[Automated Ghost Veteran Rewards]

For Q3, our developers continued to push out a number of developments and exceed milestones, with one deliverable that’s for the history books.

Automated Ghost Veteran Rewards
Our developers worked over time on this deliverable and pushed it to production on Saturday, October 1st at block height 591621. This protocol entered the history books for Ghost as the blockchain becomes even more decentralized. The AGVR protocol introduces GVR rewards on a per block basis given stake weight and AGVR eligibility. No other blockchain has this similar structure in place.



Currently, at press time, there are 102 AGVR eligible Veterans that will soon observe AGVR blocks in their wallet. These Veterans are currently waiting out their time lock of 21600 blocks as described in the AGVR update posted here. After block height 613221 Veterans will begin to see the first AGVR blocks being produced.
We observed a brief bug after the initial hard fork that was related to anon inputs/outputs. Within hours our dev team deployed the hotfix and released the current core version, 0.22.1.0. There were no errors found upon the basis of the protocol tracking GVR transactions, so users and the blockchain remained unaffected. This protocol is compatible in all formats of the Ghost Wallet including GhostVault. Furthermore, users who are cold staking can still enjoy the benefits of this protocol as the rewards are paid directly to the staker and not the pool.

Ghost Electrum
In the background while AGVR was approaching the final stages of development, our developers were also working on a new lightweight wallet for both desktop and mobile use! Shortly after the launch of AGVR, we proudly introduced Ghost Electrum. This new lightweight wallet can be downloaded directly from the Google Play store here. And for those that do not have access to the Google Play store, the APKs can be downloaded here. This is Ghost’s first official mobile wallet developed as an app for your Android device. For Apple users, iOS versions of Ghost Electrum will came later, but again, Apple users on macOS can download the APKs just fine.



The Ghost-Electrum wallet is not a full node like the Ghost Desktop or Ghost QT wallet. It is a lightweight wallet that features greater coin control and accessibility. This new wallet will help pave the way for Ghost to be implemented with hardware wallets like Trezor and Ledger. Because Ghost-Electrum is not a full node, sync times are as low as 2 minutes. This is achieved through servers indexing the block headers.
Speaking of servers, there are zero downtimes because Ghost Electrum servers are decentralized and robust. Your wallet is never down. Another advantage of using Ghost Electrum is the near instant transaction time since block headers are indexed, unlike a full Ghost node. As mentioned above, this lightweight wallet now makes it possible for Ghost to be used on hardware wallets. In the meantime, users are still able to utilize Ghost-Electrum as cold storage. Your private keys are encrypted and never leave your computer. If your device goes offline, you still have access to your funds via recovery seed. It should be noted that the seed phrases on Ghost Electrum are different from that of the Ghost Desktop wallet.
Moreover on security, Ghost Electrum features 256-bit addresses just like the Desktop and QT wallet. This is not common in other lightweight wallets as 256-bit encryption can become complex due to the cryptography. These addresses use the most secure encryption currently available. Not even Bitcoin uses 256-bit addresses. Fore more on Ghost Electrum, please read our announcement here.

Hardware Wallets
With the launch of Ghost Electrum, implementing Ghost onto popular hardware wallets as described earlier will make this all the more possible. In the past we have researched the different requirements each hardware wallet has. We have developed the foundation for this and are now moving forward with the main development. There has been a few test runs in the past with Ledger, but it was nothing compared to what will be actually supported via official firmware.
When this deliverable hits production, users will still be able to cold-stake just like on the other wallets, and of course, use this as cold storage. In the previous section it was mentioned Ghost Electrum supports 256-bit addresses. This will remain true when Ghost is supported on the various hardware wallets available. More to come regarding this deliverable later.

Partnerships
In other developments, our Community Relations and Media Personnel team have been busy seeking out new opportunities to create strong partnerships for the Ghost ecosystem. Some of these include repairing old partnerships that spoiled in our early days due to lost contact and others are new partners that will increase the accessibility of Ghost, among other things. As our continuing efforts to spread awareness and expand our community, we have had a few official news articles written about Ghost. We expect to increase the number of articles through our Media Personnel. They are working day in and day out connecting with journalists and writers from every avenue.

