Bullion (CBX) 'the Digital Precious Metal' | 2019 Roadmap published

[BTCat]

I think you have misunderstood. What I was trying to say was that there is so much discussion going on behind the scenes that it is easy to get caught up and forget about keeping the interest of readers, and potential investors.

If I had known you were so prickly, I wouldn't of pointed my finger at you as an example.

Killiz,

I read again and don't think you meant it that personal, so my apology for the aggressive defense.

Elambert has made many posts with his vision on future developments. Think of all the coins that have uncertain future and unproven devteams, I think we should be happy with a dedicated and consistant dev/manager who stayed on the ship since mid 2013. That alone is worth his weight in gold. I hope more people will start to appreciate that and join the club.

[Killiz]

Hey guys,
Couple things.

First, I have not heard back from cryptsy but have offered assistance with the 'wallet maintenance'.

Second, a new revamped client has recently been released and is a major step forward from the old client we were operating with for the first almost 2 years.

Third, development continues but takes time. As is BTCat's situation, we are all volunteers here and offer what we can of ourselves to work on the project because we believe in it and have invested in it. Next up on the TODO tech wise is merged mining. This will aid in better protecting the block chain and also draw in additional attention from miners. After that hard fork we will follow as soon as possible with another to release Crypto Bullion's own unique version of Proof-of-Stake for which the white paper is already written. In my opinion this is the best version of PoS out there but the proof is in the pudding.

I completely get what you mean regarding community silence and that is a growing problem sadly. We have worked to continue to maintain trust by working hard and providing a quality product but can't blame people for running to the next big windfall hope-urtinity. We will continue to develop along the planned promise that we outline in our announcements and I am still confident our goals will be achieved.

As far as communicating, much of our announcements go without response from the community. Occasionally we get a nice job but mostly if we hear something it relates to an issue (such as the Cryptsy withdrawal issue). For the most part it is BTCat, raizor and myself grinding this out everyday getting strength from each other. It is a rather thankless job, but that is okay - we believe in ourselves and our product and will stand by it and better it.

Any suggestions from the community are welcome but really just need people to get interested and care. Continued development brings that to the table but takes time. Investors also bring that to the table...

Thanks for taking the time to answer my questions, putting together the detailed update and voicing your opinions on the community situation elambert. Much appreciated.

Getting attention and support from the community has certainly been a slog for CBX. With a crypto so promising fundamentaly, and a development team so dedicated, I've also felt the frustration when each achievement seems to fall on deaf ears.

There has to be a problem somewhere that can be fixed, as to why readers don't take the time or effort to make repeated and quality posts. If people are looking for a long established, actively developed, fair and honest cryptocurrency then people are going to run into CBX. Why they pass by is a puzzle that needs solving.

Feedback and regular discussion from readers creates a vibrancy within a thread, along with buoyancy on the altcoin section. Updates on development keep people interested. Most importantly, humour and idle chit chat between readers keep them coming back on a daily basis.

I'm as much to blame as anyone else over the last year or so, for only coming to this thread to take a quick glance to see if there are any updates or new posts, then I'm gone. I then realised that this was probably what everyone else who has an interest in CBX was doing. How we get people talking again is anyone's guess, but I believe the use of this thread for less serious and less confidential communication, rather than just a posting point for info and updates would bring people closer to CBX again.

I think you have misunderstood. What I was trying to say was that there is so much discussion going on behind the scenes that it is easy to get caught up and forget about keeping the interest of readers, and potential investors.

If I had known you were so prickly, I wouldn't of pointed my finger at you as an example.

Killiz,

I read again and don't think you meant it that personal, so my apology for the aggressive defense.

Elambert has made many posts with his vision on future developments. Think of all the coins that have uncertain future and unproven devteams, I think we should be happy with a dedicated and consistant dev/manager who stayed on the ship since mid 2013. That alone is worth his weight in gold. I hope more people will start to appreciate that and join the club.

