As Bitcoin continues to gain ground as a preferred online currency due to it's anonymous and instant payments, it is also quickly becoming a favorite of many sports bettors and casino gamers.

CoinSovler is a new auto-switching scrypt coin mining pool that pays out directly in BitCoin. We're still in Beta, so suggestions and feedback are most welcome, and we have many features in the works. We intend for it to be dead simple to use, highly profitable and very transparent about the mining information.

What were the top "wallets" 5-6 years ago? I messed around with bitcoin for a few months, but marriage/kids pushed me away to other things. I have no idea what wallet I should be getting back into now. I'm trying to find out which ones I may have used and if I could possibly get back into the one I had and see what's there.
Any certain Wallets that I probably would have used 5 to 6 years ago or so?

'''
Yes, this is from referral only, you must use an invite link though [link]^¹
Here are the conditions to receive $25 Option 1: Deposit a minimum of $5 to their Abra wallet using a US bank account (can be easily created with Transferwise etc) or eligible American Express card. Option 2: Deposit crypto and exchange it to any other asset except BTC, BCH, ETH, and LTC.
From today the App is available in 155 countries.
'''
Context Link
Go1dfish undelete link
unreddit undelete link
Author: patrickroper
1: i**ite*ab*a.c**/5SFpdjoiLW
Unknown links are censored to prevent spreading illicit content.

Welcome to the /Bitcoin Sticky FAQ

You've probably been hearing a lot about Bitcoin recently and are wondering what's the big deal? Most of your questions should be answered by the resources below but if you have additional questions feel free to ask them in the comments.
It all started with the release of the release of Satoshi Nakamoto's whitepaper however that will probably go over the head of most readers so we recommend the following videos for a good starting point for understanding how bitcoin works and a little about its long term potential:

Some other great resources include Lopp.net, the Princeton crypto series and James D'Angelo's Bitcoin 101 Blackboard series.
Some excellent writing on Bitcoin's value proposition and future can be found at the Satoshi Nakamoto Institute.
Some Bitcoin statistics can be found here and here. Developer resources can be found here. Peer-reviewed research papers can be found here.
Potential upcoming protocol improvements and scaling resources here and here.
The number of times Bitcoin was declared dead by the media can be found here (LOL!)

Key properties of Bitcoin

Limited Supply - There will only ever be 21,000,000 bitcoins created and they are issued in a predictable fashion, you can view the inflation schedule here. Once they are all issued Bitcoin will be truly deflationary. The halving countdown can be found here.
Open source - Bitcoin code is fully auditable. You can read the source code yourself here.
Accountable - The public ledger is transparent, all transactions are seen by everyone.
Decentralized - Bitcoin is globally distributed across thousands of nodes with no single point of failure and as such can't be shut down similar to how Bittorrent works. You can even run a node on a Raspberry Pi.
Censorship resistant - No one can prevent you from interacting with the bitcoin network and no one can censor, alter or block transactions that they disagree with, see Operation Chokepoint.
Push system - There are no chargebacks in bitcoin because only the person who owns the address where the bitcoins reside has the authority to move them.
Low fee scaling - On chain transaction fees depend on network demand and how much priority you wish to assign to the transaction. Most wallets calculate on chain fees automatically but you can view current fees here and mempool activity here. On chain fees may rise occasionally due to network demand, however instant micropayments that do not require confirmations are happening via the Lightning Network, a second layer scaling solution currently rolling out on the Bitcoin mainnet.
Borderless - No country can stop it from going in/out, even in areas currently unserved by traditional banking as the ledger is globally distributed.
Trustless - Bitcoin solved the Byzantine's Generals Problem which means nobody needs to trust anybody for it to work.
Pseudonymous - No need to expose personal information when purchasing with cash or transacting.
Secure - Encrypted cryptographically and can’t be brute forced or confiscated with proper key management such as hardware wallets.
Programmable - Individual units of bitcoin can be programmed to transfer based on certain criteria being met
Nearly instant - From a few seconds to a few minutes depending on need for confirmations. Transactions are irreversible after one or more confirmations.
Peer-to-peer - No intermediaries with a cut, no need for trusted third parties.
Portable - Bitcoins are digital so they are easier to move than cash or gold. They can even be transported by simply memorizing a string of words for wallet recovery (while cool this method is generally not recommended due to potential for insecure key generation by inexperienced users. Hardware wallets are the preferred method for new users due to ease of use and additional security).
Scalable - While the protocol is still being optimized for increased transaction capacity, blockchains do not scale very well, so most transaction volume is expected to occur on Layer 2 networks built on top of Bitcoin.
Divisible - Each bitcoin can be divided down to 8 decimals, which means you don't have to worry about buying an entire bitcoin.
Designed Money - Bitcoin was created to fit all the fundamental properties of money better than gold or fiat

Where can I buy bitcoins?

Bitcoin.org and BuyBitcoinWorldwide.com are helpful sites for beginners. You can buy or sell any amount of bitcoin (even just a few dollars worth) and there are several easy methods to purchase bitcoin with cash, credit card or bank transfer. Some of the more popular resources are below, also check out the bitcoinity exchange resources for a larger list of options for purchases.

Here is a listing of local ATMs. If you would like your paycheck automatically converted to bitcoin use Bitwage.
Note: Bitcoins are valued at whatever market price people are willing to pay for them in balancing act of supply vs demand. Unlike traditional markets, bitcoin markets operate 24 hours per day, 365 days per year. Preev is a useful site that that shows how much various denominations of bitcoin are worth in different currencies. Alternatively you can just Google "1 bitcoin in (your local currency)".

Securing your bitcoins

With bitcoin you can "Be your own bank" and personally secure your bitcoins OR you can use third party companies aka "Bitcoin banks" which will hold the bitcoins for you.

If you prefer to "Be your own bank" and have direct control over your coins without having to use a trusted third party, then you will need to create your own wallet and keep it secure. If you want easy and secure storage without having to learn computer security best practices, then a hardware wallet such as the Trezor, Ledger or ColdCard is recommended. Alternatively there are many software wallet options to choose from here depending on your use case.
If you prefer to let third party "Bitcoin banks" manage your coins, try Gemini but be aware you may not be in control of your private keys in which case you would have to ask permission to access your funds and be exposed to third party risk.

Note: For increased security, use Two Factor Authentication (2FA) everywhere it is offered, including email!
2FA requires a second confirmation code to access your account making it much harder for thieves to gain access. Google Authenticator and Authy are the two most popular 2FA services, download links are below. Make sure you create backups of your 2FA codes.

Google Auth	Authy	OTP Auth
Android	Android	N/A
iOS	iOS	iOS

Watch out for scams

As mentioned above, Bitcoin is decentralized, which by definition means there is no official website or Twitter handle or spokesperson or CEO. However, all money attracts thieves. This combination unfortunately results in scammers running official sounding names or pretending to be an authority on YouTube or social media. Many scammers throughout the years have claimed to be the inventor of Bitcoin. Websites like bitcoin(dot)com and the btc subreddit are active scams. Almost all altcoins (shitcoins) are marketed heavily with big promises but are really just designed to separate you from your bitcoin. So be careful: any resource, including all linked in this document, may in the future turn evil. Don't trust, verify. Also as they say in our community "Not your keys, not your coins".

Where can I spend bitcoins?

Check out spendabit or bitcoin directory for millions of merchant options. Also you can spend bitcoin anywhere visa is accepted with bitcoin debit cards such as the CashApp card. Some other useful site are listed below.

Store	Product
Gyft	Gift cards for hundreds of retailers including Amazon, Target, Walmart, Starbucks, Whole Foods, CVS, Lowes, Home Depot, iTunes, Best Buy, Sears, Kohls, eBay, GameStop, etc.
Spendabit, Overstock and The Bitcoin Directory	Retail shopping with millions of results
ShakePay	Generate one time use Visa cards in seconds
NewEgg and Dell	For all your electronics needs
Bitwa.la, Coinbills, Piixpay, Bitbill.eu, Bylls, Coins.ph, Bitrefill, LivingRoomofSatoshi, Coinsfer, and more	Bill payment
Menufy, Takeaway and Thuisbezorgd NL	Takeout delivered to your door
Expedia, Cheapair, Destinia, Abitsky, SkyTours, the Travel category on Gyft and 9flats	For when you need to get away
Cryptostorm, Mullvad, and PIA	VPN services
Namecheap, Porkbun	Domain name registration
Stampnik	Discounted USPS Priority, Express, First-Class mail postage

Coinmap and AirBitz are helpful to find local businesses accepting bitcoins. A good resource for UK residents is at wheretospendbitcoins.co.uk.
There are also lots of charities which accept bitcoin donations.

Merchant Resources

There are several benefits to accepting bitcoin as a payment option if you are a merchant;

1-3% savings over credit cards or PayPal.
No chargebacks (final settlement in 10 minutes as opposed to 3+ months).
Accept business from a global customer base.
Increased privacy.
Convert 100% of the sale to the currency of your choice for deposit to your account, or choose to keep a percentage of the sale in bitcoin if you wish to begin accumulating it.

If you are interested in accepting bitcoin as a payment method, there are several options available;

BTCPay
Square cash
Stripe
Coinify
Wyre
Blockonomics (direct to your wallet)

Can I mine bitcoin?

Mining bitcoins can be a fun learning experience, but be aware that you will most likely operate at a loss. Newcomers are often advised to stay away from mining unless they are only interested in it as a hobby similar to folding at home. If you want to learn more about mining you can read more here. Still have mining questions? The crew at /BitcoinMining would be happy to help you out.
If you want to contribute to the bitcoin network by hosting the blockchain and propagating transactions you can run a full node using this setup guide. If you would prefer to keep it simple there are several good options. You can view the global node distribution here.

Earning bitcoins

Just like any other form of money, you can also earn bitcoins by being paid to do a job.

Site	Description
WorkingForBitcoins, Bitwage, Cryptogrind, Coinality, Bitgigs, /Jobs4Bitcoins, BitforTip, Rein Project	Freelancing
Lolli	Earn bitcoin when you shop online!
OpenBazaar, Purse.io, Bitify, /Bitmarket, 21 Market	Marketplaces
/GirlsGoneBitcoin NSFW	Adult services
A-ads, Coinzilla.io	Advertising

You can also earn bitcoins by participating as a market maker on JoinMarket by allowing users to perform CoinJoin transactions with your bitcoins for a small fee (requires you to already have some bitcoins.

Bitcoin-Related Projects

The following is a short list of ongoing projects that might be worth taking a look at if you are interested in current development in the bitcoin space.

