IMPORTANT UPDATE!

During the past few days since the last changelog update we worked tirelessly on addressing the issues raised in the review campaign and evaluating all suggestions for new features. Let's start with the issues:

We are now confident enough to communicate that the stability issues have been fixed. While short downtimes* could still happen every now and then because of our architecture**, using the service should now be a much more pleasant experience.

You will find the changes that we made today quoted at the end of this post, and this is what's left for the following days:
-Sweep deposits more efficiently
-Add support for all address types
-Popups for success and error messages instead of alerts
-Outputs from main address will be sent with a higher fee to avoid transactions getting stuck (if we continue to consolidate all received UTXOs)
-Delay time will be respected even if the service has downtime***
-Fix UI issues on mobile

If we missed anything let us know and we'll add it to the backlog.

And now the most exciting part, suggestions and new features:
-1 confirmation for small deposits
-Lower minimum deposit for Notes so you can consolidate small balances anonymously
-Pay to Note

Some users suggested that we should implement a 'Split Note' feature, where instead of combining 2 Notes together to consolidate their balances you could also split a single Note into multiple smaller ones. The idea behind this was that instead of sending someone BTC and revealing your address while also paying fees, you could split a Note with your desired amount and send it to the person directly in an anonymous way.

We considered this but there is one huge disadvantage if we implement it in this form, and one that is not acceptable to us. The receiver could lie about the Note being empty or not having the agreed balance, and as a sender you would have no way of proving it.

Here is where our Note system really shines. When you 'generate' a Note, what you are saving is its private key. Each Note also has a corresponding public key that is displayed in the Letter of Guarantee. (API Address)

This makes it possible to implement a Pay to Note feature where from your own Note's balance you can send any amount to another Note's public key, essentially enabling feeless and anonymous BTC transactions. Whirlwind will sign a Letter of Guarantee for each transfer so the sender will be able to prove that he is acting in good faith in case any issues arise.

As an example let's say you want to send your friend 1BTC. Currently you would need to send it through a normal transaction, revealing both your and your friends addresses in the process. With the Pay to Note feature you would only need to ask your friend for his Note Public key, and you can use that to send him the 1BTC anonymously and for free through Whirlwind from your own Note balance. He could then use his Note Private key to withdraw it to his address/es through the normal process. Unless you tell him yourself, not even your friend will be able to know your originating deposit or any information about you at all.

We reckon this would be a huge breakthrough and hope that you are as excited as we are for what's coming!

Ready to answer any questions or concerns!

*seconds, maybe a few minutes in exceptional cases
**we use a backend + validator model, multiple servers have to sync through Tor all the time so 100% stability isn't achievable with the current level of security. You can read more about it in the discussion thread I started, but in short we value security above everything else
***currently if you have to receive 2 outputs in 1 and 2 hours respectively, but the service is down for 3 hours, whenever it's getting back online you will receive both outputs at the same time. it will be changed so that you only receive the first one and then have to wait for another hour to receive the second