New Exchange Listing
Speaking of partnerships, the last cherry on top of an explosive Q3 is a new exchange listing! $GHOST has been listed on Exchange Assets, a Ukrainian based exchange that offers PoS pools, interest on your holdings, and more. They have been around for over five years and counting! Exchange Assets offers four different trading pairs for $GHOST, BTC/LTC/USDT/S11. Users can trade on this exchange now.! Here is the link to their platform https://exchange-assets.com/en/

GHOST has been listed on ExchangeAssets, a Ukrainian based hybrid system offering PoS Pools, bux (Active Ad System), interest and more! ExchangeAssets does not KYC, so users can enjoy the freedom of privacy while trading on the platform!
Currently, there are four different trading pairs for $GHOST! BTC, LTC, USDT, and S11. Withdrawal fees are 0.01 with Deposit times of 10 confirmations.

Trading is now live!
https://exchange-assets.com/en/?market=ghost_btc

We are very excited to announce the launch of Ghost Electrum!

This is a lightweight wallet that delivers speed and security right from your Android device! Users can download the official Ghost Electrum App directly from the Google Play store here: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.ghost.ghostelectrum&hl=en_US&gl=US

Ghost Electrum paves the way for Ghost to be integrated into hardware wallets such as Trezor & Ledger. This is because the wallet supports third-party plugins which users have complete authority over.

A huge advantage of this wallet is the easy to use coin control features. This takes managing your coins to a whole new level!

For those who do not want to use the Google Play store or are unable to access it, the apks can be downloaded here: https://github.com/ghost-coin/ghost-electrum/releases/tag/4.3.3

After Q1’s massive round of updates, we have been staying focused on developing more of our deliverables that will expand the Ghost ecosystem. For Q2 we took a step back to ask what are the most critical areas that need attention and or which deliverables make the most sense to implement into the blockchain at this time. Below are a few additions to the blockchain that are currently being developed and perfected.

· Automating Ghost Veteran Rewards (AGVR)

· Anonymous Ghost Chat (AES-256)

· Ghost Tip Bot

Development has been made towards further decentralizing the Ghost Veteran Rewards system. At current glances, GVR is processed through a manual monthly basis, which the blockchain automates on the backend. To automate this fully, we are developing a special protocol which eliminates all manual processes and makes for a more efficient (and decentralized) tool.

Before work could be underway, like anything in software development, we spent a required amount of time reviewing our codebase to determine how best to build this protocol. Thanks to the massive round of updates pushed out in Q1, our developers don’t have to “clean up” any remaining code for any new additions. Upon finalization of our review, and confirmation from our cryptographers, the green light was given to begin development.

Furthermore, with GVR, block rewards are based on stake weight as stated in our whitepaper. To automate this, we have already begun building a rough draft script in which the script will scan all addresses containing the required threshold (in the current model this is already done) plus a few other covenants required to be placed into the script. More details on this will be shared later.

It should be noted that an additional advantage to decentralizing the current GVR model is Veterans being able to receive their GVR rewards on a “per block” basis. Thus, eliminating a monthly lump sum that then gets distributed out according to stake weight. Because this development is being worked on at the consensus level, it will have a profound impact in bringing together the ecosystem as a whole.

Ghost Chat

Continuing on, development for Ghost’s own peer-to-peer encrypted chat is being built in the background as well. AGVR will have no conflicting consequences while this protocol is being developed. Ghost Chat is making use of full AES-256 encryption. This protocol will be handled exclusively by each Ghost node and due to the nature of the encryption, impossible to break. In other words, there is no data backup solely for Ghost Chat making it completely anonymous in connection with Ghost’s anonymous transactions.

Ghost Tip Bot

Over the past week our community has implemented a Telegram tip bot for all users who wish to participate. This is a great addition to our family of chats especially for those who work hard on helping others troubleshoot through their issues and for donations to the team members. We have seen a great increase in community engagement since its implementation and are going another step further.

