Peercoin Newsletter #8: v0.4, Peerunity, Peershares Hiring, Upcoming Interview

Peercoin Newsletter - Issue #8
April 23rd, 2014

Introduction

Thank you for joining our Peercoin newsletter. There have been several major developments for Peercoin in the past few months, so let's get to it.

PeercoinTalk thread

Peerunity

Peercoin is quickly approaching a major milestone in its life with the announcement of Peerunity. On 4/12/14, Peershares architect Jordan Lee revealed the development of this next level wallet and client supporting Peercoin and eventually Peershares. This represents a sort of melding in the Peercoin and Peershares development, meaning faster and broader updates to Peercoin development:

Quote from: Jordan Lee on April 12, 2014, 02:59:00 AM

I am pleased to be able to announce the launch of Peerunity development, your next Peercoin wallet.

Since day one the Peershares specification has included a client (wallet) that would integrate support for Peercoin as well as multiple Peershares instances. While this versatile client has not been scheduled for the initial release of the Peershares template, the Peershares team feels it is time to begin development of this combined Peercoin/Peershares wallet. Accordingly, you can find the code project here: https://github.com/Peerunity/Peerunity

It is a fork of the ppcoin repository. The first two or three releases will not feature support of Peershares. We would like it to be an open and inclusive environment for the broader Peercoin community to improve this Peercoin client. This does not belong to the Peershares team. In recognition of Peershares' dependence on Peercoin, some development of Peerunity will be sponsored by the Peershares team. We also want to reach out to developers such as irigi, b0netruper, Curve25519, JSmith-BitFlipper, ghost, sengaya, ngbatnicdotmil, ErikDubbelboer, samilaine and especially vpereira who have placed pull requests against ppcoin and say: the Peercoin community is very thankful for your work and we want to cooperate closely with you to refine and test your contributions and get them into the hands of users in the Peercoin community quickly. We encourage all developers considering making a pull request against the ppcoin repository to also make a pull request against Peerunity.

To help faciliate broad community cooperation, a number of trusted Peercoin/Peershares community leaders have write permissions to the repository, meaning they can integrate the code changes into the master copy of the code. These members are Sunny King, Ben, sigmike and myself.

I have said in the past that Peercoin development will be provided and funded by our Peershares team in the future. Today that future arrives. The Peershares project will be funding user interface based minting (aka one button minting) and will also provide Peercoin branding (updating PPCoin branding) for the client in our first Peerunity release. We will also include most of the pull requests currently pending against the ppcoin repository. We want to lock down the code for testing very quickly (in a week or two) and then release very quickly after that, so if you have something you would like to contribute to the first release, please speak up quickly and we will consider your request. One button minting is already in Peerunity (thanks to sigmike and funding from Peershares) and we will be merging ppcoin pull requests in the coming days. Initially we will place changes in master. As the cutoff for feature inclusion arrives, we will branch into 0.5, stabilize the branch through testing for release and simultaneously continue adding additional improvements to master.

The days of slow or nonexistent Peercoin development are over.

The specifications of the first Peerunity release have been finalized.

Quote

The specifications accepted for the 0.1 release are:

1. Rebranding: Accepted and funded by Peershares (no pull request yet)
2. Menu based minting: Accepted and funded by Peershares (pull request by sigmike merged)
3. Coin control: Accepted and funded by Peer4Commit donation @ 130 PPC (pull request submitted by glv2)
4. createmultisig RPC: Accepted (pull request submitted by Jordan Lee)

The createmultisig RPC I just submitted has absolutely zero testing. If someone will test it and resubmit the pull request with two indentation anomalies fixed and any fixes your testing may indicate are needed I will merge your pull request instead of mine and give you a 5% tip [edit: about 60 PPC].

In addition to the above items our first release includes a half dozen pull requests brought in from PPCoin and an updated French translation.

All that remains is the easiest task, rebranding. This will be provided by the Peershares team very soon. I believe Sentinelrv is going to provide icons for the rebranding which are still outstanding. Except for this simple and straightforward item, all that remains to be done is testing. We are very close to being code complete.

"Peershares are a way for businesses to raise funds by issuing shares to the public and managing them in a decentralized fashion. It uses the Peercoin network to automate the distribution of associated dividends in the form of Peercoins."

