Nav Coin 4.0.2 SegWit Voting and Surprise Release
Earlier in the week we announced that SegWit signalling would begin for Nav Coin on 1 May 2017. If you’re unsure what Segregated Witness is all about, the bottom line of implementing SegWit for Nav Coin is that it will make our block structure more flexible. This in turn allows us greater freedom for our next generation NAVTech 2.0 Multichain Wallet and the possibility to implementing more powerful smart contracts into Nav Coin and our Subchain.
There are other technical benefits such as smaller transactions sizes and a raft of other things that will impact Nav Coin less profoundly which can be read about here:
https://bitcoincore.org/en/2016/01/26/segwit-benefits Today we are delivering Nav Coin Core 4.0.2 which enables users vote for the activation of Segregated Witness on the network. This will be the worlds first SegWit activation decided by proof of stake users.
When you start version 4.0.2 of the Nav Coin Core wallet, it will show a status line on the Staking section of the overview page indicating the signalling start date. Once this date is reached (12am 1st May), you will be prompted to cast your vote for or against activating SegWit. If you wish to alter your vote in the future you are able to do so from the options menu.
If you’re running the NavPi or other command line installs, you will also need to update and you can set the vote paramter from the navcoin.conf file.
votewitness=1 (to vote YES)
votewitness=0 (to vote NO)
NavPis can be easily updated using a script. Connect through SSH to your device and type in the following command:
wget -O --
http://www.navcoin.org/files/update-navpi.sh | bash
It is necessary to upgrade to this latest version of Nav Coin Core to cast your vote. If you run an older version, the lite wallet, or the mobile wallet, you are not able to vote.
Votes are cast by attaching a special bit to blocks which the full node wallet validates. This makes voting not a one time action, but continuous during the voting period. So if you want to vote we recommend keeping 4.0.2 wallet running and unlocked for staking for the voting period.
This vote shows the governance power of Proof of Stake coins vs. Proof of Work coins. Because individual NAV users are the ones validating blocks, the power truly is in our communities hands rather than large corporate mining companies when it comes to network decisions like this.
We ask that all users who are able, to please download the 4.0.2 wallet and signal your SegWit vote. If you’re on an old version, please update to this one.
http://navcoin.org/downloads/#nav-coin-coreAs well as the release of Nav Coin Core 4.0.2 we have a surprise release up our sleeve for you today. We have just put the finishing touches on our Nav Coin Paper Wallet generator which we have been working on in secret and is now ready for public release.
The Nav Coin Paper Wallet generator is a great way to either cold store some of your NAV or also give people physical gifts of Nav Coin.
The wallet generator creates a valid public address which you can immediately send NAV and see on the block explorer. The private key is also generated and this allows the holder of the paper wallet to import the NAV sent to the public address to their own Nav Coin wallet whenever they choose.
There is also the option to BIP38 encrypt the private key with a passphrase. This is a great anti-theft measure and means that the private key isn’t directly printed on the paper, you actually need a password to reveal the private key.
There are also QR disruptor patterns on the printed design which allows you to fold the private key and seal it with anti-tamper tape. The disruptors mean that the QR is not visible through the paper even when a light is shined on it. So the only way to access the private key would be to peel off the anti-tamper tape, so you should be able to tell if your key has been physically revealed by a malicious actor.
There are full color or black and white only options so you don’t have to blow through all your printer ink and you can fit up to 4 paper wallets onto a single A4 sheet of paper.
If you encrypt the passphrase, you will need to decrypt the private key before importing it to your wallet. We have also added a menu option to import a private key to your Nav Coin Core 4.0.2 to make it easier to retrieve nav sent to these paper wallets.
There are two ways to run the paper wallet generator; as a desktop app, or in your browser.
http://navcoin.org/downloads/#paper-wallet The browser option is available so you can inspect the javascript code and ensure with your own eyes that the code you’re running is safe and not broadcasting your private keys. The same code is also on our github account.
You can see a demo of the browser generator here:
http://paper.navcoin.orgHowever we recommend you download the code and run it locally and offline rather than directly from this demo site.
Either way, everything is done locally on your machine. All the html and javascript is run in your web browser (or in the application). There is no communication at all to any server. This ensures that you can do this process completely offline and in a secure environment.
If you’re paranoid about keeping the private keys safe we recommend to create the wallets on a freshly installed USB booted version of Ubuntu. Make sure you computer and your printer are offline while you’re making the paper wallets then correctly wipe or destroy the USB drive and printer before going back online or plugging into any other device.
There are many guides on how to do this for bitcoin paper wallets and the process would be the same for ours except you will use our generator of course.
We hope you like this special surprise!
Talk soon,
The Nav Coin Team