The current tip bot is utilized through a telegram bot that is able to send/receive transactions off-chain. We are developing our own in-house tip bot that will be on-chain and will have the ability to send/receive anonymous tips to any and all users. Each user in the respective chat will have their own wallet just like the desktop wallet. It will have all the of the same features and security as well. However, we will still recommend users downlead the desktop wallet for holding their coins. Staking to be considered at a later time. We are very excited to roll this out in the coming days.

Stay tuned for more updates especially regarding development on AGVR and Ghost Chat!

Source: https://ghostbymcafee.medium.com/ghost-development-update-may-2022-24fe8a2cf90d

On March 9th we released core version 0.21.1.8 that laid out the foundation for what was months long worth of work. To briefly summarize that release, included was a re-work of the original bug identified in RingCT last year, faster node syncing, support for Taproot and among other additions, please read that article here for a full breakdown. This update re-introduced anonymous transactions on the Ghost blockchain. Privacy is central to everything we do at Ghost.
Upon the release of v0.21.1.8, some users experienced difficulties when creating new ANON transactions as well as broadcasting them to other ANON addresses or even Public addresses. Our development team and cryptographers quickly found the reason for this blockade, and worked on a hotfix to the underlying problem.
With the above complication in the RingCT protocol being resolved, core version 0.21.1.9 introduced this hotfix allowing full non-restricted broadcasting for new ANON transactions. After its release, the blockchain quickly observed users exercising the RingCT protocol with some of these transactions having a ring size of 32 signatures! That’s 21 more ring signatures than Monero’s current standard ring size.

Moving on with development, our team has been busy creating a new self hosted cold staking pool written in Python. Currently in place is Ghostman. That being said, this new version offers anonymous staking with various levels of privacy for the user. This is a groundbreaking technical breakthrough in the world of privacy focused blockchains. We are very excited to release this development here very soon, so please stay tuned for further details.
Among other roadmap deliverables being worked on in the background, Ghost has just undergone a hard fork at block height 458743. This hard fork introduces the groundwork to be laid out for automating Ghost Veteran Rewards while also solidifying the transmission of subsidizations. This is a huge step forward in further decentralizing the Ghost blockchain until we are ready to release this deliverable and also come out with on-chain governance.
With the hard fork being undertaken, a new core version has been released as well. Yes, a third core in one month. We apologize for the amount of updates being released in such a short period of time, but success is unyielding. Furthermore, ALL users MUST update to this new core, version 0.21.1.10. Please download and update immediately. The new core can be obtained here: https://github.com/ghost-coin/ghost-core/releases/tag/v0.21.1.10 . Users who are on the desktop wallet can simply close their wallet and re-open it for the new daemon to be downloaded. Stay tuned for more exciting news coming next month!

