[NXT] Development Discussion - The dev plan that keeps on delivering

[jabo38]

Visit the Nxt Technology Tree at nxttechnologytree.com to view the features that have been implemented in Nxt and find out more about the plans for the future.

I love this tree, but is there a way to find out which devs are working on each project.  I would love to read their updates the same way James does his updates.  

For core devs Jean-Luc/Mrv777/lyaffe/ChuckOne/CfB (not so much now)/might have missed someone, it is best to follow the Nxt Commits Twitter:  https://twitter.com/nxtcommit


For James type updates, Kushti and Jones each have started their own threads-

Kushti: https://nxtforum.org/general/kushti%27s-topic/

Jones: https://nxtforum.org/general-discussion/the-official-jones-thought-thread/

I am not sure if Wesley has got his own thread, they work him hard on the GUI so I think he does that 24/7 now (had to give up working on Jinn to keep up)



Kushti is knee deep with another phd student, a maths professor on sabatical and CfB digging deep into the forging algo here...

https://nxtforum.org/general/nxt-forging-algorithm-simulating-approach/

... so you might not hear from him for a while. I think CfB is hoping Kushti gets a better knowledge of Transparent Forging than him so he can take a back seat on the technical side  


Failing that, you just have to ask them  

@Jabo38, update from Wesley on GUI progress

TL:DR
i) Wesley (GUI dev) very busy with RL work. We have two new GUI devs.
ii) Re-skin of client theme being developed by Mrv777.
iii) Monetary system confirmed by two devs now as being in version 1.4.0
iv) Due to public demand, Jones&Wesley working on a wallet.dat system for Nxt
v) A fourth GUI dev, Crimi, may be joining soon. I believe Crimi currently runs the very useful peerexplorer.com atm.
vi) Humanfractal's idea of QR login/signing seems to be in the pipeline.
vii) Having more GUI devs will speed up the releases of Nxt (and get us along the tech tree quicker  )

As you may have noticed I have been absent from the forum these past few weeks. As I have said in some of my last posts, this is due to "real world commitments" (job) that are taking up all my time.

Fortunately, we already have 2 new GUI developers working on core that are doing a great job. Mrv777 is working on his theme changer, a feature that I didn’t have time to develop, and is also working on the UI for a 1.4 feature, the "monetary system".

Jones as I understand it is working on wallet.dat and a few other things. And I hear crimi may also be interested in joining the GUI developers sometime soon.

Having multiple GUI developers just makes sense, it was never good to rely on a single person (me) in the past. It should also bring new ideas and innovations, such as the QR login / signing idea from HumanFractal. And of course it will speed up development, which sometimes has to wait for GUI development before being able to test things properly (this was partly why 1.3 took so long).

*snip*

Source: https://nxtforum.org/technical-development-committee/gui/msg122194/#msg122194

Daedelus, thank you very much.  Those are great links.

[Daedelus]

You're welcome.

Here is another you will probably like, hot off the press:

...in an effort to increase transparency, we greatly improved out presence on the BitBucket issue tracker: https://bitbucket.org/JeanLucPicard/nxt/issues?status=new&status=open ...

https://nxtforum.org/general-discussion/(core)-bitbucket-development-efforts/

[Daedelus]

Kushti is also active atm...


Kushti: "Trustless escrows are coming!"

https://nxtforum.org/general/trustless-escrows-are-coming!/

Topics covered in OP;

Trustless escrows
2-phase transactions (phasing)
Multivoting
Vote-for-hash & votable appendix

[jabo38]

Kushti is also active atm...


Kushti: "Trustless escrows are coming!"

https://nxtforum.org/general/trustless-escrows-are-coming!/

Topics covered in OP;

Trustless escrows
2-phase transactions (phasing)
Multivoting
Vote-for-hash & votable appendix

That trustless escrow is huge! 

I had saw where openbaazar was trying to do that, but it looks like NXT will beat them to it. 

[Daedelus]

Jean-Luc confirms features (and possible features) for Nxt NRS version 1.4.

*snip*

Monetary System definitely yes.
Smart Contracts definitely no.
Voting, and Phasing, not yet sure.

Smaller features that will be included: asset dividends payment transaction, alias deletion transaction.

Nxt has had Voting in the backend since Mar/April but we have a bottleneck around user interface devs right now (Wesley had to leave Jinn just to concentrate on the core). I guess that is why Voting is a maybe.