Project	Description
Lightning Network	Second layer scaling
Blockstream, Rootstock and Drivechain	Sidechains
Hivemind and Augur	Prediction markets
Tierion and Factom	Records & Titles on the blockchain
BitMarkets, DropZone, Beaver and Open Bazaar	Decentralized markets
JoinMarket and Wasabi Wallet	CoinJoin implementation
Coinffeine and Bisq	Decentralized bitcoin exchanges
Keybase	Identity & Reputation management
Abra	Global P2P money transmitter network
Bitcore	Open source Bitcoin javascript library

Bitcoin Units

One Bitcoin is quite large (hundreds of £/$/€) so people often deal in smaller units. The most common subunits are listed below:

Unit	Symbol	Value	Info
bitcoin	BTC	1 bitcoin	one bitcoin is equal to 100 million satoshis
millibitcoin	mBTC	1,000 per bitcoin	used as default unit in recent Electrum wallet releases
bit	bit	1,000,000 per bitcoin	colloquial "slang" term for microbitcoin (μBTC)
satoshi	sat	100,000,000 per bitcoin	smallest unit in bitcoin, named after the inventor

For example, assuming an arbitrary exchange rate of $10000 for one Bitcoin, a $10 meal would equal:

0.001 BTC
1 mBTC
1,000 bits
100k sats

For more information check out the Bitcoin units wiki.
Still have questions? Feel free to ask in the comments below or stick around for our weekly Mentor Monday thread. If you decide to post a question in /Bitcoin, please use the search bar to see if it has been answered before, and remember to follow the community rules outlined on the sidebar to receive a better response. The mods are busy helping manage our community so please do not message them unless you notice problems with the functionality of the subreddit.
Note: This is a community created FAQ. If you notice anything missing from the FAQ or that requires clarification you can edit it here and it will be included in the next revision pending approval.
Welcome to the Bitcoin community and the new decentralized economy!

Edit: Currently writing a new version of this, dont know when it will be done.
Edit: Since first post I have updated a few sections with additional information.
I recommend reading it all even if it is very long, I might have placed some relevant info in different sections while thinking about what else needed to be added, plenty of steps remains mostly the same except when I comment directly on it. It is not necessary to do 100% security all the time, unless you absolutely need it, combining some high and some lower security ideas for a balance of security and convenience is useful.
I will base this mostly on Windows, Linux users probably know this, and I have no idea how apple machines work (tho many things in here are still relevant for other operating systems, as they are just general tips)
Disclaimer: There are certainly other steps that can make you more anonymous or safer, however I think for most people this will surfice. Any software I recommend should be independently verified for security, and examples of software are not to be taken as endorsements. I simply use examples and give recommendations when I believe it necessary, or helpful.
I will not really differentiate between anonymity and security, they are often the same thing. As such the word security can mean either more anonymous, less vulnerable, or both.
--------
Everyday Simple Info Sec:

Password for the device is an obvious one (8+ characters minimum, best if over +12), if there is sensitive information on any of the drives, either encrypt the entire drive or just the sensitive files, and make encrypted backups on a different memory storage device (There many programs to encrypt files and drives I'm sure a search will figure it out)

-There could be a hidden administrator user on your PC, make sure to change its password

Always use the device on a non admin account
- a VPN that doesn't log (use with kill switch on, should be enough for everyday stuff, more safe stuff in the high security section) (VPNs that claim they don't log sometimes do, it's bad, but I would like to point out that not using a VPN will always expose your traffic to your ISP and also remove additional encryption. Even if the VPN tracks, there is no downside because your ISP would track anyways, and VPNs can be more anonymous, and also add extra encryption)
disable location tracking (preferably make all your privacy setting to release minimal info, get rid or cortana, change privacy settings in all of your accounts as well, there's no reason why you should allow Facebook to give you target ads. Use the setting they give you.
TOR, Firefox or similar browser, stay the fuck away from Google Chrome.
your preferred search engine should be duckduckgo (other privacy focused search engines exist as well)
use an adblocker that also prevents the adding of tacking cookies
Use pgp with all your friends or messaging services that implemented end to end encryption (Implemented services can still be bypassed, but are way more convenient so for everyday use they should suffice, some examples should be Telegraph, Signal, WhatsApp etc) (more info on pgp in high security section)

(Snapchat msgs, reddit dms, discord msgs, are just a few examples of msgs that are never encrypted)
-Any info even send in encrypted msgs (and obviously non encrypted) should still be kept with possible deniability, don't say "I'm gonna do MDMA", say "I'm going out with molly."

use software (like ccleaner) that purges cookies and other data after every use, before shutting down your device
use a virus scanner daily (I like spy bot Search and destroy, many other options also exist)
never use the same password/passphrase twice (I will address what passphrase are below) (Better yet use randomized passwords that are stored in a master key chain, make them as long as possible (tho it is okay to go with the minimum of 12 never go below 7, I recommend 15+ depending on how often you have to manually enter the password instead of copying/pasting it) Don't generate too long keys for things you need to access regularly without copy/paste, except your master key ring)
its ideal to never use the same email or username as well, especially username, email is obviously tricky and also very annoying, but it would be best to always change the email.
it's also ideal to check https://haveibeenpwned.com and anything you have that comes up positive should be immediately changed

-DO NOT STORE ANY PASSWORDS ON GOOGLE, IF GOOGLE LOGIN IS AUTHENTICATED IT WILL AUTFILL ALL PASSWORDS IT HAS SAVED (same with other similar services) (This means if you are logged in to chrome and someone has access to your machine, they can auto fill passwords without entering a single password)
-use a rememberable passphrase, especially for your master key ring aka password manager A long sentence that is memorable makes an okay password (decent example,: "I met my wife at Little Ceasers for the first time on 07/09/20" better even if it's just something you know, if its impersonal, and if you can add special characters or numbers that you won't forget) (A better example for a passphrase is: "There is 0nly 0ne letter that d0esn’t appear in any U.S. state nameQ")

for your main password manager(key ring), I highly recommend Keepass 2, make backups of the file save to separate devices and drives (Flash drives, phone, PC, laptop, etc, if you loose that file, you lose all of your passwords) (Other good password managers exist as well, I don't recommend online password managers as you lose the control over passwords)

-Purge your internet activity frequently, there's a reason why I only have one post, and a few comments appearing in my account, but thousands of kama. Exposing information needlessly is not good.
-Never post private information publicly, and if you do, do it vaguely as possible. (Example: Not "I'm 15", say "I'm a teenager") Do not post any vital information ever, no birthdays, mother's maiden name, age, or anything you have ever seen in a security question. Never post your current activities while they are ongoing. You going on a vacation? Don't announce it to the world, taking picture there? Post them when you are home.

Any account that is supposed to remain anonymous and as secure as possible should only be used on secured devices. A unsecured device can link you to the account.
always shutdown your machine when leaving it (To prevent access, and to prevent a possible attack vector)
2 factor factor authentication is not great anymore. Unless you can do it over a anonymous source. A cell phone is usually directly connected to you, so it is not a anonymous device. There might still be secure/anonymous 2 factor authentication methods that won't expose you, for example over a secure email. (If there is 2FA that doesn't need a device that removes anonymity and is secure, use it.) (Please don't misunderstand, 2FA is great, however it can remove the anonymity that you worked hard to establish)

-Rethink how you do security questions. Many answers to security questions can be found in your internet history. One could use the first word of the security question as an answer, or a different sceme that will mean you always remember it. (Security question need to go, the amount of personal info an average person puts on the internet makes it easy to attack anything using security question)
-------_
High level crimimal information security:
The motto here is, "All the Security, All the Time" As one fuck up can end with you leaving a lick of traceability, and you could be fucked.
Pre Note: All of your software should always be up to date. Also even perfect info sec does not guarantee you are completely safe, a new zero day (exploit) can still fuck you, but good info security makes you significantly safer, by eliminating as many attacks as possible.
-Get a new device (or make a already owned device seem like you never owned it, do this only if you know how to, there's a lot of stuff that goes into that, like changing your mac adress etc) buy with cash, and your face covered, preferably far away from where you live. (Do I need to specify to not bring your phone or anything else that tracks your location to anywhere you want to go anonymously?) (Be aware that even hardware can have vulnerabilities, many cpus have known vulnerabilities, I can't list them all, do some research before buying)

Do not EVER use a high security device at any lower level of security. There are unique identifiers to your device, exposing them once can expose you for everything you do.

-If you know how to use Tails (A linux distro designed for Info sec) use that, preferably on a USB. (Or learn how to use tails, its better, but complicated) Otherwise a clean copy of windows (make sure its not in any way associated with you) can do the job too, tho not as well. (Using a VM might give extra security, since VMs usually erase all data and RAM they were using on shutdown)
-Get a non tracking VPN, Enable the kill switch (a setting that disables all traffic that doesn't go through the VPN) (change your firewall settings to only allow the traffic from the VPN, windows guide (Change settings so only traffic from the tor application is send) Edit: (Due to complaints: do not use vpn over tor, use tor over vpn. tor over vpn has no notable downside, if the VPN logs it makes no difference, your ISP will always log anyways, and vpns remove other attack vectors and also provide backup security should tor fail. Again even if the VPN tracks you only change the people doing the tracking, but now you are further removed making it more anonymous and also with less vulnerabilities)
-rember privacy settings, cookie cleaner, and antivirus, password (There could be a hidden administrator user on your PC, make sure to change its password)
-Always use the device on a non admin account

encrypt the entire drive, here are 3 free whole disk encryption softwares. Thoese are just examples do your own research. Free ones could be less safe then paid ones, this will require research.

-Ideally use this device only on networks that are not connected with you. Such as public networks (try to never use the same public networks twice, move around) (a home network should be fine now, as it should never be exposed, but more security is always better) (Its just a conveniences vs security trade)
-Never use accounts that have been exposed to lower security on higher security machines
-your browser is now TOR (or your preferred security focused browser, if you dont plan on using onion ) Make sure you get the standalone version of tor not the addon build (the standalone is safer, because there are less settings and options to tweak)
-Change your tor settings, to safest mode, enable a bridge (to my knowledge there's no difference in security between the build in bridges in tor), enable automatic updates, set duckduckgo onion as your primary browser. Set dark.fail onion page as your home page. (Or your preferred privacy search engine and onion directory)

set up a new pgp (can't use the same one you use for regular use, again less safer accounts are never used on safer devices) Cleopatra is my choice, its simple to use. Make sure you back up the private key multiple times, on safe devices. (Dont let the private key fall into anyone's hands) Give it a generic name like "HighSecurityPGP" do not give the pgp key pair a name that could identify you. (No initials etc) (Some pgp key pair programs want an associated email for a key pair, you can create a safe email, or which I recoend you can use a different program (like Cleopatra) (Feds & LEOs are known to copy private keys if they have your machine, so you will need to set up a new key pair if they ever take a device with a private key copy)
a high security machine that facilitates criminal activity can not use many programs. Many programs collect your devices mac adress, which is a unique identifier, amongst other things. It's should be used only for the activity you want to do.

