So the update is fully on RPC Wallet API?

How stable is the current version?

Is it backward compatible?

2. What are you up to now? When is the next large update?
3. You didn't update the roadmap and v.1.0.9 doesn't correspond with the actual release. When is it going to be updated?

Also, can you elaborate on what happened to transactions list tab?
The transactions are now expandable... but why? Some of my previous transactions have weird small transfers inside.

In 1886, Karl Benz presented the first car. This car could speed up to 10 mph and had less than 1 hp. However, despite such low parameters, this three wheeler was the first car to be mass-produced.

Only well fixed people could afford it, and it was not until twenty years later when Henry Ford started producing the famous Ford T, a car that was available for middle class. It became better, too: the car had 20 hp and could drive at 40-45 mph.

22 years passed since creation of a car until mass adoption. Today, such period seems half-eternal. Today, we are accustomed to the fact that new technologies appear almost every day, and the old ones die just as fast.


It took cars 62 years to become used by 50 000 000 people. Bank cards only required 28 years, the Internet reached this level in 7 and Twitter conquered this summit in 2 years.

However, some technologies develop slower, and their adoption requires even more time.

People often ask me questions, such as "what is the purpose of cryptocurrencies" or "how do I make my own cryptocurrency". However, I get less questions like that lately. Now, people are more interested in how they could build a business using cryptocurrencies. This trend exhilarates me, for it signifies a step from working on the technology itself to the point when it starts being profitable.

In this article, I would like to share my opinion on the relations between cryptocurrencies and business. I would also explain how to make your own cryptocurrency, if you think that you do need one.

Bitcoin is wonderful. Bytecoin is wonderful. Dogecoin is wonderful. All cryptocurrencies are wonderful (well, let us think for a moment that it is true).

You can pay Bitcoins for sandwiches in Subway, use Bytecoins for private purchases, send Dogecoins to your friends as gifts and so on. That is, you can use features of each cryptocurrency for suitable cases. But - what a nuisance! - you would not like to keep a dozen wallets with all these coins.

Naturally, you can just make another cryptocurrency, which will combine all the best features. A kind of a standard for cryptocurrencies. Wait... it reminds me of something...


Of course, such approach might be viable... in theory. But practically, it is not feasible. First, the idea of "all the best" is very personal. Not everyone thinks that demurrage in Freicoin is a very useful feature. It would be a challenge to select a standard from the wide range of Proof-of-Work functions as well. Second, some things cannot be combined by their very essence: imagine yourself in the shoes of a service, which has to take into account a million features of a SINGLE cryptocurrency. Would you like to accept it? Finally, it is very difficult from the technical point of view to keep implementing all the innovations that appear in other projects.

Is privacy good or evil? Does any person have a right to be privacy-protected? Can we apply common statement "If you are doing nothing wrong, you have nothing to hide" to our lives?

Right now, society is desperately looking for the answers to these particular questions, but it seems that government has solid position regarding them, too. Lack of privacy in our lives seems to be relatively farfetched problem for the majority of people, but eventually debates could turn into a serious confrontation. A careful eye would notice that for now there is little resistance.


Look around thoroughly - we are living in the world where surveillance cameras are all around us, banks know exactly how much money we have and how exactly we are spending it, search engines know what exactly we are looking for and what exactly we like, and, of course, you should keep in mind that messages we send via social networks and messaging apps could be easily accessed by authorities.

It may be Bitcoin's single greatest achievement that the cryptocurrency has gained name recognition that far surpasses its actual value or utility.




In a way, it's not unlike how many consumers already associate forward-thinking tech giant Tesla with driverless cars, or equate NASA with missions to Mars. Those companies will surely be major players in those respective pursuits, but aren't really there yet. Similarly, Bitcoin has positioned itself to be a significant if not dominant financial resource once the world fully comes around to the idea of digital currencies. But at this point, we're (again) just not there yet.

Usual Bytecoin transaction construction process, in simplified terms, can be described as follows:

That's not to say Bitcoin doesn't have plenty of value or utility for those who choose to put their trust in it. It holds real financial value, still carries lucrative potential as an investment, and is even used as legal, acceptable currency in many places. Bitcoin has met its goal of becoming a viable alternative to typical financial transactions--it just hasn't quite scaled up at the rate many initially expected to see.

Today's blog post is dedicated to the technical side of the implementation and will mainly cover the percentage of a transaction part of the update. During the setup process you can set maximum percentage of a transaction to be donated. On average, donation will be lower than the specified percentage. Why? Let's have a look into the how the donation part of the transaction is being constructed first.

