Hi All!
We have been blown away by how civil, helpful, and proactive the Verus community has been, both on Bitcointalk and Discord. To all Verus community members, thank you for your contributions to this culture. As we look forward and dive into the next stages of development, we need community engagement to realize the vision from the Verus vision paper (http://veruscoin.io). Right now, it’s important that we get the word out, so we can attract a larger, vibrant and contributing community. If we could have our way, we would want everyone in the world to have a chance to read the Verus Vision paper. We know that isn’t possible, but as we extend ourselves as a community, we hope to do so not just by posting all over, but with the informative discussion and quality debates that we see on the Verus Discord every day.

We want to recognize, and strive to reward those who contribute toward these goals, and even further reward those who start meaningful discussions that help us instill and improve our vision collectively. To these ends, we have allotted a near term bounty budget of up to 10,000 fully mature VRSC to be given out for all kinds of help over the next 2 weeks.

All of these bounty programs will be administered by the following Discord community members only. If anyone else makes an offer, it is in no way affiliated with this announcement or the Verus Coin project:
Discord: https://discord.gg/4ZBvCs
@miketout
@englal
@michaeltoutjr
@Asher
@VirtualSoundNW
@crypto05

We are offering new bounties, in the form of fully mature Verus from between 5 to 100 Verus each. If you are a US Citizen and you earn a total of more than 100 Verus in this or this plus any other bounty program this year, you will need to provide us with 1099 information. If you are not a US Citizen or you do not earn more than 100 Verus in any of our bounty programs combined, we do not need this information. If you are a US citizen planning on earning more than 100 Verus in our bounty programs, please contact one of the community members above to provide your information.

Our bounty offers for the next couple weeks are:
1. Original Content (blogs, articles, videos)
2. Social Network Discussion Starters
3. Translations of Vision Paper abstract: https://versucoin.io/ into Chinese, Japanese, Russian, Korean, Spanish, German, or French.

Every bounty paid will be judged on its merit and is entirely discretionary, we will attempt to be completely fair, but not all contributions will receive a reward. We will not send more than a total of 10,000 Verus. We are open to community ideas for bounties as well, so if you’d like, please suggest your ideas on the Discord #suggestions channel.

We are setting up two Discord channels for this program, the first channel, #10k-bounty-submissions, should be used for only the following information:
For articles, blogs, or video bounties (10 - 100 Verus at the sole discretion of Verus Coin project representatives until total of 5000 Verus paid from budget):
1. Link to evidence of your completion of the bounty (for example, your article, your blog post, your youtube video, no one else's)
2. The VRSC receiving address must be part of the document you link to. We will not send VRSC to a different address than the donation address, which must be in the video description, blog post, or translation itself.

For social network discussion starters (5 - 20, depending on level of engagement on the post and at the sole discretion of Verus Coin project representatives, (please, no spam or content-less shilling - all entries deemed to be spam or trolling will be immediately disqualified). Even reasoned, negative discussion may be eligible, as long as we don’t see it as trolling.
1. Link to your legitimate discussion (Twitter, Reddit, Bitcointalk, Instagram, Facebook)
2. Proof that the poster, tweeter, or originating identity in question is you
3. VRSC receiving address

For translations (20 VRSC for Vision paper abstract translation):
1. Link to first good translation and suggested posting location
2. Proof that you are the author of the translation
3. VRSC receiving address

The second channel, #10k-bounties-paid, will be filled by community members above when they send a bounty, so that everyone can see the bounties paid.

We expect related news in the near future and more bounty programs in the coming weeks, months, and years. We developers need to focus on phase II development more than outreach now, and we have enough knowledgeable community members that we feel the time is right to ask the community to start driving outreach. Going forward, we are looking for people interested in earning bounties for code development, Verus-themed artwork and design, mining integrations, user support, more translations, community management, and marketing. Join us for one bounty or help regularly and earn more.

Visit the #active-bounties channel on our Discord for more information and details: https://discord.gg/4ZBvCs

[Mining instructions:]

You can download the latest builds at https://verus.io.

Please make sure to back up your wallet.dat before updating, just as a standard precaution that is likely unnecessary, delete the existing  App install folder, not the VRSC folder and  no other folders, then install and run the update.

