Due to reasons beyond my control I'm unable to continue contributing to this project

Update regarding state of the network:

Things seem to be running smoothly on mainnet.

• Network is live for about 11 days so far
• 1680 blocks closed so far
• Block time averaging at 10 minutes (in last week exactly 1008 blocks)
• zawy's difficulty adjustment algorithm seems stable!

Fork the repo and create a release in Github

When you create a release, you can upload build artifacts to the release - they can be large files like dmg

https://help.github.com/en/articles/creating-releases

The launch looks fairly successful

The network went live as planned at exacly 20:00:00 UTC
It's currently live for about 5 hours

The block explorer is connected to mainnet, you can explore it here:
http://explorer.bitcoinroyale.org/

Does anyone have a mac and can contribute the build? If so, please PR to github

The genesis block has been pushed to git:
https://github.com/bitcoinroyale/bitcoinroyale/commit/55f4fe005e7d08d58e183669bbdd61fe060315d7

The timestamp on the block is October 7, 2019 20:00:00 UTC (1570478400)

The newspaper headline ultimately chosen is "The Washington Post 07/Oct/2019 In Siberia, a mammoth thaw".
It's from today's Washington Post, you can see it below.

The article is about global warming and how catastrophic things are becoming. Satoshi's quote had to do with a failing financial system, but the world's problems go much deeper than that. It is the responsibility of our generation to create a sustainable future, part of which is created with technology. A technology that can outlast the difficult times ahead. Where turmoil undermines value and only a decentralized system of value can remain immutable.
 

Testnet is progressing better than expected so we can move a little faster, here is the current mainnet launch schedule:

We are aiming to launch mainnet on October 7, 20:00 UTC

If there are last minute problems and issues, this will allow around 4 hours of fixes so we can enter October 8 with a working mainnet.

If the problems will not be fixable in these 4 hours, we will postpone mainnet launch for 1 day and try again the day after at the same time. This will repeat for the next few days until all issues are ironed out.

The release codebase with the genesis block will be pushed to git a few minutes before. Will update in the forum when this happens.

The genesis will contain a newspaper headline from October 6 or October 7, depending on what headlines are out there.. we want to choose a good one this will remain with us for good.

Announcement: Mainnet will be launched in 4-6 days!

Exact time depends on finals tests on testnet and how stable they are. Assuming we have no last minute bugs, this will be in about 4 days on October 8. Follow this forum thread of updates on the exact time.

Genesis plan:

1. The genesis block will be mined immediately before the launch and be committed to git before the first nodes are live. A current events headline will be used to prove it's fresh.
2. Announcement will be made on the forum that the nodes should be launched.
3. Two seeds nodes (seed.bitcoinroyale.org and seed-two.bitcoinroyale.org) will be launched from genesis. These seed nodes are just full nodes, they are not doing any mining. They will enable new nodes to join the network and propagate the chain.
4. This means the network relies on you as miners to move forward. If there are no external miners, the chain will stand still until a new miner becomes online.
5. There is no pre-mine. The genesis current event events headline will prove this. All mining is fair play to anyone as soon as the genesis event occurs.

This is your chance to be part of the genesis. Launch your node as soon as the genesis block is commited to git.

How can you get ready?

I took the time to write thorough documentation with everything you need to know. Please take the next few days to go over it, review the codebase and experiment with running testnet nodes:

* How to run a Bitcoin Royale network node

* How to run a Bitcoin Royale wallet

* How to solo mine Bitcoin Royale (BTCR)

Looks great. It's good that you used the standard implementation by @zawy12, I saw that he gave the PR a thumbs up.

Block explorer is now up and running to help verify the testnet is running smoothly.

Source code: https://github.com/bitcoinroyale/explorer
Running instance: http://explorer.bitcoinroyale.org/

Notice that http://explorer.bitcoinroyale.org is currently connected to testnet but will change to mainnet as soon as mainnet is launched.

Update: testnet is live!

Testnet is actively mining blocks. To participate in testnet, you must pull the latest version from github.

I created a simple tutorial on how to do CPU mining on testnet for anyone who wants to expreiment with the codebase: https://github.com/bitcoinroyale/bitcoinroyale/wiki/CPU-mining-on-testnet

The plan going forward:

Aiming to finalize the code for the first release during the upcoming week. Everything will be ready for mainnet launch in about 10 days. Once the codebase is ready, we'll coordinate the launch date in the forum so anyone can participate in the genesis event and mine from the very beginning.

I've been working locally.. everything is pushed to github now:
https://github.com/bitcoinroyale/bitcoinroyale

If anyone is interested in contributing, now is a good time. I'd like to to reach the first codebase release in the next couple of weeks.