Usual Bytecoin transaction construction process, in simplified terms, can be described as follows:

• Wallet receives transaction data: amount, mixin count (anonymity level), address(es) to send to.
• Wallet starts to create a transaction - it looks for several user's outputs that would cover the specified amount. These outputs then become transaction inputs.
• For each recipient wallet splits an amount into new outputs with power of 10 (for example 53800 is split into 50000, 3000 and 800) and for each new output generates a one-time key from the recipient's address and some random data. These pairs (new amount, one-time key) become transactions outputs.
• If sum of transaction inputs (see #2) exceeds the transaction amount, it creates a separate transfer (in the same transaction) to user's address to send a change.
• When the whole process is finished, wallet signs the transaction and sends it to the network.

This blog post continues blockchain projects topic that we've discussed in our previous article. Last time we've talked about how blockchain influenced cloud storage, communications, DNS and other services. Today we continue presenting projects that successfully utilize blockchain technology.

Universal identification: nameid.org, shocard, aliases

It would be logically to develop the idea of Namecoin for registering not only domains but also any names. Actually, this function is already available in Namecoin itself. While domains are registered with prefix "d/", or, in more technical words, "in namespace d/", there also exists a prefix "id/" for registering private names and associated data. Therefore, it is not a problem to input your data in the blockchain. The problem is what to do next.


The nameid.org service combines the Namecoin blockchain and OpenID scheme. More specifically, if a site offers you to log in using OpenID, you can select nameid provider, which will access the Namecoin blockchain. If the stated name exists, you will have to sign a random string using the corresponding key (instead of a password), which can be done via Namecoin client. After that you will be logged onto the first site under the name from Namecoin.

Naturally, such mechanism for authorization via Namecoin (or any other blockchain that provides for registering such aliases) can be integrated into any site, successfully eliminating the intermediary nameid and the OpenID protocol itself. Maybe, at some point, it will become a standard, and you will be able to log onto a site using a public address in your favorite cryptocurrency, e.g. nvsaberhagen@cryptonote. The notion of 'login' itself will then be equivalent to the notion of 'spending money'.

However, this is still in the future. For now, you can only hurry up and stake your username...

How would we remember Bitcoin? No, it is not a start of an obituary, and no one buries anyone! What I am asking is, what the specialness of Bitcoin technology is, what novelties it has? We have seen e-cash before it (DigiCash by David Chaum), used proof of work in the real life, and digital signatures can actually be considered as classics. Trustless P2P networks? Not a novelty, yet a warmer guess.

Some might say that a combination of abovementioned is the winning hand, but I would like to emphasize a single feature. Blockchain. Had the first blockchain-based application been not Bitcoin and its coins, but a BitZombie (a service for coordinating survivors in case of a Zombie-apocalypse), then it would be called the innovation that changed the world.



Blockchain is not a simple decentralized database, which is completely stored by each network node. Its unique feature lies in the fact that every user can check on his own that his copy is similar to those stored by the majority of other nodes. Absolutely similar, down to the last bit, in the same order. (naturally, there is also a margin for error, but it is negligible or it can be made as small as one would wish). The key point is "on his own", meaning that one should not trust other nodes to sustain the network (trusting mathematics is better). In practice, it is a solution to the problem known as "Byzantine Fault Tolerance". Scientists call it the "distributed consensus mechanism".

Naturally, storing complete blockchain at one's computer is not mandatory. The data inside the blocks is stored as a tree, so it is possible to ensure that a "leaf" of the tree (transaction or any other data) is included in the chain without downloading its full version. If at least one node exists in the network, we can say that the blockchain exists as well. Practically, it is like a perpetuum mobile that cannot be stopped by anyone and anything (short of the Big Freeze).

It is the blockchain technology that makes Bitcoin so wonderful. Still, it causes a question: is the technology applicable anywhere besides finances and zombie apocalypse? And yet another one: can we justify such application? Today, we are going to try to find this out by evaluating different services based on blockchain....

Hello!

I just tried to test RPC Wallet.

I so sad to inform you about errors in current version [PaymentService v1.0.7.564()].

I use Windows version.

First of all it doesn't work as Win service. At all.

Second issue is much worse - amount of money sent to wallets does not equal amount received.

So I advice everybody not to use RPC Wallet at present time

Aggregate Addresses in CryptoNote: Towards Efficient Privacy (Whitepaper)


Aggregate addresses (or multi-addresses) is the new scheme for efficient bulk processing of CryptoNote transactions. It was introduced in Bytecoin 1.0.6 to improve experience of e-commerce services that accept Bytecoin and other CryptoNote currencies.

Today Bytecoin Team has released the whitepaper that defines the aggregate addresses scheme: "Aggregate Addresses in CryptoNote: Towards Efficient Privacy". It is available in the new section of the website devoted to Bytecoin and CryptoNote technical documentation.