Source: https://ghostbymcafee.medium.com/ghost-eom-update-march-31-356328b66a24

Back in September when we hard forked to re-enable anonymous transactions we included an additional privacy layer to the Ghost blockchain. This additional layer, Dandelion++, was a nightmare for development to say the least. Those who have had experience implementing this protocol into their blockchain are aware of the monumental task Dandelion endures. The protocol was originally developed for Bitcoin back in 2017 (BIP156), but was never implemented. Because of this, programmers have to develop a large portion of the protocol itself to be compatible with their blockchain. This is especially true due to there being three levels of bitcoin-core being released since the inception of this protocol.
In the early stages of implementing Dandelion, ghost-core was crashing upon boot and in some cases unable to even boot. This is because the protocol works at the consensus level and executes traffic scrambling throughout the network’s nodes. Once Dandelion was able to communicate with the nodes in a manner that wouldn't crash the core, it was deemed successful and thus included in the preceding hard fork.
After further monitoring of how Dandelion was reacting in the production environment, our cryptographers determined the protocol posed a risk to the network. It was discovered that some functional tests were not processed by our lead dev at the time, which, would have exposed any complications remaining with Dandelion. Because Dandelion operates at the consensus level and the risks it posed, we were not able to simply turn off the protocol and continue with re-enabling RingCT.
With that being established, the past few months have been dedicated to temporarily removing Dandelion++ from the core, improving syncing, node propagation, and a rework for the solution to the original RingCT exploit found last March. Also included is another blockchain upgrade, Taproot. However, at the time of launch, Taproot will be disabled until a later date this year. Moving forward with anonymous transactions again, we have decided to remove Blind transactions. While we offer users the choice between public and private transactions, Blind proved to be pointless for our blockchain.
It should be stated again that Ghost was not exploited during the time before anonymous transactions were turned off, meaning the supply has not been artificially inflated by bad actors.
Existing users know that when RingCT was disabled, if you had coins in your Anon/Blind wallet, they became frozen, i.e., unable to move. With this next update users will be able to access their funds again, but will have to go through a verification process first. This is because every coin sitting in Anon/Blind has been blacklisted in order to ensure without a doubt that these coins were not artificially created. Again, this is to protect the community and the chain as a whole. In order to move these coins, users will have to create a transaction via the console and run a command that will execute this action. Funds are spendable (in exact inputs) only to a Recovery address that the elected community oversight group control through multi-sig. Once these coins have been verified legitimate, the Custodians will send these coins to the corresponding owner and they will be free to move without restriction.
For those that do not have coins frozen in Anon/Blind or do not wish to access current frozen funds, the above paragraph does not apply to you. Users will be able to create new anonymous transactions without restriction. When the update goes live, we will provide the RPC command that users must run in order to access their frozen funds. Please stay tuned for more information relating to this matter.

Source: https://ghostbymcafee.medium.com/ghost-development-update-march-2022-46e1103ea4af

What is Ghost (GHOST)?

Ghost is a decentralized ecosystem that was launched in 2020 with a simple goal, privacy. Transacting privately and with anonymity is a basic human right. Most people believe that you are safe to use Bitcoin because it’s the first cryptocurrency or it has strong privacy features. The latter couldn’t be farther from the truth. It is relatively easy to trace back the origins of each transaction and ultimately reveal the identity of the user. Ghost is engineered to obfuscate transactions throughout the network on both the receiver and senders end and conceal all elements of said transaction through bleeding edge cryptography. The team behind Ghost has a strong belief of privacy for all with the ease of transacting regardless how tech savvy a user may or may not be. Ghost provides protection to all users and financial freedom.

Who are the original Founders of Ghost?

Ghost’s origins date back to Particl, a privacy-focused and decentralized cryptocurrency that was launched in 2017. Particl is a fork of Bitcoin. In early 2020 the team behind Ghost forked Particl’s core and began work on code revisions and additions, and thus GHOST was born. Originally, there were a few developers who still wish to remain anonymous, that started looking at developing a new privacy coin that is fully decentralized and offers unparalleled privacy. Josh Case is one of the Co-Founders that brought this vision to fruition. It should be noted that John McAfee is also regarded as one of the Co-Founders of Ghost. Although McAfee’s involvement with the project is limited to just advertising. In an effort to make the Ghost ecosystem more decentralized, Josh Case stepped down from any authoritative roles. Since then, the project has been in the community’s hands ever since. Following Ghost’s interim governance model, the community decides the direction of the project.

What makes Ghost different?

There are a variety of features that distinguishes Ghost’s unique code. One of the project’s foremost importance is decentralization. Ghost wants to become the standard when it comes to trustless systems. Ghost operates on a Proof-of-Stake consensus method. This allows users to secure the blockchain by staking their coins, which in turn the users gain rewards for doing so. Users who have the status of “Ghost Veteran”, are those that hold enough coins to be eligible for bonus rewards from the network. Veterans earn additional rewards that are distributed once a month to all eligible vets, including the daily staking rewards. This makes Ghost’s staking rewards some of the highest in the industry.