No offence taken BTCat, I have a habit of posting in a not so clear way. I couldn't care more about any other crypto than I do for CBX, and if I was able, I would do all the hard work myself for sure.
All I can do is buy and hold as I've been doing for getting on to 2 years, and throw a few words about now and again. Sometimes you may get hit by them, but they are never thrown with contempt.

[llildur]

Hey guys,
Couple things.

First, I have not heard back from cryptsy but have offered assistance with the 'wallet maintenance'................

Hi im new in comments but not in this proyect as someone mentioned before i keep coming for updates only, today i want to show my support to you guys, i am following several projects in crypto space, CBX from my personal point of view has good future but not gonna make it alone, there are some projects like supernet, blocknet or even bitshares that could booster the adoption and provide exposure to CBX, is interesting that blocknet claim to achieve some P2p communication at the edges between blockchains and not relying on groups of servers utilising m-of-3 multisig like supernet does, anyway  if CBX get involved in some of this projects will benefit and could get a better scope of option to make their own path and fulfill the niche what is created for, all the projects has pros and cons but i think CBX should not be an island, cheers 

[elambert]

Hey guys,
Couple things.

First, I have not heard back from cryptsy but have offered assistance with the 'wallet maintenance'................

Hi im new in comments but not in this proyect as someone mentioned before i keep coming for updates only, today i want to show my support to you guys, i am following several projects in crypto space, CBX from my personal point of view has good future but not gonna make it alone, there are some projects like supernet, blocknet or even bitshares that could booster the adoption and provide exposure to CBX, is interesting that blocknet claim to achieve some P2p communication at the edges between blockchains and not relying on groups of servers utilising m-of-3 multisig like supernet does, anyway  if CBX get involved in some of this projects will benefit and could get a better scope of option to make their own path and fulfill the niche what is created for, all the projects has pros and cons but i think CBX should not be an island, cheers 

Nice to hear from you and thank you for the suggestions, they are appreciated!

[BTCat]

WeUseCoins.com | Alt-Coin Section Added | Need CryptoBullionX Articles as Github Pull Requests

We Use Coins is one of the premier websites in the cryptocurrency industry. It released the viral video What Is Bitcoin? which has received over 7.5m views.
An Alt-Coin section has been added to the main navigational menu. In order for CryptoBullionX to get more exposure on this venue there is a need for high quality, objective, accurate and professional articles.
Content is handled via the Github repo, where we have how-to instructions for those who may not be familiar, so please submit pull requests of articles about CryptoBullionX if you are interested in helping it get more exposure. This is a great venue to help new users.

Reference with working links: http://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoBullionX/comments/33cmek/weusecoinscom_altcoin_section_added_need/

[raizor]

Killiz, those are some good points. I should point out that I can see how BTCat misinterpreted your post, as I got the wrong impression too when I initially read it Anyway, all said with good intention, so let's concentrate on moving forward.

Guys,

I'm tired as hell due to following the election here in the UK, so please excuse any fuzziness in my text below.

I appreciate that a lot of the discussion takes place in private, and addressing that makes a lot of sense. Crypto in general seems to be quite 'protectionist' as many developers are worried about their work being copied before release. However, I don't think that's the correct mentality, especially if Crypto is to succeed. We need to work together as much as possible as there will be countless external threats to our existence in the future, I'm sure. Communication with the community hasn't been particularly great of late (on my part at least), so let's look to address that. I will aim to provide a weekly update from this point forward. Feel free to give me a nudge now and again

The team and the community is what initially attracted me to CryptoBullion and that still stands. We have some great people here and we should concentrate on working together and helping each other as much as possible in order to ensure the future success of CryptoBullion. The 'active' Core Team is indeed small and could certainly do with the injection of some new blood and renewed enthusiasm.

As Elambert mentioned, the Core Team (primarily Elambert, BTCat and myself) are working on CBX in our own time, without any payment and I'm sure you can appreciate many of us have families to feed and general day-to-day expenses to cover, which can make life a little stressful from time to time. The lack of funding of course affects the pace of development as we need to do other work in order to generate income. The continued fall in bitcoin value has also compounded this issue. The lack of a development and marketing budget also means that the Core Team has to personally fund things for now, so it's actually costing us to develop CBX. This is the fact of the matter and unless we look to raise some funding, this is how we're going to have to continue for the time-being.   