[Daedelus]

Coin Shuffling is part of Monetary System but won't be included until release 1.5.

And I forgot to mention Coin Shuffling which was initially part of the Monetary System, it will not be in 1.4, but Lior is already working on it so very likely 1.5.

I don't even know who Lior is so we must have a new core dev 

[ShroomsKit_Disgrace]

Where can we get info about this Lior dev?

[Daedelus]

Where can we get info about this Lior dev?

I have got a feeling it is lyaffe, who has posted the Monetary System Documentation here: https://nxtforum.org/monetary-system/monetary-system-documentation/


Nxt Currencies, which are coins built on top of Nxt through Monetary System, Documentation is here - https://bitbucket.org/JeanLucPicard/nxt/issue/136/monetary-system



Extract below:

****
## Currency Properties ##

The currency entity supports several properties. Properties can be mixed and matched in various ways to compose the currency type. The currency type then controls the inner workings of the currency.
The list of available currency properties is as follows:

**EXCHANGEABLE** - the currency can be exchanged with NXT. Holders of the currency can publish an exchange offer specifying the buy and sell rate of the currency much the same as banks or currency exchanges publish their exchange rates . Each account can publish only a single exchange offer at any given time. Buyers and sellers can issue buy offer and sell offer to match published exchange offers. Unlike asset orders, offers are not saved, they are either executed immediately (fully or partially) or not executed at all. A match of exchange offer with a buy or sell offer creates an exchange entity which represents the transfer of currency units in return to NXT balance and causes the relevant account balances to update.

**CONTROLLABLE** - currency property suitable for currencies which needs to track an external entity. It imposes the following limitations on the currency (1) Currency can be transferred only to/from the issuer account (2) only the issuer account can publish exchange offers. The idea is that the issuer account can issue a large (practically infinite) supply of units in advance, then transfer units to accounts or exchange units to reflect actual transactions which takes place in an external system. The large supply of units in the issuer account can be used for creating units out of nowhere to support features such as interest payments, dividends or other inflationary practices.

**RESERVABLE** - means that the currency units are not issued immediately. Instead the currency issuer sets a block height at which the currency will be issued and a limit of NXT needed in order to issue the currency. Currency "founders" then lock their NXT to reserve their currency stake. If the amount of NXT needed inn order to issue the currency is not reserved before reaching the block height the issuance is cancelled and funds are returned minus fees. If the required reserve is allocated, the currency is issued and units are split between founders according to their proportional stake of invested NXT. In case of rounding, leftovers are sent to the issuer account. Reservable currency can be used as crowd funding tool where the issued currency units serve as stake in the issued currency.

**CLAIMABLE** - currency units of resereable currency can later be claimed at the same exchange rate used when reserving the currency. The ability to claim a currency at a certain rate imposes some practical limits on the rates in which users would want to exchange it. However claimable currency can also be exchanged if only for the purpose of exchanging the whole currency supply so that the currency can be deleted.

**MINTABLE** - currency can be minted using proof of work algorithms much the same as Bitcoin. Unlike Bitcoin mining, minting currency does not secure the network (this is done by NXT). Minting is used solely for creating new currency units and serve as the only mechanism to inflate the number of available units after the currency issuance.

**SHUFFLEABLE** - this property indicates that in the future this currency can participate in coin shuffling.

Properties are combined into an Integer bit mask designated as the Currency type.

[hayabusa911]

Looking really good brother!!! 

[johncarpe64]

nxt is one of the best cryptos and gets the least respect. is there a timeline?

[jabo38]

nxt is one of the best cryptos and gets the least respect. is there a timeline?

I'd also like to know a rough guess.

[Daedelus]

Generally when you see a flare up of "Nxt is a sacm", "Nxt Pirates killed Elvis" and "Nxt ate my babies" type threads on here, you know a release is just around the corner   There has been a persistent smearing in the week before the last two releases, always from the usual suspects. But they only delay people in discovering what is happening in Nxt, I see a troll-turned-nxter every so often


The 24th of November is Nxt's 1st birthday! so expect something special around then. There is a programme of a release roughly every 6 weeks, but you won't get much more precise than that.