Privacy is executed through a couple of special attributes. Where other privacy coins have ‘selective anonymity”, Ghost by default obfuscates every transaction on both the receiver & sender end. This is achieved with Dandelion++ . To further increase the anonymity of the user, Ghost also uses confidential transactions and RingCT, all while running Bulletproofs to decrease fees and speed up transaction times. There are several other implementations that will be added to the blockchain in the future, see our roadmap for details.

Over the past six months+ the Ghost team has been hard at work to progress the project forward and meet road map deliverables. In the following text we’ll analyze the team’s progress and the difficulties the team faced.

In January the GitHub and a good portion of community funds, were still under the management of the previous lead developer Reborn. Be that as it may, @GhostVeterans, @test_net_online, and @Tizymandias were elected to lead this project and spared no time in doing so. The team presented to the community an updated road map for 2021 which outlined key deliverables mentioned in the original whitepaper. With the community’s approval of the new road map, the team polished the outline and published it to corresponding websites.

Given the state that Ghost was in before the aforementioned team was elected, there was plenty of work to be done in order to repair previous relations with strategic partners. The team tirelessly worked to repair countless relationships with previous developers, exchanges, social platforms — and the image of Ghost as a whole. The desktop wallet for macOS users received an update pertaining to code signing & notarizing. The team honored all ERC-20 swaps that were eligible, thus finalizing the swap portal. To learn more about the ERC-20 swaps check out our post here. Over the past half year, the team added three new exchanges to the list and successfully intervened to prevent any imminent de-listings. At the beginning of the year, Ghost was only listed on two exchanges. This brought the total number of exchanges to five. Furthermore, Ghost successfully implemented a mobile wallet for iOS users. You can read about this here. Of course, with the previous management team, months went by without updating or establishing regular communication between CoinMarketCap (CMC) & CoinGecko (CG). Thus, after the election the team was able to establish regular updates about the project and correct all displayed information on these websites. This new establishment of updates allowed the team to be listed on Blockfolio Signal which the community had been asking for, for quite some time.

With respect to the Ghost whitepaper, research & development for Dandelion++ was actually an ongoing process before the current custodians took office. However, development was halted due to the disruption by previous management. Nevertheless, this allowed for more research on the ground breaking tech which helped pave way for the team to deploy it on-chain here very soon. Learn more about the Dandelion protocol here. As for Ghost Veteran Rewards (GVR), development for automation is approx. 95% complete. We’re very excited to share this with the community once we’re finished. This will further decentralize Ghost as GVR will no longer need to be manually processed. Support for hardware wallets was something the original management team began implementing, but difficulties with communication made development come to a screeching halt. That being said, the community continued to voice their demand for support on hardware wallets and the new team listened. The work on hardware wallet support for Ghost is also basically done, so very soon users will be able to store and stake their coins on Trezor & Ledger. Ghost is looking to expand hardware support on Bitfi as well.

The implementation of trustless on-chain governance is the foundation of any decentralized project. After researching new and existing models the team was able to begin developing the very parameters of this system. This ensures the governance stays decentralized and won’t be subject to bad actors or any external threats. A draft of this model has already been released to the Veterans. This deliverable will undergo further discussion before finalization, and ultimately our last vote amongst the Veterans via the current interim governance model.

Indeed, in the background of current operations GVR has been processed each month on a consistent, zero-error basis, with a provable perfect record of no misappropriation of funds. In late Q1, research began on Bulletproofs+ (B+), which is a more efficient version of the current Bulletproofs protocol and will serve as a drop-in replacement. B+ further reduces the size of range proofs and offers a speedup in verification. More to come on this later. The team is constantly interviewing and only hiring known developers that share the same passion for Ghost as we all do — a very demanding standard to meet.

At block height 296,000 we will undergo a hard fork which resolves the exploit mentioned above. With this fork, full Anon & Blind transactions are going to be restored, as well as the successful implementation of Dandelion++. In the coming days we will release a full technical write up explaining the underlying fixes to the code correcting the exploit.