On 3/22/14, Jordan Lee gave an update on the development of Peershares. Note that this update came before the announcement of Peerunity, but it does provide insight into the ongoing development of Peershares.

Quote from: Jordan Lee on March 22, 2014, 03:11:10 PM

Though winter has arrived in Bitcoin land and Peercoin land, it is spring in Peershares land. I am ecstatic with the progress we are making, the prospects for Peershares and our implementation and extension of Peershares.

Though the USD value of the funding Peershares received has declined by about 40% over the last couple of months, we are not struggling with funding at all. Of the 200 BTC dedicated to our implementation of Peershares, 158.45542308 BTC remains unspent. The entire sixty thousand PPC balance remains unspent. There are several people who have expressed interest in providing additional funding in exchange for equity as well. We are well funded now with excellent prospects of finding additional funding when needed.

We have Peershares successfully distributing Peercoin dividends now and the features slated for initial release are rapidly approaching alpha quality. Soon we will be opening a Peershares test network to the public.

We are expanding the team. I am in negotiations with snakie (his peercointalk username), creator of peerchain.net, regarding terms for creating the website for our implementation of Peershares. While the mini-blockchain project is technically separate from Peershares because it is high risk and we don't want the success and release of Peershares to be held hostage to it, Cryddit of bitcointalk.org is working hard on this and we are ready to pay another C++ developer to work with him on it. Please contact me if you are interested and spread the word about the opening. For those who don't know, the mini-blockchain is basically a mechanism for pruning a blockchain so that it scales much better, supporting high transaction levels while requiring modest amounts of disk space. It will be open source and available to be used in other blockchain implementations.

The development of our extension of Peershares is about half code complete. When this is complete it will provide additional funding for the team.

Now is the time for businesses interested in raising funds and managing equity using Peershares to step up and seize the opportunity. Contact me if you are interested in creating your own Peershares blockchain and would like to try out our test network. The people on our team can guide you through the process of setting it all up. Peershares is no longer vaporware. I think a lot of people are still confused about what type of business could benefit from Peershares so I will briefly say that any business that wants to raise funding or manage shareholder equity in an inexpensive automated fashion could benefit. Your business need not be related to cryptocurrency. It could be a restaurant, a property management business or nearly any other type of business.

Regardless of what other businesses do, we are racing to create our extension of Peershares which will provide a real world demonstration of what Peershares has to offer. Additional details will be released in the coming weeks and months.

The first public alpha test for Windows is now live. Join the thread and test Peershares!

Peershares team hiring experienced C++ developer and QA Engineer!

Quote

Here are more details on both positions we have open right now:

Senior C++ Developer

We are presently looking for an experienced C++ developer with a passion for cryptoassets to join the Peershares team. You will be developing the first extension of the Peershares template. This is a telecommute position which can be part time or full time and pays from $60 to $90 an hour depending on experience. Please contact Jordan Lee by BitMessage at BM-2cXS5ezep1jUqeu8CwC6M4aTmMSxcFEHNN (preferred contact method), PM him directly on peercointalk.org or by email at jlee at vistomail dot com.

QA Engineer

We are presently looking for an experienced QA Engineer with a passion for cryptoassets to join the Peershares team. You will be testing the first extension of the Peershares template. This is a telecommute position which can be part time or full time and pays from $30 to $50 an hour depending on experience. Please contact Ben by BitMessage at BM-2cT3cMyCKiTBMLxX7bZA84p5tTUaR5k6XQ (preferred contact method) or PM him directly on peercointalk.org (username Ben).

If you can help recruit by spreading word of these opportunities, please do so. As a referral bonus you will receive 10% of what the referred contractor makes through September 2014.

Tell him Yurizhai sent you Wink

Peercoin Client v0.4 Released

On 4/5/14, Peercoin creator Sunny King released client v0.4. Just to avoid any confusion, until Peerunity is released, this is the up to date version of the Peercoin client. Deadline to update from v0.3 is May 5th, 2014!

Quote

What's included in v0.4.0:
- Debug window console support in Qt, easier to get to command line e.g. unlock wallet for minting (if you enter wallet passphrase in the console please remember to use the clear button to clear it).
- Protocol adjustment required for future p2pool support. Protocol switch scheduled for May 5th.
- Experimental getblocktemplate support
- getpeerinfo support
- Bug fixes
- Mandatory upgrade release, upgrade deadline May 5th.