To make a brief recap, CryptoNote protects sender's privacy with ring signatures (allowing a sender to sign the transaction on behalf of a group of potential senders), while recipient's privacy is ensured with one-time keys. Unlike in Bitcoin, a public address of a Bytecoin user has no link to the data contained in the blockchain. When sending a transaction, the sender creates one-time keys for each output using recipient's public key and random data. Thus, the only option for the recipient to claim the funds is to check each output in the blockchain with his private keys.

In case of user-to-user transaction, this approach is suitable. However, it poses an obstacle for enterprise operations. If a service, such as a payment processor or an exchange, receives payments from a number of users, it is non-feasible to verify each transactions output against each user's address. It would require exponentially increasing resources.

The original solution to this issue is payment ID enclosed with each transaction, which is sent to one public address. It is the unique identifier that helps a server to distinguish payments of various customers. However, such an approach is not convenient for the clients (what if you forgot to provide your payment ID?). Moreover, payment ID is stored non-encrypted in the blockchain, making deposit transactions potentially linkable.

Aggregate addresses is the solution introduced by Bytecoin Team in order to resolve this inefficiency. It allows the server to create a new deposit address for each customer. The solution lies within CryptoNote protocol design, which utilizes two private keys for a user's address. It is possible to share one key between all addresses and save time on repeating calculations with the same data when receiving a payment.



There is also another trick that reduces the load on the server allowing it to process a number of Bytecoin addresses simultaneously, namely a hash table of public keys. In the "Aggregate Addresses in CryptoNote: Towards Efficient Privacy" whitepaper we describe the issue in details as well as the naive and aggregate addresses approaches. Please refer to the paper for more information.

Aggregate addresses is the solution that significantly improves Bytecoin transaction processing for services. This scheme is useful for all CryptoNote currencies as it drastically upgrades user experience and effectively depreciates Payment ID. Aggregate addresses are currently available in Bytecoin RPC Wallet.

Today we would like to present this whitepaper for peer review and are looking forward to your feedback.

New Bytecoin Release 1.0.8 introduces fusion transactions and wallet outputs optimization

On August 27, we have updated Bytecoin to version 1.0.8. This version includes update of Bytecoin Wallet that enables Fusion Transactions that were announced previously. What's more, the updated Reference Client features a number of optimizations and improvements based on your feedback.

Fusion Transactions provide users with possibility to automatically optimize their accounts. The optimization process runs in background, and it is easy to launch by ticking a single box in the settings.



This optimization will be useful for those users whose Bytecoins are split in multiple small outputs. Such situation might occur if, for example, one receives large numbers of tips to the account or uses pool, which transfers money to the user in multiple small payments (e.g. earlier versions of open source CryptoNote pools). Besides increasing convenience, such optimization will also improve the privacy level of the wallet owner.

Technically, optimization is a fee-free money transaction to yourself such that the number of outputs becomes less while the outputs themselves grow larger. Such a transactions is called Fusion Transaction. If optimization process is on, the wallet will automatically select the outputs that should be fused.

At the moment, only closed beta version of the latest Bytecoin Wallet is available. If you want to participate in account optimization testing, we can provide you with Wallet with Fusion Transaction enabled. To obtain the wallet please contact us, and we will send You the link for download.

In addition to new type of transactions, this update contains other improvements:
1) Instant transactions notification is now available for Wallets connected to remote daemons
2) Reset feature for Bytecoin Wallet to resync your wallet data from the blockchain
3) IWallet High-Level API has been significantly updated
4) JSON RPC interface improvements for Bytecoin Reference Client and RPC Wallet
5) The sync process of Bytecoin Wallet on OS X has been improved.

The latest Bytecoin Reference Client and RPC Wallet version can be found on our website. To obtain beta version of Bytecoin Wallet, please contact us.

Today we’ve released Bytecoin version 1.0.7 and Bytecoin Wallet version 1.0.6.

This is a major update for Bytecoin network and we urge everyone to update your clients and wallets to the latest version to ensure compatibility with 1.0.8 version.

This update features:

• New feature called Fusion transactions. This feature is designed to help users combine smaller transaction inputs into the bigger ones. Fusion transactions are going to be a part of the block and won’t take up more than 30% of the median block size.
• Various Simplewallet and Bytecoin Wallet improvements

In this update we’ve introduced new daemon rules, users will be able to optimize their wallets in 1.0.8 update that is coming up soon.

Bytecoin Wallet can now import and export tracking keys. Tracking key is a combination of public and private keys. Anyone possessing wallet's tracking key can view all funds that were transferred to the account, but he can neither view the outgoing transactions nor spend the money.

As we mentioned before, this is a major update that introduces new block template rules. Download latest version of Bytecoin reference client and Bytecoin Wallet on our Downloads page to ensure compatibility with 1.0.8 version. 

You can find more about the 1.0.7 release here: https://bytecoin.org/news/bytecoin-major-update-1.0.7-introduces-fusion-transactions/