-------_
How to use dark net markets (DNMs)
If you finished your High Security setup, we can dive right in. Otherwise go do that. This is where all that is essential.
Quick info on Tor, and onion sites. There is no search engine. It's all based of directories and addresses you are given by others. Tor will likely not be very quick, it has to pass through multiple networks to get to the destination. DNMs sometimes exit scam, an exit scam is when a market shuts down completely and takes all the money, this is a risk when using DNMs, it's not too common but happens maybe 0-4 times a year. The admins of thoese servers need to get out at some point, before they get jailed, so they exit the game, and scam everyone out of their money.
-A very useful onion directory is dark.fail it has a lot of links, for all kinds of stuff. News, email, DNMs, Psychonautwiki (harm reduction website), forums etc. (Other directories also exist)
-Pick a market, preferably one that handles secure connection server side instead of requiring you to establish the secure connection. Then create an account. Your account once created should include an entry box in your profile for a pgp key, post your PUBLIC key in there. (Verify the link is not a scam, most markets should provide a pgp signature)
-Next is currency setup. All major cryptocurrency exchangers can be used, I can recommend coin base but there could be better ones out there. Unless you find a small non U.S., exchange, they will always ask for your identity. So unless you can find a trustworthy exchange that doesn't ID, you will need to give it to them. (Side note, all major crypto exchangers report to the IRS, if the IRS asks you if you bought cryptocurrency and you bought while having IDed yourself SAY YES, DO NOT COMMIT TAX FRAUD WHEN THEY KNOW YOU DID)

I recommend using Monero, it's hard to track, so it makes your job a lot easier. (If you use bitcoin you should run it through a scrambler, because BTC is tracable to anyone who knows what they are doing)

-Transfer (monero you can send directly, btc you should scramble) to your wallet. There are two options a cold wallet (physical) or a software wallet. Software wallets usually dont cost anything so I recommend them, even if often less safe. Electrum is easy to use, and pretty safe. You can also do your own research and find a wallet that fits your needs.

decide where you want to ship it. You can send to your home, to a PO box, to a PO box that you opened with a fake ID (I don't recommend), an abandoned house, general mail (sending to a post office instead of a street adress) pickup up with fake ID, use a remailing service. These are some options, sending it to your own home, isn't ideal, but its pretty much the only easy way.

-now you are ready to buy, only buy using escrow (it means the money is held by the market as a middle man until the product is delivered, they will also handle any issues like wrong quantity, cuts, etc), judge the reviews for a product, and if available look at the history of the vendor, until you find a product from a vendor you trust. (I recommend to buy within your country as much as possible, so it doesn't go through customs, it's very rare that something is found, but it can happen)
-now you get to buy, depending on market, you either have cryptocurrency stored in their wallets (not recommend, you will lose it in an exit scam) or you can send it every order. When you send your delivery adress (or the one you want it to go to) encrypt the adress using the sellers public key. Make sure the adress is correct.
-wait for the product, make sure to extend the escrow until the product arrives, if you can't extend it anymore dispute the order, and a moderator will step in
-test the product, use it, and leave a review. PLEASE LEAVE A REVIEW, DNMs only work because of reviews.
Edit: Didn't imagine I would write over 15000 words. Oh well, it was fun. Hope it helps, if you have any questions feel free to ask.
No idea how long this will stay up, I might purge it in 7 days, or never.

"Inflation makes you pay 50 dollars for the 20 dollar haircut you used to get for 5 dollars when you had hair!"
Let's embark on a journey that made the United States the number 1 economy of the world.

1. Despite the British Empire's claim that it would for ever remain the leading empire,history can serve as a harbinger for what's to come...

At the peak of its power, in 1913, "the empire on which the sun never sets", controlled 25% of the planet's land mass and about the same percentage of the world's population. Britain was both the naval an imperial power of the 19th century, and between 1812-1914, its dominance resulted in relative peace in Europe and the rest of the world. The industrial revolution transformed Britain into the workshop of the world.
By the start of the 20th century things changed as both Germany and the United States started to challenge Britain's economic and influential leadership. As often happened during human history such challenging lead to war and although Britain achieved its largest territorial influence after WW1, the war had destroyed much of its economic strength, with losses in industrial and military power marking the begin of its demise.
During WW2, Japan occupied Britain's colonies, and after WW2, India, Britain's most valuable and populous possession, achieved independence. Much of the British Empire's influence is now enshrined in the Commonwealth Charter, stating shared values like democracy, human rights and the rule of law.
The United Kingdom's pound sterling was its world's reserve currency during its reign and by controlling the supply of money, Britain was able to influence its global power.
"Permit me to issue and control the money of a nation, and I care not who makes its laws!" Mayer Amschel Rothschild

2. The US Empire repeats this blueprint by claiming the U.S. Dollar's reserve currency status as its birthright!

The Federal Reserve Act.
The Panic of 1907 triggered many American's belief that The Federal Reserve Act, passed by the 63rd United States Congress and signed into law by President Woodrow Wilson on December 23, 1913, was necessary for financial and economic stability. The law created the Federal Reserve System, the central banking system of the United States.
The Bretton Woods System.
The FED ended immobile reserve issues and the inelastic currency problems and successfully internationalized the U.S Dollar as the global reserve currency. The usage of the prior nationally used U.S. Dollar expanded a first time when the Allies agreed to the terms of the Bretton Woods System, establishing the rules for commercial as well as financial regulations among the United States and its allies. Canada, Western Europe, Australia and Japan accepted the U.S. Dollar, which was backed by a gold exchange standard, making the U.S. Dollar "as good as gold". This was only possible because the United States controlled two thirds of the world's gold reserves.
Soviet representatives, who claimed that institutions like the IMF and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) were Wall Street branches, didn't participate in Bretton Woods and later proved to be right, as the United States printed too much money (not backed by its gold reserves) to wage war on Vietnam, destroying a big part of the value of the U.S. Dollars held by its allies, due to the inflation of the U.S. Dollar money supply.
Yet, the initial demand for U.S. dollars created the American way of life: a consumer driven economy fueled by products made outside the U.S. in return for U.S. Dollars. As the Allied countries couldn't really buy any "Made in America"-products, due to the fact that the United States' elites rather outsourced their manufacturing, they instead invested their hard labor into U.S. Treasuries.
On August 1971, President Richard Nixon announced the unilateral cancellation of the direct international convertibility of the United States dollar to gold, in a response to halt the Allied countries' continuous attempts to exchange their U.S. Dollars for Gold. By 1973, the Bretton Woods system was replaced by the current freely floating fiat currency system.
The petro dollar system.
The second wave of U.S. Dollar adoption was the result of the petro dollar, making the global trade of oil U.S. Dollar denominated. Every country on this planet needed and still needs oil to operate and grow its economy, creating an enormous growth in U.S. Dollar demand and like mentioned before, those dollars had to be earned. Especially China served the United States consumer model by producing almost everything Americans can buy in Wall Mart and other stores. By relying on the U.S. Dollar reserve currency status, the American elites have made the mistake of outsourcing manufacturing to China, as often predicted by Donald Trump in the 1980's. The y figured it was easier to just print wealth.
The tradewar.
President Donald Trump, decided it was time to bring jobs back to the U.S. and started an ongoing trade war with China, the country that supplied the U.S. consumer driven economy, and proud owner of $1.07 trillion in Treasury holdings. The trade war has negatively impacted the economies of both the United States and China and will most likely result in the decoupling of both economies.
What is to come? My personal insights.
I see huge problems for the U.S. and the rest of the western liberal democracies. But especially the United States, who's currency amounts to no less than 60% of all the world's reserve assets, is vulnerable if and when China who only accounts for 1 or 2 %, says it is time for change. Most likely we will experience another banking crisis, with or without Covid-19, and unfortunately a bigger one when compared to the 2008 dissaster. Did you know that the global debt tripled since then? Many economists and politicians advocate the end of the U.S. Dollar reserve currency system and predict a reset. Every financial system has a limited lifespan similar to a human live: it is created, it grows, it matures, and unfortunately, it ages, weakens and dies. It happened to the Brittish Pound Sterling, and I am afraid that the days of this financial hegemony are numbered as well.
And I did write "afraid", why?
History tells us that these transition periods are particularly dangerous and have often led to full-blown military conflicts if not world wars. The current wealth transfer, the result of manufacturing outsourcing to mainland China, impoverished the United States and destroyed its middle class. President Donald Trump's analysis that the U.S. needs a strong manufacturing base is correct, yet without its allies the United States will not be able to turn the tide.
It took China decades to build its manufacturing base, and President Trump doesn't have the privilege of having the political luxury to design five year plans, as the United States capitalistic and political model specializes more on presidential campaigning and less on economic planning, which is exactly China's strength.

3. The Chinese 'digital' empire.

China is ideally positioned to become the new global power: it produces many of our products and dominates most supply chains. It has been hoarding gold and mines most of the Bitcoin. It might just have the right reserve assets to back its DCEP, the digital Yuan, which will be pilot tested during the 2022 Winter Olympics hosted by China. Despite the fact that the United States and other western nations might not want to adopt the Yuan or allow it to be part of the world's reserve assets, China can demand payment in Yuan for its products. It's that simple! This is why outsourcing is such as stupid economic voluntarily yet fatal policy. If you only print money and don't produce goods, how long will the world play ball?
One of the results of Trump's trade war is that China and other countries such as Russia and Iran no longer want to be vulnerable to U.S. sanctions that come in the shape of being denied access to the financial system through Swift. The United States can indeed destroy a big part of Iran's economy, but Iran is now becoming a big cryptocurrency player. In other words, bullying those countries might work in the short-term, but in the long-term they will simply adopt a new standard: and I believe that the Yuan will likely play a major role in the financial system they will adopt.
This trend means that the expansion of the demand in U.S. Dollars will stop and reverse, when countries no longer want to use the currency whose issuer can economically destroy them through sanctions. The alternatives for such countires are cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Ethereum and many others, national CBDC's (Central Bank Digital Currencies), and the adoption of the digital Yuan.
This digital Yuan will be attached to the One Belt, One road initiative, finding adoption whilst developing huge infrastructure projects that will lead to a Eurasian trading zone. If the U.S. Military leaves the Middle East, as Trump brings home troops, this will create the right conditions for China to emerge as the victor.

4. Surveillance Capitalism - Insights on the DCEP (Digital Currency Electronic Payment, DC/EP):

This centralized digital financial system works on blockchain and cryptographic principles and aims to increase the circulation of the RMB, in the hope it can become a reserve currency like the U.S. Dollar.
Created and sanctioned by the Chinese Government, it is the only legal digital currency in China.
The system offers Chinese regulators better monitoring abilities and will be an efficient tool against anonymous counterfeiting, money laundering and illegal financing. At the same time it reduces costs involved in maintaining and recycling bank notes and coins.
As mentioned above, China aims to bypass Swift, which it regards to be a U.S. entity, and will be able to collect real-time data related to money creation, bookkeeping, essential information for the implementation of monetary policies.
The pilot institutions for DCEP, China Construction Bank, Agricultural Bank of China, Bank of China and Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, will serve as a production test for China's new currency system, after which the DCEP will be distributed to large fintech companies such as Tencent and Alibaba to be used in WeChat Pay and AliPay. Transfers will not go through bank accounts, but through electronic wallets.
By mandating that all merchants who accept digital payments must accept DCEP, the DECP will become the most accepted digital currency in the world.