Stop by our discord for the latest: Discord: https://verus.io/discord
Original post:

Verus, latin for “the truth”, combines all of the features we believe are important in a cryptocurrency, and provides a foundation for future development. Verus is a fork of Zcash and Komodo that leverages the Komodo platform, and we appreciate the contributions and support from those teams as well as the Bitcoin developers that created a foundation for us to launch new capabilities in a system that supports Bitcoin and Zcash compatible transaction types as well as Komodo cross chain swaps and dPoW security enhancements.

Mining will begin for the first actual Verus Coin in 15 minutes. There is no premine, and we do not plan to have an ICO.

Verus includes zk-SNARK, zero-knowledge privacy and encrypted messages along with private transactions. Verus also introduces two brand-new and combined proof of work / proof of stake algorithms in a 50/50 ratio, designed specifically for CPU-mining, fair staking, lower power consumption, and enhanced security.

Block reward starts with a linear ramp, changing every block, for the first 10,080 blocks (1 week) going from 0 to the peak reward of 384. From that point forward, block reward will halve monthly for the following 5 months, then every 2 years after that. All block rewards, whether mined or staked, with a reward above or equal to 192 VRSC will be time locked for a random release time between block 129,600 and 1,181,520 (3 months to 2 years and 3 months after genesis). That means they will not be transferable or useful for any purpose until their time lock opens, at which time they will be mature and spendable by the miner or staker who earned them. If you earn these blocks, we hope you will join us and contribute as a stakeholder to the Verus vision.

We plan to use Verus as a platform to develop new useful cryptocurrency capabilities and to publish a white paper with our vision within the next couple months. For now, we are pleased to be able to provide the world with a cryptocurrency designed to be earned, owned, and used by everyone. For your convenience, we have added our own enhancements to the multi-coin Agama wallet, which still supports all Komodo platform coins, but also includes mining and staking support for Verus, and an easy way to shield coinbase transactions, which is a mandatory step to making them spendable in Zcash-derived privacy coins when you are the actual coinbase winner of a block.

We don’t recommend pool mining Verus until after the first couple months, when time locks are no longer applied to coinbases. We don’t currently have mining software other than the Verus enhanced wallet at this time. Also, with the timelocks in place, pools would need to keep software online, and you would have to wait for a random amount of time from 3 months to over 2 years before they could payout on each block.

Happy mining, staking, and we hope spending, and using in the future !

Max Supply:   83,540,184
Algorithm:      VerusHash PoW/PoS - 50/50
Block time:   1 minute
Reward:      1 week smooth linear ramp from 0 to 384, then halving every month (43,200 blks)
         for the following 5 months and every 2 years thereafter. All rewards over 192 Verus
         are time locked to mature at a random block between 129,600 and 1,181,520

Wallets and all that is needed to mine and stake: http://verus.io

Mining instructions:
    Install and run the Verus-enhanced Agama wallet with mining support
    Upon first run, select Verus as your coin
    In the upper right corner of Agama, go to the top menu and select settings
    At the bottom of the settings rows, you will see “</>  CLI”, which you should select, revealing two input lines, one for selecting the native coin, and one for the command.
    On the first line, select Verus as the native coin
    On the second line, enter:
          setgenerate true n
    where n is the number of threads you want to mine with. If you enter an n of 0, you will
    stake, but not mine.

Staking instructions:
Staking is automatically enabled in our enhanced version of Agama, and will operate continuously in the background as long as Agama is running and you have spendable coins that are not coinbase transactions and that have been held in your wallet for at least 150 blocks, or approximately 2-½ hours. In order to stake with coinbase funds, coinbase transactions must be first shielded and transferred to a transparent address. This can be done on the send screen, after you create at least one private address in the wallet from the receive screen. Once you have shielded and then unshielded any coinbase transactions, they will also be eligible for automatic staking from your wallet when it is running.

Source code: https://github.com/veruscoin
Verus development donation address: RFimRuEuSGvpENQdRmyqrFGm8y9JmE6cTC
Discord: https://verus.io/discord

System requirements:
Mining and staking wallets are available for Windows, Linux, and Mac. Currently, you will require an Intel or AMD processor with AES and AVX instructions. Most Intel or AMD CPUs made within the past 5 or 6 years support these instructions. You can check yours specifically by running this free utility: https://www.cpuid.com/ or using the "lscpu" command on Linux.

LEGAL DISCLAIMER: The free software made available through these links is experimental software only and should be used at your own risk. We make no warranty or guarantee of fitness for any specific use, and at no point do the Verus developers or anyone affiliated with the Verus developers assume any responsibility for financial or other loss you may incur by using the free software described in this post. USE AT YOUR OWN RISK.