With honesty and openness in mind, I'd like to lay out some of my thoughts in regard to the current situation and future hopes/goals for CBX. I think it's important to focus on negatives and shortcomings too, so that they can be discussed, addressed and resolved. I foresee a continued discussion leading to a short-list of features to be developed, which we can prioritise as a community according to time-required, importance and potential positive impact. 

Blockchain Bloat
One of my major personal bugbears with CBX is the ever increasing block count. Since PoS kicked in, the size of the blockchain has grown and grown and block 1,000,000 is now on the horizon. In the medium term, I believe we must look to address this issue by either condensing the blockchain and reducing future bloat or providing the ability to run 'thin' clients that do not require the complete blockchain to be stored locally. I am also inclined to suggest tweaking the PoS block time in the short to medium term as a measure to reduce blockchain bloat until an increase in volume warrants faster blocks.

The initial sync time required for a new CryptoBullion instance is also very slow and I feel this also needs to be addressed in order to make the experience as smooth and speedy as possible for new users.

Proof-of-Stake / Proof of Work
Our current PoS algorithm is not optimal and promotes hoarding of coins and allows users to stake periodically without any real penalty. Periodic staking is not ideal as it does little to improve network security if users are not actively minting/staking on the network. Elambert has spent a great deal of time addressing this and has produced a whitepaper with a proposal for a new and  bespoke Proof-of-Stake algorithm to address these issues. I believe it's probably time to share this and open discussions so that we as a community can refine it and start to develop and implement it.

As Elambert has mentioned previously, we are working on incorporating merged mining (AuxPOW) into CryptoBullion, which will allow you to mine other PoW coins (Doge/LTC etc) at the same time as mining CBX. This should encourage more PoW mining and as a result, improve network security and stability.

Utilizing CryptoBullion
What use are all these coins/currencies? The majority of Cryptocurrencies are merely get-rich-quick schemes or fodder for speculators who have no vested interest in the coin itself. Without a way to utilize a coin, what is its use?

For CryptoBullion to 'break out', it must stand out from the crowd by providing something unique and special. I've been giving this considerable thought and a dedicated CBX marketplace seems like a promising solution to kickstarting a thriving CryptoBullion economy. I've been working on something along these lines for another project, with incorporating the functionality into CBX being in the forefront of my mind. I'm thinking more along the lines of a decentralized EBay than SilkRoad, as I don't think that's a road CBX should travel along (pardon the pun). I think decentralized markets could well turn out to be something of a 'killer app' for cryptocurrency in general and a good fit for CryptoBullion.

The CryptoBullion Community and Team
I believe we really are in this together and in order for CryptoBullion to succeed, we all need to contribute in some way. If you're frustrated with the speed of progress or the lack of communication, please consider what you can do to assist in helping to overcome the issues. We are a friendly bunch and would love for more of you to get involved in some way

Thanks

raizor

TLDR: Let's talk more and plan our next steps for moving CryptoBullion forward together

[elambert]

Great post raizor, thank you!

I like the proposal of moving the behind the scenes conversations to the open air of the forum, great suggestion killiz - thanks! I think we did this a lot better in the past with our old friend papersheepdog leading the way but have since moved away from this approach. I believe this approach helps to allow the community to contribute and also serves as a constant reminder that this is an open source project which is owned and managed by a community consensus. The core team can help to guide and carry out the implementation of the community's desires but ownership of the project is truly in the hands of the owners, stakers and miners of CBX.

Let's get this started.

raizor,
So to summarize your vision prioritization:
1. Address blockchain bloat
2. PoS/PoW enhancement
3. Promote CBX utilization (market place + other ideas)
4. Community responsibility for ownership and participation

I suppose these items can be divided further into technical and non-technical development. What steps do you propose to tackle the blockchain bloat issue as the priority and what do we need to get this project going?