5. Sings of hope.

If the United States adopts blockchain and issues a CBDC (Central Bank Digital Currency) backed by Bitcoin, they will have a reasonable chance to offer the western democracies a new type of dollar standard that can be an anchor versus the coming RMB. If not, I fear the worst is yet to come for the U.S. Dollar and its economy.
Many smart American economists and Wall Street goeroe's have finally figured out the remarkable strength of Bitcoin, the world's first and most favorite digital form of gold.
Some of the smartest investment capitalists like Ray Dalio and Warren Buffet have allocated more money into gold, a clear sign of trouble. Bitcoin might be a step too far for Warren Buffet, but rest assure that Wall Street investment management companies have figured it out by now, have you?
You can expect more institutions to allocate a % of their portfolio's wealth into Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, as a hedge against the systemic risk in our global financial system, which will inevitable start feeling the effects of the trillions that have been printed.
"Inflation makes you pay 50 dollars for the 20 dollar haircut you used to get for 5 dollars when you had hair!"

Welcome to Forward Thinking Friday, a regular venue to discuss ideas, concepts and designs that push Decred further, bigger and better. Topics raised can be anything ranging from:

Technological improvements or enhancements
Unique opportunities well serviced by the Decred protocol
Responses to competing protocol designs and features
Integrations and Infrastructure
Marketing and Project Messaging

https://preview.redd.it/74cvfm7p26s51.png?width=929&format=png&auto=webp&s=907f5e4c7d96a67bafd906c0207efd82a84291be

Airdrops and Collateral

For this weeks focus topic, I am keen to explore two ideas and concepts and get stakeholder feedback, input and general thoughts. Personally, I think both of these are interesting methods to create new hype, interest and attention, and in the case of collateral, an essential path to monetisation and ultimate success.
Idea 1: A Second DCR Airdrop
My sense is that the market has reservations regarding the volume of DCR held by early investors, founding team and contractors. Irrespective of reality, this seems to be at least one adverse perspective. I would love to explore ideas/feasibility about hosting a second DCR airdrop.
Perhaps we deploy a portion of the treasury, perhaps via donations, perhaps it is a method to attract valuable contributors, developers, DEX liquidity etc. Perhaps we create a sidechain that locks a portion of DCR, issue an Ethereum ERC-20 token that is a right to claim and thus create unforgeable airdrops on another chain. Perhaps we create bounties via the RFP tool to deliver work within specifications. Pre-determined rewards for delivering some of the repeated desirable features from past FFF. This is a lso a path to attract new devs.

Coldcard Implementation
DCRPayserver
Ledger integration
Multi-sig functionality inside wallets
LN split tickets
A clever marketing campaign
RGB smart contract system
Drivechain/Sidechain implementation

Idea 2: DCR as pristine collateral
Chris Burniskie and Chris Dannen have both commented on this and I am also 100% in favour of creating systems that take DCR as collateral. A MakerDAO esque system, with some modifications that Ross Ulbicht actually has a great take on here, seems like an interesting approach. I have also considered what it would take to enable people to create their own on-chain treasuries/multi-sig wallets so as to create a form of on-chain business. How can we further create an internal circular economy inside Decred which has money, credit, treasuries etc. Decred is an incredible accounting system, lets explore how we take this further.
I will leave here a post by Raoul Pal from his GMI newsletter focusing on Bitcoin as pristine collateral. I don't know about you, but this is my long term end goal thesis for both BTC and DCR, as the ultimate pristine collateral.
https://preview.redd.it/orp3hcks86s51.png?width=1740&format=png&auto=webp&s=32b8d43e6fbe81eb8e90810b58cc94629dcf6c71
https://preview.redd.it/zto8y6iu86s51.png?width=1504&format=png&auto=webp&s=dae1db2ed73c03f39535778a225419128bfdb7c9

https://github.com/gridcoin-community/Gridcoin-Research/releases/tag/5.0.0.0
Finally! After over ten months of development and testing, "Fern" has arrived! This is a whopper. 240 pull requests merged. Essentially a complete rewrite that was started with the scraper (the "neural net" rewrite) in "Denise" has now been completed. Practically the ENTIRE Gridcoin specific codebase resting on top of the vanilla Bitcoin/Peercoin/Blackcoin vanilla PoS code has been rewritten. This removes the team requirement at last (see below), although there are many other important improvements besides that.
Fern was a monumental undertaking. We had to encode all of the old rules active for the v10 block protocol in new code and ensure that the new code was 100% compatible. This had to be done in such a way as to clear out all of the old spaghetti and ring-fence it with tightly controlled class implementations. We then wrote an entirely new, simplified ruleset for research rewards and reengineered contracts (which includes beacon management, polls, and voting) using properly classed code. The fundamentals of Gridcoin with this release are now on a very sound and maintainable footing, and the developers believe the codebase as updated here will serve as the fundamental basis for Gridcoin's future roadmap.
We have been testing this for MONTHS on testnet in various stages. The v10 (legacy) compatibility code has been running on testnet continuously as it was developed to ensure compatibility with existing nodes. During the last few months, we have done two private testnet forks and then the full public testnet testing for v11 code (the new protocol which is what Fern implements). The developers have also been running non-staking "sentinel" nodes on mainnet with this code to verify that the consensus rules are problem-free for the legacy compatibility code on the broader mainnet. We believe this amount of testing is going to result in a smooth rollout.
Given the amount of changes in Fern, I am presenting TWO changelogs below. One is high level, which summarizes the most significant changes in the protocol. The second changelog is the detailed one in the usual format, and gives you an inkling of the size of this release.

Highlights

Protocol

Note that the protocol changes will not become active until we cross the hard-fork transition height to v11, which has been set at 2053000. Given current average block spacing, this should happen around October 4, about one month from now.
Note that to get all of the beacons in the network on the new protocol, we are requiring ALL beacons to be validated. A two week (14 day) grace period is provided by the code, starting at the time of the transition height, for people currently holding a beacon to validate the beacon and prevent it from expiring. That means that EVERY CRUNCHER must advertise and validate their beacon AFTER the v11 transition (around Oct 4th) and BEFORE October 18th (or more precisely, 14 days from the actual date of the v11 transition). If you do not advertise and validate your beacon by this time, your beacon will expire and you will stop earning research rewards until you advertise and validate a new beacon. This process has been made much easier by a brand new beacon "wizard" that helps manage beacon advertisements and renewals. Once a beacon has been validated and is a v11 protocol beacon, the normal 180 day expiration rules apply. Note, however, that the 180 day expiration on research rewards has been removed with the Fern update. This means that while your beacon might expire after 180 days, your earned research rewards will be retained and can be claimed by advertising a beacon with the same CPID and going through the validation process again. In other words, you do not lose any earned research rewards if you do not stake a block within 180 days and keep your beacon up-to-date.
The transition height is also when the team requirement will be relaxed for the network.

GUI

Besides the beacon wizard, there are a number of improvements to the GUI, including new UI transaction types (and icons) for staking the superblock, sidestake sends, beacon advertisement, voting, poll creation, and transactions with a message. The main screen has been revamped with a better summary section, and better status icons. Several changes under the hood have improved GUI performance. And finally, the diagnostics have been revamped.

Blockchain

The wallet sync speed has been DRASTICALLY improved. A decent machine with a good network connection should be able to sync the entire mainnet blockchain in less than 4 hours. A fast machine with a really fast network connection and a good SSD can do it in about 2.5 hours. One of our goals was to reduce or eliminate the reliance on snapshots for mainnet, and I think we have accomplished that goal with the new sync speed. We have also streamlined the in-memory structures for the blockchain which shaves some memory use.
There are so many goodies here it is hard to summarize them all.
I would like to thank all of the contributors to this release, but especially thank @cyrossignol, whose incredible contributions formed the backbone of this release. I would also like to pay special thanks to @barton2526, @caraka, and @Quezacoatl1, who tirelessly helped during the testing and polishing phase on testnet with testing and repeated builds for all architectures.
The developers are proud to present this release to the community and we believe this represents the starting point for a true renaissance for Gridcoin!

Summary Changelog

Accrual

Changed

Most significantly, nodes calculate research rewards directly from the magnitudes in EACH superblock between stakes instead of using a two- or three- point average based on a CPID's current magnitude and the magnitude for the CPID when it last staked. For those long-timers in the community, this has been referred to as "Superblock Windows," and was first done in proof-of-concept form by @denravonska.

Network magnitude unit pinned to a static value of 0.25
Max research reward allowed per block raised to 16384 GRC (from 12750 GRC)
New CPIDs begin accruing research rewards from the first superblock that contains the CPID instead of from the time of the beacon advertisement

Removed

500 GRC research reward limit for a CPID's first stake
6-month expiration for unclaimed rewards
10-block spacing requirement between research reward claims
Rolling 5-day payment-per-day limit
Legacy tolerances for floating-point error and time drift
The need to include a valid copy of a CPID's magnitude in a claim
10-block emission adjustment interval for the magnitude unit

Beacons

Added

One-time beacon activation requires that participants temporarily change their usernames to a verification code at one whitelisted BOINC project
Verification codes of pending beacons expire after 3 days
Self-service beacon removal

Changed

Burn fee for beacon advertisement increased from 0.00001 GRC to 0.5 GRC
Rain addresses derived from beacon keys instead of a default wallet address
Beacon expiration determined as of the current block instead of the previous block

Removed

The ability for developers to remove beacons
The ability to sign research reward claims with non-current but unexpired beacons

Unaltered

As a reminder:

Beacons expire after 6 months pass (180 days)
Beacons can be renewed after 5 months pass (150 days)
Renewed beacons must be signed with the same key as the original beacon

Superblocks

Added

Magnitudes less than 1 include two fractional places
Magnitudes greater than or equal to 1 but less than 10 include one fractional place

Changed

A valid superblock must match a scraper convergence

Removed

Superblock popularity election mechanics

Voting

Added

Yes/no/abstain and single-choice response types (no user-facing support yet)

Changed

To create a poll, a maximum of 250 UTXOs for a single address must add up to 100000 GRC. These are selected from the largest downwards.
Burn fee for creating polls scaled by the number of UTXOs claimed
- 50 GRC for a poll contract
- 0.001 GRC per claimed UTXO
Burn fee for casting votes scaled by the number of UTXOs claimed
- 0.01 GRC for a vote contract
- 0.01 GRC to claim magnitude
- 0.01 GRC per claimed address
- 0.001 GRC per claimed UTXO
Maximum length of a poll title: 80 characters
Maximum length of a poll question: 100 characters
Maximum length of a poll discussion website URL: 100 characters
Maximum number of poll choices: 20
Maximum length of a poll choice label: 100 characters

Removed

Magnitude, CPID count, and participant count poll weight types
The ability for developers to remove polls and votes

Detailed Changelog

[5.0.0.0] 2020-09-03, mandatory, "Fern"