To adopt an organized way to discuss protocol modifications, I think we should use a system similar to BIP.
Accordingly, the bootstrap reward schedule proposal shall be known as BRIP-1   

All improvement proposals will be listed here: https://github.com/bitcoinroyale/whitepaper

News about the project are mostly in github as discussions in the github issues. Before any implementation is published, most of the discussion is about the design and schedule.

The most important proposal so far is this issue: https://github.com/bitcoinroyale/whitepaper/issues/14

The criticism of the design paper that repeated the most had to do with the length of the bootstrap period. In the original design, the bootstrap period is 1 year with a fixed block reward that drops very aggressively at the end of the bootstrap period to Bitcoin's regular block reward schedule.

The proposal is to make the bootstrap period significantly longer. From 1 year, change to 4.5 years.

In addition, during the bootstrap, instead of having a fixed block reward, make the block reward gradually decreasing.

A schedule that works nicely is to divide the 4.5 years to 9 sub-periods of 6 months each. The block reward will start at 175. After 6 months drop to 150, then after 6 months drop to 125, then to 100, then 75, then 50, then 25, then 12.5 and finally the 9th sub-period will have block reward of 6.25.

The bootstrap of 4.5 years will catch up to the first 16 years of Bitcoin. After the bootstrap, the schedule will converge to the regular Bitcon one. This will take place right after the 4th halving. Therefore the next period after the bootstrap will be 4 years (210,000 blocks) with reward of 3.125.

The full details of the proposal appear in the issue: https://github.com/bitcoinroyale/whitepaper/issues/14

Please comment on the issue if you have anything to contribute.. since implementation is already under way, this proposal should be decided upon very shortly.

The are some new issues posted that discuss the design paper. Will appreciate your feedback.

https://github.com/bitcoinroyale/whitepaper/issues

In addition, please open an issue if you want to contribute or run one of the first nodes.

Even though the code is based on Bitcoin Core and the design paper is of interest to Bitcoin developers, in terms of the forum, as it’s not a change proposal to Bitcoin, I think it’s more suitable to the Altcoins section.

Do you think this is better to be implemented as a modification to Bitcoin or as a separate protocol?

I defiantly agree that the code must be open to allow to go over it and contribute, and all source is going to be available. The project is currently under implementation, I wanted to receive feedback on the protocol design before finalizing the implementation.

To run a node, please open an issue for running a node on the GitHub repo: https://github.com/bitcoinroyale/whitepaper


After committing the design paper I initially sent it to a couple of mailing lists and only later posted it in Bitcoin talk.

The algo is identical to Bitcoin PoW.

This is an open community project and the codebase is a fork of Bitcoin Core. Any contributer interested in writing PRs to implement the design paper is welcome to. I'll update the community once the implementation is ready for execution and mining and you can of course follow the GitHub.

Block rewards are similar to Bitcoin but with a bootstrap period of expedited mining.
See the design paper (#9 Bootstrap): https://bitcoinroyale.github.io/bitcoinroyale.pdf

Bitcoin Royale is a Bitcoin-based protocol focused on store of value and anti-theft.

Overview:
We propose a set of modifications to the original Bitcoin protocol aimed to provide an ultimate electronic store of value - a better form of gold. By increasing Bitcoin’s effective transaction confirmation time of 10 minutes to 24 hours, we are able to tackle Bitcoin’s greatest flaw as a form of gold - susceptibility to theft. A system geared less towards paying for coffee and more towards holding one’s life savings with complete peace of mind, where every transaction is alerted on-chain for 144 blocks and can be canceled on emergency with a recovery key that was never used prior and hence invulnerable. The bootstrap of this system is not via hard fork but through a fairer mechanism of expedited mining, allowing the system to catch up to Bitcoin in a short period of time.

White paper:
https://bitcoinroyale.org/bitcoinroyale.pdf

GitHub project:
https://github.com/bitcoinroyale

Coin metrics:

• Coin name: BTCR (Bitcoin Royale)
• Premine: none
• ICO: none
• Total number of coins: 21,000,000 BTCR (like Bitcoin)
• Initial block reward: 175 BTCR (full schedule)
• Average block time: 10 minutes (like Bitcoin)
• Algorithm: SHA256 PoW (like Bitcoin)

Getting involved:

• For constructive feedback on the protocol, open an issue for discussion here: https://github.com/bitcoinroyale/whitepaper
• This is an open community project. To participate and contribute code, please become a contributor on GitHub.
• To run a node, run a wallet or mine - see tutorials here: https://github.com/bitcoinroyale/bitcoinroyale/wiki

Thanks,
Ian