After an extended communication hiatus (for which we apologize -- there is only so often we can say that we are working in the background, albeit slowly), we are preparing to roll out the results that we have done over the last year and announce the next steps in our plan for continued development and community support.
It has taken some time to solidify a plan moving forward, but we have managed to put an excellent team together to take this project to the next level. As we all worked full-time jobs over the last year, it was a challenge to allocate time and resources to drive the necessary momentum from the beginning. However, with the reality of several team members stepping down from their full time commitments and committing to Eclipse full time, we know that we can turn our plans into a reality.
We have updated the OP where you will find new details on Eclipse development that highlight some of the necessary changes that we hope will not only build confidence in our new structure but also in our team and the future of Eclipse.
We are sure that many of you have questions. We will be available here but also more readily available on our Slack channel
and we encourage everyone to join to stay up to date on progress moving forward. Get yourself an invite at
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Ring signatures are the basis of all the anonymous features of Eclipse. Ring signatures obsfucate the originator of a message
so that the only mathematical proof that can be attained is that 1 person out of N people is the original writer of a given message.
The message can take the form of proposing a new rule, donating tokens, transferring property, or leaking confidential material.
By design, ring signatures require the computation of a value known as a „key image“. Key images in Eclipse are generated using
an algorithm known as „Try-and-Increment“, a cryptographically secure method for mapping a scalar hash to a point on the elliptic curve.
The security of Try-and-Increment comes from the fact that this method does not rely on the group generator (i.e. basepoint) of the elliptic curve.
The inclusion of our implementation of Try-and-Increment, based on the algorithm proposed in
How to Hash into Elliptic Curves, is our only
modification to the optimized libsecp256k1 library that is used in libbitcoincore.
Ticker: ECAlgorithm: SHA-256d PoW/PoS with Independent Targeting
PoWBlock Time: 256 seconds (4 minutes)
Max PoW Mining Supply: 2.78 Million (last block 4725)
PoW Reward: 4027 EC halving every 337.5 blocks
PoS V2PoS Min Age: 8 hours
HiPoS Length: 4 Weeks
HiPoS Reward: 300 Corona, decreasing by 10/day to 20 Corona
Post-HiPoS Reward: 10 Corona
ParametersAlgo: SHA256d
Fee (Comission): 0.0002 EC
Secp256k1: New (bitcoin)
Language: C++
PortsPort: 35914 (testnet: 35915)
RPC Port: 45914 (testnet: 45915)
Blockchains that are forks of ByteCoin, the original CryptoNote token, use Ed25519 (see:
High-speed high-security signatures),
an elliptic curve in a Twisted Edwards form, for their digital signatures. Ed25519 is birationally equivalent to Curve25519,
an elliptic curve in Montgomery form, originally studied by D.J. Bernstein in
Curve25519: new Diffie-Hellman speed records.
Unfortunately, one cannot be entirely certain if the parameters that were used for Curve25519 (and the subsequently derived parameters for Ed25519)
were chosen in such a way to allow a backdoor by the NIST (which has been known to happen with SECP256R1 due to the Snowden revelations)
due to choosing the restrictive parameter space a posteriori after a suitably (insecure) curve had been constructed.
It is our opinion that neither the security of this curve nor the integrity of Bernstein is up for debate. However, SECP256K1, a Koblitz curve,
had parameters chosen by a community of cryptographers as opposed to one cryptographer; it is our opinion that one researcher could be a
malicious actor easier than multiple researchers acting in a Byzantine manner.
We decided to use the SECP256K1 elliptic curve for Eclipse due to its parameters being chosen publicly in a way to achieve fast arithmetic
operations and its long-standing usage with blockchains.
Our Team is dedicated to the long-term success of Eclipse Crypto.
However, ‘long-term success’ are mere words unless we back them up with action. We have decided to impose a restriction to the access
of 1.4 Million EC of our Development Fund wallet using the CheckLockTimeVerify (CLTV) operation. Using this built-in script functionality,
we made it so that 1/40 of the tokens that are in control of the Founding Team will become available at the beginning of every quarter
for the next 10 years.
This action effectively reduces the supply by 40% and gradually increases the access to the coins over the next decade.
We are the first cryptocurrency development team to combine these features to create a long-term funding model.
We believe that by doing this, we demonstrate our commitment to the development of Eclipse Crypto, not with words, but with recorded,
transparent, and provable actions that can be queried on the blockchain.
In addition, the coins that are locked away for the next 10 years will not be staking.
The Development Fund will be paid quarterly over 10 years:
· 1 part for each of the 6 Team Members (to pay for continued development and code maintenance)
· 1 part for bounties, marketing, and promotional events / community prizes
The remaining 89770 Eclipse from the developers’ public address build the Eclipse Marketing & Development Fund which can be found here:
Eco2cHFa6TvTDFhUpdQVvRbMvsajg1ox8AThe 1.4 Million Eclipse will be locked using CLTV for the forementioned purpose and can be found here (non staking) :
ELM61RTMp9Rd13YRwfHxPHrCf8i3p2tu7X 
1. Anonymous ProposalsYou, along with Alice, Bob, Charlie, and Dianna, belong to an organization that creates rules that determine how everyone
behave towards one another. You want to propose a rule that benefits yourself, Bob, and Dianna.
However, you have a strong working relationship with Alice and Charlie and don’t want them to find out that you proposed
a new law that doesn’t benefit them. With ring signatures, you can hide the fact that you were the one who suggested this new rule.
2. Anonymous DonationsYou support an organization that is run by Alice and Bob. Eve is collecting information for Gordon to know who supports and donates
to Alice and Bob’s organization. You can donate to Alice and Bob’s organization without Eve finding out and telling Gordon
with the use of ring signatures.
You support Alice for a particular political office. However, you are not able to donate more than a certain amount to her campaign
due to individual contribution limits. With ring signatures, you can avoid these rules by hiding the fact that you are the person donating
to Alice’s campaign.
3. Anonymous Money TransfersYou are working in China and make more than $50,000 worth of Yuan in a year. You are afraid that China’s central bank may decide
to debase their currency even further, rendering your current holdings in the Yuan worth less. You recently read the news how the
Chinese government is trying to stop people from transfering more money out of China than they are allowed using Bitcoin.
Eclipse, with its implementation of ring signatures for anonymous money transfers, allows you to circumvent China’s currency exportation
laws and anonymously transfer more money out of the country than you are allowed by law.
4. Anonymous Property TransfersYou possess a digital token that represents ownership of some type of property. You can anonymously transfer your property,
and the underlying token that represents ownership, to someone else using ring signatures.
5. Anonymous Whistle BlowingYou work for an organization that is performing actions that you believe are unjust. However, you fear for your life if you speak
out and tell others about these unfair practices.
With the help of ring signatures, you can be an anonymous whistleblower and bring to light the activities with which
you do not agree.
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