Added

Backport newer uint256 types from Bitcoin #1570 (@cyrossignol)
Implement project level rain for rainbymagnitude #1580 (@jamescowens)
Upgrade utilities (Update checker and snapshot downloadeapplication) #1576 (@iFoggz)
Provide fees collected in the block by the miner #1601 (@iFoggz)
Add support for generating legacy superblocks from scraper stats #1603 (@cyrossignol)
Port of the Bitcoin Logger to Gridcoin #1600 (@jamescowens)
Implement zapwallettxes #1605 (@jamescowens)
Implements a global event filter to suppress help question mark #1609 (@jamescowens)
Add next target difficulty to RPC output #1615 (@cyrossignol)
Add caching for block hashes to CBlock #1624 (@cyrossignol)
Make toolbars and tray icon red for testnet #1637 (@jamescowens)
Add an rpc call convergencereport #1643 (@jamescowens)
Implement newline filter on config file read in #1645 (@jamescowens)
Implement beacon status icon/button #1646 (@jamescowens)
Add gridcointestnet.png #1649 (@caraka)
Add precision to support magnitudes less than 1 #1651 (@cyrossignol)
Replace research accrual calculations with superblock snapshots #1657 (@cyrossignol)
Publish example gridcoinresearch.conf as a md document to the doc directory #1662 (@jamescowens)
Add options checkbox to disable transaction notifications #1666 (@jamescowens)
Add support for self-service beacon deletion #1695 (@cyrossignol)
Add support for type-specific contract fee amounts #1698 (@cyrossignol)
Add verifiedbeaconreport and pendingbeaconreport #1696 (@jamescowens)
Add preliminary testing option for block v11 height on testnet #1706 (@cyrossignol)
Add verified beacons manifest part to superblock validator #1711 (@cyrossignol)
Implement beacon, vote, and superblock display categories/icons in UI transaction model #1717 (@jamescowens)
neuralnet: Add integrity checking to researcher accrual snapshot registry #1727 (@jamescowens)
Add workaround for scrypt assembly on macOS #1740 (@cyrossignol)
gui: Build onboarding/beacon wizard #1739 (@cyrossignol)
doc: Add CONTRIBUTING.md from bitcoin #1723 (@div72)
rpc: Implement inspectaccrualsnapshot and parseaccrualsnapshotfile #1744 (@jamescowens)
scraper: Add disk based state backing for verified beacon list in scraper #1751 (@jamescowens)
Add ability to recover beacon in block version 11+ #1768 (@cyrossignol)
refactor: Add transaction context to contract handlers #1777 (@cyrossignol)
gui: Add context for when BOINC is attached to a pool #1775 (@cyrossignol)
doc: Clarify what to do if PR in multiple categories (for CONTRIBUTING.md) #1798 (@RoboticMind)
qt: Add option to choose not to start the wallet minimized #1804 (@jamescowens)
superblock: Add check for OutOfSyncByAge to SuperblockValidator::Validate #1806 (@jamescowens)
contract: Standardize contract validation and add block context #1808 (@cyrossignol)
add seed.gridcoin.pl to default config #1812 (@wilkart)
gui: Implement sidestake send display #1813 (@jamescowens)
gui: Add pool/investor pages to researcher wizard #1819 (@cyrossignol)
ci: Port lint scripts from Bitcoin #1823 (@div72)
doc: Create basic readme in contrib #1826 (@RoboticMind)
gui: Implement TransactionRecord::Message #1829 (@jamescowens)
rpc: Add private_key_available to beaconstatus #1833 (@a123b)
gui: Validate email address in researcher wizard #1840 (@a123b)
rpc: Add "getrawwallettransaction" RPC function #1842 (@cyrossignol)
consensus: Set block version 11 threshold height for mainnet #1862 (@cyrossignol)

Changed

Upgrade LevelDB from v1.17 to v1.20 #1562 (@cyrossignol)
Re-enable scrypt optimizations #1450 (@denravonska)
Derive CScript from prevector type (optimization) #1554 (@cyrossignol)
Disable quorum for grandfathered blocks to speed up sync #1568 (@cyrossignol)
Refactor hashBoinc for binary claim contexts #1558 (@cyrossignol)
integrated_scraper_2 branch tracking PR #1559 (@jamescowens)
Upgrade depends - OpenSSL to 1.1.1d #1581 (@jamescowens)
Ubuntu 19.10 fixes #1590 (@denravonska)
Force a re-parse of legacy claims in generated blocks #1592 (@cyrossignol)
Improve the "versionreport" RPC output #1595 (@cyrossignol)
Overhaul the core tally and accrual system #1583 (@cyrossignol)
Overhaul the superblock quorum system #1597 (@cyrossignol)
Add more data to the "superblocks" RPC output #1599 (@cyrossignol)
Update Windows Build doc #1606 (@barton2526)
Change the order of calls in gridcoinresearchd.cpp to optimize rpc shunt path #1610 (@jamescowens)
Change staking tooltip to display frequency #1611 (@jamescowens)
Enhancements to ETTS #1442 (@jamescowens)
Standardize money values as integers #1614 (@cyrossignol)
Clean up and optimize legacy coin age code #1616 (@cyrossignol)
Some scraper cleanups #1620 (@jamescowens)
Reorganize accrual code and fix 6-month cutoff #1630 (@cyrossignol)
Update Copyright years #1633 (@barton2526)
Change team whitelist delimiter to <> for CPID detection #1634 (@cyrossignol)
Change team whitelist separator to <> to accomodate more team names #1632 (@jamescowens)
Change Curl download speed type to support older environments #1640 (@cyrossignol)
Optimize logo SVGs used for tray icons #1638 (@cyrossignol)
Tweak consolidateunspent rpc function #1644 (@jamescowens)
ETTS and staking icon enhancements #1650 (@jamescowens)
Implement new transaction fees for block version 11 #1652 (@jamescowens)
Optimize in-memory storage of superblock data #1653 (@cyrossignol)
Miscellaneous superblock API improvements and housekeeping #1654 (@cyrossignol)
Update openssl to 1.1.1f compatibility #1660 (@jamescowens)
Optimize bdb to avoid synchronous flush of database #1659 (@jamescowens)
Add support for CPID input to "lifetime" RPC function #1668 (@cyrossignol)
Overhaul the contract handling system #1669 (@cyrossignol)
Make the autostart mainnet/testnet aware #1671 (@jamescowens)
Remove slashes from User Agent in peers tab #1674 (@div72)
Refactor contracts for polymorphic binary payloads #1676 (@cyrossignol)
Overhaul the beacon system #1678 (@cyrossignol)
Replace boost::optional with non-owning pointers #1680 (@cyrossignol)
Optimize proof-of-stake validation #1681 (@cyrossignol)
Updated Slack link #1683 (@NeuralMiner)
Update build-unix.md #1686 (@Quezacoatl1)
Replace deprecated QT methods #1693 (@Pythonix)
Made protocol.h more similar to bitcoin #1688 (@Pythonix)
Touch up some details for block version 11 #1697 (@cyrossignol)
More tweaks for block version 11 #1700 (@cyrossignol)
Finish the conversion to the BCLog class based logger #1699 (@jamescowens)
Move claim version transitional code in miner for proper signature #1712 (@cyrossignol)
doc: Update threads in coding.txt #1730 (@div72)
qt: Include QPainterPath in trafficgraphwidget.cpp #1733 (@div72)
doc: Update doc/build-unix.md #1731 (@div72)
gui: Show peers tab on connections icon click #1734 (@div72)
refactor: Change return type of IsMine to isminetype && move wallet files to wallet directory #1722 (@div72)
build: Updates boost to 1.73.0 for depends #1673 (@jamescowens)
doc: Update Unit Test Readme #1743 (@RoboticMind)
wallet: Change Assert To Error Message In kernel.cpp #1748 (@RoboticMind)
scraper: Shorten display representation of verification codes #1754 (@cyrossignol)
log: Change ".B." to Clear Message #1758 (@RoboticMind)
util: Fix braindamage in GetDefaultDataDir() #1737 (@jamescowens)
scraper: Improve scraper processing of beacon verifications #1760 (@jamescowens)
scraper: Add instrumentation to convergencereport #1763 (@jamescowens)
rpc: Improve rpc stress test script #1767 (@tunisiano187)
Generalize enum serialization #1770 (@cyrossignol)
scraper: Improve handling of ETags in http class and tweak verified beacon logic #1776 (@jamescowens)
scraper: Improve ProcessNetworkWideFromProjectStats and other tweaks #1778 (@jamescowens)
researcher: Automate beacon advertisement for renewals only #1781 (@cyrossignol)
gui: Tweak behavior of beacon page in researcher wizard #1784 (@cyrossignol)
Prepare for block version 11 hard-fork on testnet #1787 (@cyrossignol)
scraper: Modify UpdateVerifiedBeaconsFromConsensus #1791 (@jamescowens)
gui: Optimize OverviewPage::updateTransactions() #1794 (@jamescowens)
ci: Adopt ci changes from Bitcoin #1795 (@div72)
consensus: switch snapshot accrual calculation to integer arithmetic #1799 (@cyrossignol)
voting: Overhaul the voting system #1809 (@cyrossignol)
contract: Optimize contract replay after chain reorganization #1815 (@cyrossignol)
contract: Reimplement transaction messages as contracts #1816 (@cyrossignol)
staking: Sign claim contracts with coinstake transaction #1817 (@cyrossignol)
gui: Change research wizard text #1820 (@div72)
net: Update protocol version and clean up net messaging #1824 (@cyrossignol)
rpc, wallet: Corrections to GetAmounts #1825 (@jamescowens)
gui: Tweak some minor researcher wizard details #1830 (@cyrossignol)
gui: Change GetEstimatedStakingFrequency text #1836 (@jamescowens)
scraper: Scraper global statistics cache optimization #1837 (@jamescowens)
doc: Update Vulnerability Response Process #1843 (@RoboticMind)
scraper: Optimization of manifest and parts sharing between ConvergedScraperStatsCache, mapManifest, and mapParts #1851 (@jamescowens)
consensus: Update Checkpoints #1855 (@barton2526)
docs: Update docs to build off master #1856 (@barton2526)
gui: Fix and improve GUI combo box styles #1858 (@cyrossignol)
build: Tweak Gridcoin installer for Fern release #1863 (@jamescowens)