Also, I would like to request the community to suggest and assist with leading the way of creating ways that supporters of CBX can contribute to the project. I know there are many out there that want to help but don't know how or don't feel they have the skills to contribute. Everyone brings different skills to the table and can help our community grow and succeed. Just need to find a niche. Ideally we can outline some tasks and projects that can guide those with interest and free time.

I know BTCat has provided a link to submit CBX related articles via github for publication and promotion.

WeUseCoins.com | Alt-Coin Section Added | Need CryptoBullionX Articles as Github Pull Requests

We Use Coins is one of the premier websites in the cryptocurrency industry. It released the viral video What Is Bitcoin? which has received over 7.5m views.
An Alt-Coin section has been added to the main navigational menu. In order for CryptoBullionX to get more exposure on this venue there is a need for high quality, objective, accurate and professional articles.
Content is handled via the Github repo, where we have how-to instructions for those who may not be familiar, so please submit pull requests of articles about CryptoBullionX if you are interested in helping it get more exposure. This is a great venue to help new users.

Reference with working links: http://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoBullionX/comments/33cmek/weusecoinscom_altcoin_section_added_need/

This is a fantastic opportunity for those with the passion to write. I think employing the tool of github is a great idea as well as this can allow the community to contribute to the project in the non-technical arena now as well as the technical one.

All, feel free to contribute, get involved and voice your opinions. Lets get this community electrified again!


P.S.
I received a response from Cryptsy regarding the wallet issue and it should be resolved shortly. Below is the message:

Hello Elambert,

Havent talked in a while.

Our wallet got a few bad transactions and then tried to spend non existent inputs. It happens now and then. But then the wallet needs to have all transaction data stripped. And rescan/redownload the blockchain. I was a bit slow getting to it but it only has 50k blocks left to sync now

Should be up in the morning. Message me on skype if you wanna chat

Mullick
Head of IT
Crypto Currency Manager

[raizor]

raizor,
So to summarize your vision prioritization:
1. Address blockchain bloat
2. PoS/PoW enhancement
3. Promote CBX utilization (market place + other ideas)
4. Community responsibility for ownership and participation

I suppose these items can be divided further into technical and non-technical development. What steps do you propose to tackle the blockchain bloat issue as the priority and what do we need to get this project going?

I think there's a technical aspect to all of them Elambert, other than perhaps #4, In terms of solution to the blockchain bloat issue, I'll need to do some more research to identify the best approach. I'm keen to hear some general feedback from the community in the meantime

cheers,

raizor

[snatchmonkey]

Great stuff!

I thoroughly approve of the updates. I know they do sometimes seem to fall on deaf ears, but they provide a necessary focal point for the community. It helps settle the nerves also after a drop in price (to know that good work is going on behind the scenes). As has been pointed out though, you do all have other obligations so progress can take some time... It might be better to make the updates fortnightly for that reason. Just a suggestion as it would be a shame if you felt pressured to come up with new positive things after a week of setbacks or something.

I'm firmly in the "don't know how or don't feel they have the skills" camp. I'm very happy to support giveaways and competitions though, as I think that they really help from a marketing perspective.

I got given some coins once in a giveaway. It wasn't a coin I knew much about, but it inspired me to research it more and within a couple of months I'd bought a significant (top10) stake in it.

I remember seeing some sort of giveaway thing on a new exchange a while back, where you could just set it up and people can claim free coins every couple of hours or something. Anyone remember that? It might be gone as I had a look for it just now and couldn't figure out where I'd seen it.

[raizor]

Great stuff!

I thoroughly approve of the updates. I know they do sometimes seem to fall on deaf ears, but they provide a necessary focal point for the community. It helps settle the nerves also after a drop in price (to know that good work is going on behind the scenes). As has been pointed out though, you do all have other obligations so progress can take some time... It might be better to make the updates fortnightly for that reason. Just a suggestion as it would be a shame if you felt pressured to come up with new positive things after a week of setbacks or something.

I'm firmly in the "don't know how or don't feel they have the skills" camp. I'm very happy to support giveaways and competitions though, as I think that they really help from a marketing perspective.

