required unless you are stuck on a block on which a reindex is required. Follow this guide on how to reindex.

Changelog

• Fixes verification causing block stuck issues
• Mandatory upgrade

Safety Precautions
Please note that once you have upgraded to 13.5 branch, your wallet.dat will have a different structure from 13.4 and below and will not be backward compatible.

You are highly recommended to spend any unspent Zerocoin mints in your wallet so that they can be moved to the new Zerocoin scheme.

Binaries

Download Here

Version: v0.13.5.7- SHA256 Hashes:

• Windows: 4d93e329fe41380f93effd32c279815cb2f4bc7a0b7b97391e32751f77c4c6c1
• Linux: 26c74586e5fc0e520ed266d20748532917d2617d2e71a8497747398943eda87a
• Mac: c40c1e6242044a7768f7e498db66f565c56c1e8363e67f53cc9c9ca974613d55

We are happy to be listed on Exbase https://exba.se/  an anonymous exchange that doesn't require personal identity information with global withdraw options via VISA or international wire.

I think you are aware of the difficulties faced with the initial version of MTP.

The new paper of MTPv1.2 is now finalized and will be published by the authors shortly. Lyra2z was MEANT to be a transition algorithm.

It is currently set at 3 hours.

There are 5 other pools besides MPH and all of them are operating on fees lower than MPH. Mintpond is currently having an additional reward for the first few blocks found

Which exchange?