Removed

Remove old research age checks (rebase #1365) #1572 (@cyrossignol)
Remove PrimaryCPID check from diagnostics dialog #1586 (@cyrossignol)
Remove missed label for PrimaryCPID from diagnostics #1588 (@cyrossignol)
Remove legacy quorum messaging system (@neural network) #1589 (@cyrossignol)
Remove old remnants of legacy smart contract experiments #1594 (@cyrossignol)
Remove block nonce for version 11 #1622 (@cyrossignol)
Delete obsolete contrib/Installer and Upgrader directories #1623 (@jamescowens)
Remove redundant LoadAdminMessages() calls #1625 (@cyrossignol)
Remove some legacy informational RPC commands #1658 (@cyrossignol)
Remove informational magnitude field from binary claims #1661 (@cyrossignol)
Remove fDebug3,4, and net and convert to BCLog::LogFlags #1663 (@jamescowens)
Remove qt5.7.1 depends support build System #1665 (@iFoggz)
Remove unused jQuery library #1679 (@cyrossignol)
Remove unused NetworkTimer() function and global state #1701 (@cyrossignol)
Refactor claim context objects into contracts #1704 (@cyrossignol)
Clean old assets up #1718 (@div72)
Remove legacy "rain" RPC (not by-project rain) #1742 (@cyrossignol)
Temporarily disable voting system on testnet #1769 (@cyrossignol)
gui: Remove legacy GUI transaction description for contracts #1772 (@cyrossignol)
gui: Remove transaction fee setting #1780 (@cyrossignol)
trivial: Cleanup unused legacy functions #1793 (@cyrossignol)
mining, rpc: Remove kernel-diff-best and kernel-diff-sum #1796 (@jamescowens)
refactor: Remove libs subdirectory #1802 (@div72)
scraper: cleanup unused/unnecessary functions #1803 (@jamescowens)
gui: Remove useless "Detach databases at shutdown" #1810 (@jamescowens)
test: Remove testnet condition for standard transactions #1814 (@cyrossignol)
consensus: Remove transitional testnet code #1854 (@cyrossignol)

Fixed

Fix "Owed" amount in output of "magnitude" RPC method #1569 (@cyrossignol)
Add support for paths with special characters on Windows #1571 (@cyrossignol)
Fix lingering peers.dat temp files and clean up remaining paths #1582 (@cyrossignol)
Fix incorrect beacon length warning in GUI transaction list #1585 (@cyrossignol)
Fix default config file line endings on Windows #1587 (@cyrossignol)
Reenable Travis builds for MacOS #1591 (@jamescowens)
Correct peer detail info background color #1593 (@jamescowens)
Fix exception in debug3 mode #1598 (@cyrossignol)
Fix deadlock in "getmininginfo" RPC function #1596 (@cyrossignol)
Fix accuracy of statistics in "network" RPC output #1602 (@cyrossignol)
Fix heights for quorum vote weight calculations #1604 (@cyrossignol)
Fix deadlock in log archiver when rename fails #1607 (@cyrossignol)
Fix a spurious segmentation fault during client load on Windows with fast CPUs #1608 (@jamescowens)
Fix lock order debugging and potential deadlocks #1612 (@jamescowens)
Add dependencies #1613 (@Scalextrix)
Fix std namespace pollution #1617 (@denravonska)
Add missing condition for newbie accrual computer #1618 (@cyrossignol)
Track first reward blocks in research accounts #1619 (@cyrossignol)
Fix lingering beacon warning after advertisement #1627 (@cyrossignol)
Fix accrual calculation for new, zero-magnitude CPIDs #1636 (@cyrossignol)
Fix diagnostics, add ETTS test, fix tooltipcolor, add missing lock, and add email=investor check #1647 (@jamescowens)
Fix help message of two RPC methods #1656 (@div72)
Fix legacy accrual for newbie with non-zero past reward #1667 (@cyrossignol)
Fix GUI autostart on Windows for paths with wide characters #1670 (@cyrossignol)
Qualify boost bind placeholders with their full namespace #1672 (@Ponce)
Fix suffix when copying txids #1677 (@div72)
Unnecessary if-statement removed #1685 (@Pythonix)
Fix consolidatemsunspent Help Message #1687 (@Pythonix)
Fix gettransaction help message #1691 (@Pythonix)
Fix GetNewMint To Look for Stakes #1692 (@RoboticMind)
Suppress deprecated copy warnings for Qt with GCC 9+ #1702 (@cyrossignol)
Fix exclusion error on stats processing and misplaced ENDLOCK logging entry #1710 (@jamescowens)
Removed unnecessary comparison #1708 (@Pythonix)
Fixed typo #1707 (@Pythonix)
Fix out-of-bounds exception for peers tab version slashes #1713 (@cyrossignol)
Fix transition for v1 superblocks when reorganizing #1714 (@cyrossignol)
Touch up transition to version 2 transactions #1715 (@cyrossignol)
Avoid mutating transactions in ConnectBlock() #1716 (@cyrossignol)
Skip beacon advertisement when already pending #1726 (@cyrossignol)
Fix Windows cross-compilation in newer environments #1728 (@cyrossignol)
Fix out-of-bounds access in IsMineInner() #1736 (@cyrossignol)
Fix a couple of block version 11 issues #1738 (@cyrossignol)
Fix null pointer dereference in GUI researcher model #1741 (@cyrossignol)
accrual: Reset research accounts when rebuilding accrual snapshots #1745 (@cyrossignol)
scraper: Correct update for verified beacons #1747 (@jamescowens)
accrual: Refactor tally initialization for snapshot rebuild #1749 (@cyrossignol)
rpc: Fix "cpid" field in "beaconconvergence" RPC output #1750 (@cyrossignol)
accrual: Fix snapshot accrual superblock state transitions #1752 (@cyrossignol)
scraper: Correct stale verified beacon logic #1753 (@jamescowens)
rpc: Correct possible divide by zero in getblockstats #1755 (@jamescowens)
gui: Fix issues with researcher wizard flow #1756 (@cyrossignol)
wallet: Stop Error When Starting From Zero #1759 (@RoboticMind)
Don't count empty email as explicit investor #1761 (@cyrossignol)
accrual: Fix snapshot accrual superblock state transitions #1764 (@cyrossignol)
rpc: Cleanup Help Message and Fix Typo #1771 (@RoboticMind)
scraper: Fix scraper etag header case sensitivity #1773 (@cyrossignol)
consensus: Use explicit time to check if superblock needed #1774 (@cyrossignol)
gui: Fix scroll area dark theme styles #1785 (@cyrossignol)
rpc, gui: Fix three divide by zero possibilities #1789 (@jamescowens)
rpc: Fix balance pre-check in "rainbymagnitude" RPC #1792 (@cyrossignol)
accrual: Fix outdated comment and correct grammar #1800 (@RoboticMind)
gui: Fix stuck cursor on labels #1801 (@div72)
beacon: Fix research wizard beacon renewal status #1805 (@cyrossignol)
gui: Fix translations for port numbers #1818 (@cyrossignol)
util: Create parent directory #1821 (@div72)
mining: Fix coinstake/claim signature order #1828 (@cyrossignol)
voting: Remove double increment in loop #1831 (@cyrossignol)
neuralnet, scraper: Fix compilation with gcc5 and older libcurl #1832 (@a123b)
wallet: Fix smallest coin selection for contracts #1841 (@cyrossignol)
gui: Fix display of polls with no votes yet #1844 (@cyrossignol)
gui: add indentation to diagnostic status bar labels #1849 (@jamescowens)
voting, gui: Fix formatting and alignment of vote shares and percent #1850 (@jamescowens)
wallet, rpc: Fix for self-transactions in listtransactions #1852 (@jamescowens)
accrual: Clear any accrual snapshots when syncing from pre-v11 #1853 (@cyrossignol)
accrual: Fix reset of accrual directory if starting sync below research age height #1857 (@jamescowens)
gui: Fix researcher wizard layout on macOS with native theme #1860 (@cyrossignol)

Dragonchain Public Proposal TL;DR:

Dragonchain has demonstrated twice Reddit’s entire total daily volume (votes, comments, and posts per Reddit 2019 Year in Review) in a 24-hour demo on an operational network. Every single transaction on Dragonchain is decentralized immediately through 5 levels of Dragon Net, and then secured with combined proof on Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ethereum Classic, and Binance Chain, via Interchain. At the time, in January 2020, the entire cost of the demo was approximately $25K on a single system (transaction fees locked at $0.0001/txn). With current fees (lowest fee $0.0000025/txn), this would cost as little as $625.
Watch Joe walk through the entire proposal and answer questions on YouTube.
This proposal is also available on the Dragonchain blog.

Hello Reddit and Ethereum community!

I’m Joe Roets, Founder & CEO of Dragonchain. When the team and I first heard about The Great Reddit Scaling Bake-Off we were intrigued. We believe we have the solutions Reddit seeks for its community points system and we have them at scale.
For your consideration, we have submitted our proposal below. The team at Dragonchain and I welcome and look forward to your technical questions, philosophical feedback, and fair criticism, to build a scaling solution for Reddit that will empower its users. Because our architecture is unlike other blockchain platforms out there today, we expect to receive many questions while people try to grasp our project. I will answer all questions here in this thread on Reddit, and I've answered some questions in the stream on YouTube.
We have seen good discussions so far in the competition. We hope that Reddit’s scaling solution will emerge from The Great Reddit Scaling Bake-Off and that Reddit will have great success with the implementation.

Executive summary

Dragonchain is a robust open source hybrid blockchain platform that has proven to withstand the passing of time since our inception in 2014. We have continued to evolve to harness the scalability of private nodes, yet take full advantage of the security of public decentralized networks, like Ethereum. We have a live, operational, and fully functional Interchain network integrating Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ethereum Classic, and ~700 independent Dragonchain nodes. Every transaction is secured to Ethereum, Bitcoin, and Ethereum Classic. Transactions are immediately usable on chain, and the first decentralization is seen within 20 seconds on Dragon Net. Security increases further to public networks ETH, BTC, and ETC within 10 minutes to 2 hours. Smart contracts can be written in any executable language, offering full freedom to existing developers. We invite any developer to watch the demo, play with our SDK’s, review open source code, and to help us move forward. Dragonchain specializes in scalable loyalty & rewards solutions and has built a decentralized social network on chain, with very affordable transaction costs. This experience can be combined with the insights Reddit and the Ethereum community have gained in the past couple of months to roll out the solution at a rapid pace.

Response and PoC

In The Great Reddit Scaling Bake-Off post, Reddit has asked for a series of demonstrations, requirements, and other considerations. In this section, we will attempt to answer all of these requests.

Live Demo

A live proof of concept showing hundreds of thousands of transactions

On Jan 7, 2020, Dragonchain hosted a 24-hour live demonstration during which a quarter of a billion (250 million+) transactions executed fully on an operational network. Every single transaction on Dragonchain is decentralized immediately through 5 levels of Dragon Net, and then secured with combined proof on Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ethereum Classic, and Binance Chain, via Interchain. This means that every single transaction is secured by, and traceable to these networks. An attack on this system would require a simultaneous attack on all of the Interchained networks.
24 hours in 4 minutes (YouTube):
24 hours in 4 minutes
The demonstration was of a single business system, and any user is able to scale this further, by running multiple systems simultaneously. Our goals for the event were to demonstrate a consistent capacity greater than that of Visa over an extended time period.
Tooling to reproduce our demo is available here:
https://github.com/dragonchain/spirit-bomb

Source Code

Source code (for on & off-chain components as well tooling used for the PoC). The source code does not have to be shared publicly, but if Reddit decides to use a particular solution it will need to be shared with Reddit at some point.