I got given some coins once in a giveaway. It wasn't a coin I knew much about, but it inspired me to research it more and within a couple of months I'd bought a significant (top10) stake in it.

I remember seeing some sort of giveaway thing on a new exchange a while back, where you could just set it up and people can claim free coins every couple of hours or something. Anyone remember that? It might be gone as I had a look for it just now and couldn't figure out where I'd seen it.

Thank you snatchmonkey

To be honest, even sharing your thoughts here really helps. It's always good to get a fresh perspective and some feedback. I feel your pain with regard to price drops. They do seem to be caused primarily by low volume and trading bots though, the gradual ones at least. On the upside, it really doesn't take much volume to get the price shooting back up again due to the volume and limited number of total coins.

The free coins thing you mention may have been a faucet. It's essentially a site that pays out a small amount to visitors and takes donations to refill the pot. Apologies if you already knew this, but it may be useful info for someone if that is the case.  I don't think there's currently a CBX faucet, is there Elambert? It would be good for someone to set one up if they have time

cheers,

raizor

[raizor]

I've just finished upgrading the QT wallet to QT5 (from QT4). The next release will be QT5 based. I imagine we'll add some more features before the next wallet update though. If anyone has any suggestions for features or enhancements to add to the pot, please jot them down here.

Also, I've been wondering how the community feels about transaction anonymity? By this I mean the ability to send coins to someone without anyone else being able to trace/track the source and destination of the transaction. It's probably not so much of an issue at the moment, but it may become one if you want to buy a lifesize Jenna Jameson doll from the future CBX marketplace

cheers,

raizor

[BTCat]

The site where there was a faucet within the exchange was probably cryptex.biz, but they went out of business.

We can ask the Cryptopia guys if they want to implement something like this. They seem to be in for a lot of things.

Thanks for all the posts, good work.


About anonymity personally I don't really care about such feature, it has been a big hype for new coins to set that as goal.
If you're not doing anything illegal then probably no one will ever care about your transaction and it's already very hard to backtrace.

I saw one wallet had some nice features like price chart or info on the blockchain etc. A blockexplorer within the wallet would sure be nice.

[raizor]

The site where there was a faucet within the exchange was probably cryptex.biz, but they went out of business.

We can ask the Cryptopia guys if they want to implement something like this. They seem to be in for a lot of things.

Thanks for all the posts, good work.


About anonymity personally I don't really care about such feature, it has been a big hype for new coins to set that as goal.
If you're not doing anything illegal then probably no one will ever care about your transaction and it's already very hard to backtrace.

I saw one wallet had some nice features like price chart or info on the blockchain etc. A blockexplorer within the wallet would sure be nice.

Thanks BTCat. Asking Cryptopia sounds like a good idea.

[raizor]

BTCat, I'm not against the idea of price charts, but some may feel that the necessary centralization is undesirable. Personally, I don't see it being a problem for something like this. I imagine we'd have a service running on a VPS, which would be responsible for polling the exchanges and storing the latest prices in a database. Clients could then connect to get the latest batch of timestamped prices. We could potentially share the prices from node to node in p2p manner, but I think that's probably overkill. We could pull the latest CBX news down in the same manner too. Hmm, the more I think about this, the more I like it. It could certainly be used to make the wallet overview page more informative and interesting. We could give advanced notice of hard-forks, upgrades etc too.

I like the idea of a block-explorer too, but it would be a fair chunk of work just to save someone firing up a web-browser.

Something else I was mulling over recently was 'web' wallets. I've found them to be a little clunky, but wondered if anyone else was a big fan of them. I'm referring to the QT wallets that have a HTML interface. Effectively a mini website running in the wallet, providing the wallet GUI (buttons, textboxes etc). Vericoin and Shadowcoin both use one. I'm sure there are other coins too, but those are the only ones I've come across.

cheers,

raizor

[snatchmonkey]

I've only used a handful of wallets before, but I like the recent DGC one. It has the block explorer and price chart as mentioned, and also an irc portal to the DGC channel. I don't go on there much but when I do it is easier to fire up the client than it is for me to search out a web link to take me there. Even if not as a community gathering place, a similar setup might be useful for support and troubleshooting problems.