For the average user, there are two important things to note about v0.4.

- Improved security via bug fix. You are now required to enter your wallet pass-phrase in order to send coins when your wallet is unlocked for minting.

- There is now a debug console which makes unlocking your wallet for minting coins much easier. Open the client, go to Help - Debug console. Type in " walletpassphrase <passphrase> <time> true" - Time being in seconds. So if your passphrase was 123 and you wanted to unlock your wallet for 10 minutes, you would type exactly:

Quote

walletpassphrase 123 600 true

Note that it will likely require a lot longer than 10 minutes to mint coins. If you are serious about minting, I suggest unlocking the wallet for several days at least. Also keep in mind that only PPC that has been stationary for at least 30 days are eligible for minting!

You can find the PeercoinTalk thread on unlocking the wallet through the debug menu here.

Warning: If you use the debug console to unlock your wallet, make sure to hit the clear button when you're done so somebody doesn't walk up to your computer and see your pass-phrase!

Peer4Commit

Announcing Peer4Commit, where Peercoin supporters can donate to development and developers can earn PPC for adding to the cause. As of this writing, there is over 38,000 PPC up for grabs!

- Current projects include the new marketing video, Peerunity, the Android wallet and more.
- Read the Peer4Commit FAQ here.
- Check out the Primecoin version, Prime4Commit here.

Community Interview With Sunny King
Given the opportunity to ask Peercoin & Primecoin creator Sunny King their questions, the community voted and the top five questions from each category were chosen. Keep an eye on PeercoinTalk.org for details and responses.

New Peercoin Video
The community has raised funds and made contact with a video developer to create a new Peercoin promotional video. It seems the script is being finalized and you can follow the developments here.

Exchange Spotlight

- Moolah, a payment processor is planning to support Peercoin. This will give merchants an easy way to accept Peercoin for their goods/services. Peercoin has also been added to Prelude, an exchange created by the same people.

- UK supporters can now buy Peercoin from Bittylicious using a GBP bank transfer.

- HolyTransaction now supports Peercoin. Read how it works via the FAQ here.

- Coinomat now supports Peercoin. "We offer instant Peercoin exchange to BTC and fiat e-currencies such as Egopay and Perfectmoney. The whole process takes no more than 10 minutes. Good alternative to trading at an exchange."

Warning: I am only reporting on these exchanges. Please do your own research before trusting any site with your money or cryptocurrencies!

Merchant Spotlight

- Buy electronics, gift-cards, video games and more with PPC at Coinverted.

- Register .bit domains on the Namecoin network with Peercoins using dotbit.me.

- Buy Sea salt from around the world with PPC at Seasaltworldwide.

- Buy Vinage Home Decor and Hand Blown Crystal with PPC at distinguishedimports.

Warning: I am only reporting on these merchants. Please do your own research before trusting any site with your money or cryptocurrencies!

For a list of other merchants that may accept Peercoin, please see here.

Random Tidbits

- Peercoin is over 1.5 years old and still retains a blockchain size of less than 300mb due to design.

- The Peercoin difficulty now sits at 152 million, over double it's January 2014 difficulty of 64 million.

- A presentation was created for Peercoin. Useful for a brief overview of Peercoin and it's properties.

- Erowid.org accepts Peercoin donations.

- The Peercoin proof-of-work block reward is now 89.94 PPC.

- Coindesk article that speaks about the energy waste needed to support the Bitcoin network, and how other cryptocurrencies have improved in that regard (including PPC!).

- Reddit user RyanKindler reviews his experience buying gift-cards from pock.io using Peercoins.

Social Media

Official Forum & Chat - http://www.peercointalk.org
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/Peercoin
Twitter - https://twitter.com/peercoinPPC
Reddit - www.reddit.com/r/peercoin

Conclusion

I hope you enjoyed this Peercoin newsletter. As always, join the official forums and chat at PeercoinTalk.org for all the latest information. Also, consider supporting Peercoin by signing up to become a volunpeer, where you can list your skills and receive important Peercoin related emails.

See you next time.