Scaling

How it works & scales

Architectural Scaling

Dragonchain’s architecture attacks the scalability issue from multiple angles. Dragonchain is a hybrid blockchain platform, wherein every transaction is protected on a business node to the requirements of that business or purpose. A business node may be held completely private or may be exposed or replicated to any level of exposure desired.
Every node has its own blockchain and is independently scalable. Dragonchain established Context Based Verification as its consensus model. Every transaction is immediately usable on a trust basis, and in time is provable to an increasing level of decentralized consensus. A transaction will have a level of decentralization to independently owned and deployed Dragonchain nodes (~700 nodes) within seconds, and full decentralization to BTC and ETH within minutes or hours. Level 5 nodes (Interchain nodes) function to secure all transactions to public or otherwise external chains such as Bitcoin and Ethereum. These nodes scale the system by aggregating multiple blocks into a single Interchain transaction on a cadence. This timing is configurable based upon average fees for each respective chain. For detailed information about Dragonchain’s architecture, and Context Based Verification, please refer to the Dragonchain Architecture Document.

Economic Scaling

An interesting feature of Dragonchain’s network consensus is its economics and scarcity model. Since Dragon Net nodes (L2-L4) are independent staking nodes, deployment to cloud platforms would allow any of these nodes to scale to take on a large percentage of the verification work. This is great for scalability, but not good for the economy, because there is no scarcity, and pricing would develop a downward spiral and result in fewer verification nodes. For this reason, Dragonchain uses TIME as scarcity.
TIME is calculated as the number of Dragons held, multiplied by the number of days held. TIME influences the user’s access to features within the Dragonchain ecosystem. It takes into account both the Dragon balance and length of time each Dragon is held. TIME is staked by users against every verification node and dictates how much of the transaction fees are awarded to each participating node for every block.
TIME also dictates the transaction fee itself for the business node. TIME is staked against a business node to set a deterministic transaction fee level (see transaction fee table below in Cost section). This is very interesting in a discussion about scaling because it guarantees independence for business implementation. No matter how much traffic appears on the entire network, a business is guaranteed to not see an increased transaction fee rate.

Scaled Deployment

Dragonchain uses Docker and Kubernetes to allow the use of best practices traditional system scaling. Dragonchain offers managed nodes with an easy to use web based console interface. The user may also deploy a Dragonchain node within their own datacenter or favorite cloud platform. Users have deployed Dragonchain nodes on-prem on Amazon AWS, Google Cloud, MS Azure, and other hosting platforms around the world. Any executable code, anything you can write, can be written into a smart contract. This flexibility is what allows us to say that developers with no blockchain experience can use any code language to access the benefits of blockchain. Customers have used NodeJS, Python, Java, and even BASH shell script to write smart contracts on Dragonchain.
With Docker containers, we achieve better separation of concerns, faster deployment, higher reliability, and lower response times.
We chose Kubernetes for its self-healing features, ability to run multiple services on one server, and its large and thriving development community. It is resilient, scalable, and automated. OpenFaaS allows us to package smart contracts as Docker images for easy deployment.
Contract deployment time is now bounded only by the size of the Docker image being deployed but remains fast even for reasonably large images. We also take advantage of Docker’s flexibility and its ability to support any language that can run on x86 architecture. Any image, public or private, can be run as a smart contract using Dragonchain.

Flexibility in Scaling

Dragonchain’s architecture considers interoperability and integration as key features. From inception, we had a goal to increase adoption via integration with real business use cases and traditional systems.
We envision the ability for Reddit, in the future, to be able to integrate alternate content storage platforms or other financial services along with the token.

LBRY - To allow users to deploy content natively to LBRY
MakerDAO to allow users to lend small amounts backed by their Reddit community points.
STORJ/SIA to allow decentralized on chain storage of portions of content. These integrations or any other are relatively easy to integrate on Dragonchain with an Interchain implementation.

Cost

Cost estimates (on-chain and off-chain) For the purpose of this proposal, we assume that all transactions are on chain (posts, replies, and votes).

On the Dragonchain network, transaction costs are deterministic/predictable. By staking TIME on the business node (as described above) Reddit can reduce transaction costs to as low as $0.0000025 per transaction.
Dragonchain Fees Table

Getting Started

How to run it

Building on Dragonchain is simple and requires no blockchain experience. Spin up a business node (L1) in our managed environment (AWS), run it in your own cloud environment, or on-prem in your own datacenter. Clear documentation will walk you through the steps of spinning up your first Dragonchain Level 1 Business node.
Getting started is easy...

Download Dragonchain’s dctl
Input three commands into a terminal
Build an image
Run it

More information can be found in our Get started documents.

Architecture

Dragonchain is an open source hybrid platform. Through Dragon Net, each chain combines the power of a public blockchain (like Ethereum) with the privacy of a private blockchain.
Dragonchain organizes its network into five separate levels. A Level 1, or business node, is a totally private blockchain only accessible through the use of public/private keypairs. All business logic, including smart contracts, can be executed on this node directly and added to the chain.
After creating a block, the Level 1 business node broadcasts a version stripped of sensitive private data to Dragon Net. Three Level 2 Validating nodes validate the transaction based on guidelines determined from the business. A Level 3 Diversity node checks that the level 2 nodes are from a diverse array of locations. A Level 4 Notary node, hosted by a KYC partner, then signs the validation record received from the Level 3 node. The transaction hash is ledgered to the Level 5 public chain to take advantage of the hash power of massive public networks.
Dragon Net can be thought of as a “blockchain of blockchains”, where every level is a complete private blockchain. Because an L1 can send to multiple nodes on a single level, proof of existence is distributed among many places in the network. Eventually, proof of existence reaches level 5 and is published on a public network.

API Documentation

APIs (on chain & off)

SDK Source

Nobody’s Perfect

Known issues or tradeoffs

Dragonchain is open source and even though the platform is easy enough for developers to code in any language they are comfortable with, we do not have so large a developer community as Ethereum. We would like to see the Ethereum developer community (and any other communities) become familiar with our SDK’s, our solutions, and our platform, to unlock the full potential of our Ethereum Interchain. Long ago we decided to prioritize both Bitcoin and Ethereum Interchains. We envision an ecosystem that encompasses different projects to give developers the ability to take full advantage of all the opportunities blockchain offers to create decentralized solutions not only for Reddit but for all of our current platforms and systems. We believe that together we will take the adoption of blockchain further. We currently have additional Interchain with Ethereum Classic. We look forward to Interchain with other blockchains in the future. We invite all blockchains projects who believe in decentralization and security to Interchain with Dragonchain.
While we only have 700 nodes compared to 8,000 Ethereum and 10,000 Bitcoin nodes. We harness those 18,000 nodes to scale to extremely high levels of security. See Dragonchain metrics.
Some may consider the centralization of Dragonchain’s business nodes as an issue at first glance, however, the model is by design to protect business data. We do not consider this a drawback as these nodes can make any, none, or all data public. Depending upon the implementation, every subreddit could have control of its own business node, for potential business and enterprise offerings, bringing new alternative revenue streams to Reddit.

Costs and resources

Summary of cost & resource information for both on-chain & off-chain components used in the PoC, as well as cost & resource estimates for further scaling. If your PoC is not on mainnet, make note of any mainnet caveats (such as congestion issues).

Every transaction on the PoC system had a transaction fee of $0.0001 (one-hundredth of a cent USD). At 256MM transactions, the demo cost $25,600. With current operational fees, the same demonstration would cost $640 USD.
For the demonstration, to achieve throughput to mimic a worldwide payments network, we modeled several clients in AWS and 4-5 business nodes to handle the traffic. The business nodes were tuned to handle higher throughput by adjusting memory and machine footprint on AWS. This flexibility is valuable to implementing a system such as envisioned by Reddit. Given that Reddit’s daily traffic (posts, replies, and votes) is less than half that of our demo, we would expect that the entire Reddit system could be handled on 2-5 business nodes using right-sized containers on AWS or similar environments.
Verification was accomplished on the operational Dragon Net network with over 700 independently owned verification nodes running around the world at no cost to the business other than paid transaction fees.

Requirements

Scaling

This PoC should scale to the numbers below with minimal costs (both on & off-chain). There should also be a clear path to supporting hundreds of millions of users.
Over a 5 day period, your scaling PoC should be able to handle:
*100,000 point claims (minting & distributing points) *25,000 subscriptions *75,000 one-off points burning *100,000 transfers

During Dragonchain’s 24 hour demo, the above required numbers were reached within the first few minutes.
Reddit’s total activity is 9000% more than Ethereum’s total transaction level. Even if you do not include votes, it is still 700% more than Ethereum’s current volume. Dragonchain has demonstrated that it can handle 250 million transactions a day, and it’s architecture allows for multiple systems to work at that level simultaneously. In our PoC, we demonstrate double the full capacity of Reddit, and every transaction was proven all the way to Bitcoin and Ethereum.
Reddit Scaling on Ethereum

Decentralization

Solutions should not depend on any single third-party provider. We prefer solutions that do not depend on specific entities such as Reddit or another provider, and solutions with no single point of control or failure in off-chain components but recognize there are numerous trade-offs to consider

Dragonchain’s architecture calls for a hybrid approach. Private business nodes hold the sensitive data while the validation and verification of transactions for the business are decentralized within seconds and secured to public blockchains within 10 minutes to 2 hours. Nodes could potentially be controlled by owners of individual subreddits for more organic decentralization.

Billing is currently centralized - there is a path to federation and decentralization of a scaled billing solution.
Operational multi-cloud
Operational on-premises capabilities
Operational deployment to any datacenter
Over 700 independent Community Verification Nodes with proof of ownership
Operational Interchain (Interoperable to Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Ethereum Classic, open to more)

Usability Scaling solutions should have a simple end user experience.

Users shouldn't have to maintain any extra state/proofs, regularly monitor activity, keep track of extra keys, or sign anything other than their normal transactions

Dragonchain and its customers have demonstrated extraordinary usability as a feature in many applications, where users do not need to know that the system is backed by a live blockchain. Lyceum is one of these examples, where the progress of academy courses is being tracked, and successful completion of courses is rewarded with certificates on chain. Our @Save_The_Tweet bot is popular on Twitter. When used with one of the following hashtags - #please, #blockchain, #ThankYou, or #eternalize the tweet is saved through Eternal to multiple blockchains. A proof report is available for future reference. Other examples in use are DEN, our decentralized social media platform, and our console, where users can track their node rewards, view their TIME, and operate a business node.
Examples:

Transactions complete in a reasonable amount of time (seconds or minutes, not hours or days)

All transactions are immediately usable on chain by the system. A transaction begins the path to decentralization at the conclusion of a 5-second block when it gets distributed across 5 separate community run nodes. Full decentralization occurs within 10 minutes to 2 hours depending on which interchain (Bitcoin, Ethereum, or Ethereum Classic) the transaction hits first. Within approximately 2 hours, the combined hash power of all interchained blockchains secures the transaction.