[devphp]

I heard they planned to release 1.4 mid-November for test net with the Monetary System feature + something else. Add 3 weeks of bugfixing and 1 week for everyone to upgrade and no later than mid-December we can realistically expect 1.4 features to kick in for live net. Be sure to follow https://nxtforum.org/nrs-releases/

[Daedelus]

Update from nxtforum.org, devphp's timeframe looks right.

Hi folks,

some updates and teasers:

1.3.3 is almost finished. Its up-front improvement is the **tease**.

For the 1.4 series we already decided a feature freeze:
 - Monetary System (UI in progress), mostly described here: https://bitbucket.org/JeanLucPicard/nxt/issue/136/monetary-system
 - Dividends Payment (awaiting UI, but is trivial)
 - Alias Deletion (awaiting UI, but is trivial)

We assume having a workable UI for MS in 1 or 2 weeks and we are going to put this on the testnet as 1.4.0e.

We further expect you, guys, to shit-test the MS as you did with the Asset Exchange; to test every single nasty corner and special case. The MS is a very huge feature update containing a lot of new transactions types, database upgrade and bugs (kidding but you never know, so it is your responsibility to find them). Do not forget to test dividends payments and alias deletion either.

Leave your feedback here.

Cheers,
Chuck


PS: active MS thread: https://nxtforum.org/monetary-system/monetary-system-documentation/

But CfB has hinted a few times about the 24th November... I'd be surprised if nothing was announced 

My 5 Nxt bet goes on his Sryrim mod as the distributed computing proof of concept using Jinn 

[Daedelus]

Generally when you see a flare up of "Nxt is a sacm", "Nxt Pirates killed Elvis" and "Nxt ate my babies" type threads on here, you know a release is just around the corner   There has been a persistent smearing in the week before the last two releases, always from the usual suspects. But they only delay people in discovering what is happening in Nxt, I see a troll-turned-nxter every so often


The 24th of November is Nxt's 1st birthday! so expect something special around then. There is a programme of a release roughly every 6 weeks, but you won't get much more precise than that.

It is happening 

[Daedelus]

Update from kushti (one of the core devs) about 2 phased transactions (escrows, i.e. you send Nxt but it isn't released until BTC has been sent from other side). Also of the likely features in version 1.4.

1.4 looks to be a lot of new features, made possible in the backend changes done in v1.3. They had been queuing up and waiting for 1.3 

Just published post-implementation 2-phased transactions specification: https://nxtforum.org/general/2-phased-transactions-post-implementation-specification/ . I don't know whether it will be in 1.4 or a later release as 1.4. has too many implemented features to be included probably: Monetary System, Coin Shuffling, dividends, alias deletion, Voting System, 2-phased transactions. But I would be happy see businesses around Nxt starting to think about using 2-phased transactions. For example, with Bitcoin's multisig and 2-phased transactions it's possible to provide signature escrow service without money holding on escrow's side.

A world of Nxt-based businesses could be changed a lot with Voting System(https://nxtforum.org/voting-system/voting-system-got-massive-updates/, https://nxtforum.org/general-discussion/getting-voting-system-out-the-door/) & 2-phased transactions. Distributed shareholders voting, money spendings controlled by shareholders etc

[ShroomsKit_Disgrace]

Where is CfB nowadays?

[Daedelus]

Where is CfB nowadays?

90% of his time in Jinn as far as I know. He consults with the Nxt devs when developing the implementations (and horses around on NxtForum too  )

CfB has only been 50% in Nxt since April.

[freenxt.org]

The tree is looking really great and ChuckOne gives awesome info about the development processes. Good work guys! Keep on Nxt =)

[Daedelus]

Kushti has been working on trying to define the "Nothing@Stake Problem" and is due to publish his findings. I think I saw the first paper will be published on Monday.

Seems Nxt and other Proof-of-Stake currencies are suffer from lack of trust to the distributed consensus algo. There are some "threats" described e.g.  Nothing-at-Stake, "weaker consensus properties"  and so on. To clarify all claims around proof-of-stake currencies, investigate consensus properties and make the research widely accessible via executable parametric simulations we've started Consensus Research group with  crowdfunding via Nxt AE https://trade.secureae.com/#5841059555983208287 . First results will be published soon including the most clear and formal definition of Nothing-at-Stake to the moment!

Here is Kushti's website with his previous work: http://chepurnoy.org/blog/archives