I picked this coin as a "super secret" coin to accumulate earlier in the year. Very cool to see how you're carrying on this legacy blockchain, psionin.
It became a bit of a guessing game to talk about it indirectly with people trying to figure it out. I hope it create a little buy action and value to encourage some more work on the portfolio app, which I think is absolutely awesome.
dm me on Twitter if you want to talk, dev!
Hey, it's great to hear such feedback. I've actually been using the portfolio manager myself, and it's been quite helpful in tracking a bunch of different coins at once without having to keep looking them up and reloading pages. There didn't seem to be much interest about it at first, but maybe now it can be moved to the front burner.
As for SmartCoin in general, my goals have been to keep this thing together as an autonomous, decentralized, and open project, and to make it easy for anyone wanting to participate in a beneficial and constructive manner to add their contributions, if they fit in and make sense, while ensuring that basic underlying functionality (such as adequate exchange listings and fast blockchain synchronization) remains in place.
For a while, there may have been some doubts about the nature and purpose of this project, such as when too many alts were being made and taking up investor attention, or when the idea of Bitcoin being the only real cryptocurrency was becoming widespread. It is now more clear that scaling the crypto ecosystem cannot happen with Bitcoin alone, and that alts are very much needed in this growing economy.
In regards to the question about future updates to the node code, it is certainly possible and may be done, but it is important to be cautious and make such changes count. There is also value in blockchain immutability, and it is arguably better to keep a stable version in place rather than to have potentially conflicting updates on the network. So first and foremost I think it is important to recognize that SmartCoin is already successful in the state that it is in right now, that it has the same type of "digital gold" properties as Bitcoin, and that it could be relied upon to function and provide a means of value storage and exchange in the years to come.
This is exactly the kind of thoughtful response I had hoped to hear. I know with the recent high-valuation of masternode coins (DASH and PIVX) there is pressure for legacy blockchains like Smartcoin's to attempt to capture some of that price-hype by an encouragement to hardfork to include that system ("because it's already x11" or so the wishful thinking goes). The truth is, more long-term value is built on staying the course of what has been planned for the coin from the beginning, and leveraging its best assets (name, simplicity) as you have already been doing.
I'm glad you chose to keep Smartcoin and its related assets alive through the 2015-2016 period you mentioned when altcoins in general were overpopulated and overextended. As the illegitimate projects fall away into segregated, speculation-only markets like Yobit, there's much potential for a re-evaluation of legacy blockchains like SMC which have stood the test of time.
Specifically, I've always hated the time I have to spend updating my portfolio spreadsheet manually. I don't have the technical chops to have each field complete the api call to each coin's block explorer, and I'm sure each explorer works differently. The closest tool to what you've created is the Coinigy Marketwatch app, and though it allows you to enter an altcoin's address manually, it doesn't scoop price or quantity information from any exchanges, and thus doesn't work (except as an aggregator of your balances across supported exchanges). If Smartcoin's hold-to-unlock live portfolio manager could allow for address entry of any altcoin listed on Coinmarketcap, that would be amazing. Even a tiered price model where one would need to hold 1000 SMC for each five addresses whose balance the tool would track, would be fantastic.
In any case, thank you for your response and your continued attention. Anytime you want to contact me for help or discussion please feel free!