I think that must have been it BTCat (cryptex), I had an idea that it was something you had mentioned before.

[raizor]

I've only used a handful of wallets before, but I like the recent DGC one. It has the block explorer and price chart as mentioned, and also an irc portal to the DGC channel. I don't go on there much but when I do it is easier to fire up the client than it is for me to search out a web link to take me there. Even if not as a community gathering place, a similar setup might be useful for support and troubleshooting problems.

I think that must have been it BTCat (cryptex), I had an idea that it was something you had mentioned before.

I've just checked out the DGC one, snatchmonkey. I do like the idea of an IRC pane that autoconnects to the #cryptobullion. The market data section is pretty neat too. I think we should add something similar to our wallet. The DGC wallet only pulls prices from Bittrex, but I think we could improve that and pull from multiple sources. Thanks for the info

cheers,

raizor

[digit]

regarding the blockchain bloat and PoS enhancement, i think this can be partially addressed by the use of minimum inputs amount (eg 50 CGB) that can stake to prevent fractional and dust amounts staking.  also and prevent splitting of inputs below a certain amount eg 100 CGB, reduce further bloat of blockchain and users own wallet.dat with the dust amounts staking in always on wallet. Maybe also making changes to increase the block time would help as well, i was looking at the blockchain explorer at random 10 minute period and found that at least 10 blocks are mined, so any efforts to increase the time between blocks would definitely help towards reducing bloat.

If looking into research for PoS, i would recommend using Blackcoin as model, almost all of the new PoS coins in the past year including those mentioned above have drawn from BLK for their PoS features

[raizor]

regarding the blockchain bloat and PoS enhancement, i think this can be partially addressed by the use of minimum inputs amount (eg 50 CGB) that can stake to prevent fractional and dust amounts staking.  also and prevent splitting of inputs below a certain amount eg 100 CGB, reduce further bloat of blockchain and users own wallet.dat with the dust amounts staking in always on wallet. Maybe also making changes to increase the block time would help as well, i was looking at the blockchain explorer at random 10 minute period and found that at least 10 blocks are mined, so any efforts to increase the time between blocks would definitely help towards reducing bloat.

If looking into research for PoS, i would recommend using Blackcoin as model, almost all of the new PoS coins in the past year including those mentioned above have drawn from BLK for their PoS features

Great info digit, thank you very much. I keep hearing about Blackcoin's PoS model, so I'll spend some time looking over the code.

cheers,

raizor

[BTCat]

Cryptopia said me something of a faucet is in the works.

[elambert]

Great conversation occurring here!

I am a big fan of continuing the evolution to make the CBX Vault (client) more feature rich so users have the functionality they desire in an easy to use and intuitive platform. This should definitely be pursued and does add tremendous value.

The biggest bang for the buck regarding time and effort expenditure in development I believe comes from implementation of CBX's own unique Hybrid algorithm (proposed in the unreleased white paper). I do agree that Blackcoins PoS model is an improvement to the PPC PoS model but one solution does not fit all. I maintain that the proposed PoSP solution, in conjunction with PoW merge mining, is the right solution for CBX and its future.

I am not suggesting tabling the Vault's feature development, just perhaps allocating the larger portion of effort towards the algo project? Just my opinion here guys.

Regarding blockchain bloat... CBX having been around for almost 2 years now combined with a one-minute target block time have made the CBX blockchain grow quickly. I think we do need to seriously consider slowing target block time to the 5-10 minute range while multiplying the PoW reward by the same factor to maintain equilibrium. CBX has been traditionally designed and targeted as more of a storage of wealth than a currency and if this direction is maintained, a further slowing of block generation time I feel is acceptable.

On that note, it seems the question of direction needs to be discussed. Do we want CBX to fight with the multitude of coins in the battle to be the every day spending medium or do we want CBX to continue to establish itself as the premier crypto-commodity (storage of wealth) / digital precious metal?