Free to use for end users (no gas fees, or fixed/minimal fees that Reddit can pay on their behalf)

With transaction pricing as low as $0.0000025 per transaction, it may be considered reasonable for Reddit to cover transaction fees for users.
All of Reddit's Transactions on Blockchain (month)
Community points can be earned by users and distributed directly to their Reddit account in batch (as per Reddit minting plan), and allow users to withdraw rewards to their Ethereum wallet whenever they wish. Withdrawal fees can be paid by either user or Reddit. This model has been operating inside the Dragonchain system since 2018, and many security and financial compliance features can be optionally added. We feel that this capability greatly enhances user experience because it is seamless to a regular user without cryptocurrency experience, yet flexible to a tech savvy user. With regard to currency or token transactions, these would occur on the Reddit network, verified to BTC and ETH. These transactions would incur the $0.0000025 transaction fee. To estimate this fee we use the monthly active Reddit users statista with a 60% adoption rate and an estimated 10 transactions per month average resulting in an approximate $720 cost across the system. Reddit could feasibly incur all associated internal network charges (mining/minting, transfer, burn) as these are very low and controllable fees.
Reddit Internal Token Transaction Fees

Reddit Ethereum Token Transaction Fees
When we consider further the Ethereum fees that might be incurred, we have a few choices for a solution.

Offload all Ethereum transaction fees (user withdrawals) to interested users as they wish to withdraw tokens for external use or sale.
Cover Ethereum transaction fees by aggregating them on a timed schedule. Users would request withdrawal (from Reddit or individual subreddits), and they would be transacted on the Ethereum network every hour (or some other schedule).
In a combination of the above, customers could cover aggregated fees.
Integrate with alternate Ethereum roll up solutions or other proposals to aggregate minting and distribution transactions onto Ethereum.

Bonus Points

Users should be able to view their balances & transactions via a blockchain explorer-style interface

From interfaces for users who have no knowledge of blockchain technology to users who are well versed in blockchain terms such as those present in a typical block explorer, a system powered by Dragonchain has flexibility on how to provide balances and transaction data to users. Transactions can be made viewable in an Eternal Proof Report, which displays raw data along with TIME staking information and traceability all the way to Bitcoin, Ethereum, and every other Interchained network. The report shows fields such as transaction ID, timestamp, block ID, multiple verifications, and Interchain proof. See example here.
Node payouts within the Dragonchain console are listed in chronological order and can be further seen in either Dragons or USD. See example here.
In our social media platform, Dragon Den, users can see, in real-time, their NRG and MTR balances. See example here.
A new influencer app powered by Dragonchain, Raiinmaker, breaks down data into a user friendly interface that shows coin portfolio, redeemed rewards, and social scores per campaign. See example here.

Exiting is fast & simple

Withdrawing funds on Dragonchain’s console requires three clicks, however, withdrawal scenarios with more enhanced security features per Reddit’s discretion are obtainable.

Interoperability Compatibility with third party apps (wallets/contracts/etc) is necessary.

Proven interoperability at scale that surpasses the required specifications. Our entire platform consists of interoperable blockchains connected to each other and traditional systems. APIs are well documented. Third party permissions are possible with a simple smart contract without the end user being aware. No need to learn any specialized proprietary language. Any code base (not subsets) is usable within a Docker container. Interoperable with any blockchain or traditional APIs. We’ve witnessed relatively complex systems built by engineers with no blockchain or cryptocurrency experience. We’ve also demonstrated the creation of smart contracts within minutes built with BASH shell and Node.js. Please see our source code and API documentation.

Scaling solutions should be extensible and allow third parties to build on top of it Open source and extensible
APIs should be well documented and stable

Documentation should be clear and complete

For full documentation, explore our docs, SDK’s, Github repo’s, architecture documents, original Disney documentation, and other links or resources provided in this proposal.

Third-party permissionless integrations should be possible & straightforward Smart contracts are Docker based, can be written in any language, use full language (not subsets), and can therefore be integrated with any system including traditional system APIs. Simple is better. Learning an uncommon or proprietary language should not be necessary.

Advanced knowledge of mathematics, cryptography, or L2 scaling should not be required. Compatibility with common utilities & toolchains is expected.
Dragonchain business nodes and smart contracts leverage Docker to allow the use of literally any language or executable code. No proprietary language is necessary. We’ve witnessed relatively complex systems built by engineers with no blockchain or cryptocurrency experience. We’ve also demonstrated the creation of smart contracts within minutes built with BASH shell and Node.js.

Bonus

Bonus Points: Show us how it works. Do you have an idea for a cool new use case for Community Points? Build it!

TIME

Community points could be awarded to Reddit users based upon TIME too, whereas the longer someone is part of a subreddit, the more community points someone naturally gained, even if not actively commenting or sharing new posts. A daily login could be required for these community points to be credited. This grants awards to readers too and incentivizes readers to create an account on Reddit if they browse the website often. This concept could also be leveraged to provide some level of reputation based upon duration and consistency of contribution to a community subreddit.

Dragon Den

Dragonchain has already built a social media platform that harnesses community involvement. Dragon Den is a decentralized community built on the Dragonchain blockchain platform. Dragon Den is Dragonchain’s answer to fake news, trolling, and censorship. It incentivizes the creation and evaluation of quality content within communities. It could be described as being a shareholder of a subreddit or Reddit in its entirety. The more your subreddit is thriving, the more rewarding it will be. Den is currently in a public beta and in active development, though the real token economy is not live yet. There are different tokens for various purposes. Two tokens are Lair Ownership Rights (LOR) and Lair Ownership Tokens (LOT). LOT is a non-fungible token for ownership of a specific Lair. LOT will only be created and converted from LOR.
Energy (NRG) and Matter (MTR) work jointly. Your MTR determines how much NRG you receive in a 24-hour period. Providing quality content, or evaluating content will earn MTR.

Security. Users have full ownership & control of their points.

All community points awarded based upon any type of activity or gift, are secured and provable to all Interchain networks (currently BTC, ETH, ETC). Users are free to spend and withdraw their points as they please, depending on the features Reddit wants to bring into production.

Balances and transactions cannot be forged, manipulated, or blocked by Reddit or anyone else

Users can withdraw their balance to their ERC20 wallet, directly through Reddit. Reddit can cover the fees on their behalf, or the user covers this with a portion of their balance.

Users should own their points and be able to get on-chain ERC20 tokens without permission from anyone else

Through our console users can withdraw their ERC20 rewards. This can be achieved on Reddit too. Here is a walkthrough of our console, though this does not show the quick withdrawal functionality, a user can withdraw at any time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNlTMxnfVHw

Points should be recoverable to on-chain ERC20 tokens even if all third-parties involved go offline

If necessary, signed transactions from the Reddit system (e.g. Reddit + Subreddit) can be sent to the Ethereum smart contract for minting.

A public, third-party review attesting to the soundness of the design should be available

To our knowledge, at least two large corporations, including a top 3 accounting firm, have conducted positive reviews. These reviews have never been made public, as Dragonchain did not pay or contract for these studies to be released.

Bonus points
Public, third-party implementation review available or in progress

See above

Compatibility with HSMs & hardware wallets

For the purpose of this proposal, all tokenization would be on the Ethereum network using standard token contracts and as such, would be able to leverage all hardware wallet and Ethereum ecosystem services.

Other Considerations

Minting/distributing tokens is not performed by Reddit directly

This operation can be automated by smart contract on Ethereum. Subreddits can if desired have a role to play.

One off point burning, as well as recurring, non-interactive point burning (for subreddit memberships) should be possible and scalable

This is possible and scalable with interaction between Dragonchain Reddit system and Ethereum token contract(s).

Fully open-source solutions are strongly preferred

Dragonchain is fully open source (see section on Disney release after conclusion).

Conclusion

Whether it is today, or in the future, we would like to work together to bring secure flexibility to the highest standards. It is our hope to be considered by Ethereum, Reddit, and other integrative solutions so we may further discuss the possibilities of implementation. In our public demonstration, 256 million transactions were handled in our operational network on chain in 24 hours, for the low cost of $25K, which if run today would cost $625. Dragonchain’s interoperable foundation provides the atmosphere necessary to implement a frictionless community points system. Thank you for your consideration of our proposal. We look forward to working with the community to make something great!

Disney Releases Blockchain Platform as Open Source

The team at Disney created the Disney Private Blockchain Platform. The system was a hybrid interoperable blockchain platform for ledgering and smart contract development geared toward solving problems with blockchain adoption and usability. All objective evaluation would consider the team’s output a success. We released a list of use cases that we explored in some capacity at Disney, and our input on blockchain standardization as part of our participation in the W3C Blockchain Community Group.
https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-blockchain/2016May/0052.html

Open Source

In 2016, Roets proposed to release the platform as open source to spread the technology outside of Disney, as others within the W3C group were interested in the solutions that had been created inside of Disney.
Following a long process, step by step, the team met requirements for release. Among the requirements, the team had to:

Obtain VP support and approval for the release
Verify ownership of the software to be released
Verify that no proprietary content would be released
Convince the organization that there was a value to the open source community
Convince the organization that there was a value to Disney
Offer the plan for ongoing maintenance of the project outside of Disney
Itemize competing projects
Verify no conflict of interest
Preferred license
Change the project name to not use the name Disney, any Disney character, or any other associated IP - proposed Dragonchain - approved
Obtain legal approval
Approval from corporate, parks, and other business units
Approval from multiple Disney patent groups Copyright holder defined by Disney (Disney Connected and Advanced Technologies)
Trademark searches conducted for the selected name Dragonchain
Obtain IT security approval
Manual review of OSS components conducted
OWASP Dependency and Vulnerability Check Conducted
Obtain technical (software) approval
Offer management, process, and financial plans for the maintenance of the project.
Meet list of items to be addressed before release
Remove all Disney project references and scripts
Create a public distribution list for email communications
Remove Roets’ direct and internal contact information
Create public Slack channel and move from Disney slack channels
Create proper labels for issue tracking
Rename internal private Github repository
Add informative description to Github page
Expand README.md with more specific information
Add information beyond current “Blockchains are Magic”
Add getting started sections and info on cloning/forking the project
Add installation details
Add uninstall process
Add unit, functional, and integration test information
Detail how to contribute and get involved
Describe the git workflow that the project will use
Move to public, non-Disney git repository (Github or Bitbucket)
Obtain Disney Open Source Committee approval for release

On top of meeting the above criteria, as part of the process, the maintainer of the project had to receive the codebase on their own personal email and create accounts for maintenance (e.g. Github) with non-Disney accounts. Given the fact that the project spanned multiple business units, Roets was individually responsible for its ongoing maintenance. Because of this, he proposed in the open source application to create a non-profit organization to hold the IP and maintain the project. This was approved by Disney.
The Disney Open Source Committee approved the application known as OSSRELEASE-10, and the code was released on October 2, 2016. Disney decided to not issue a press release.
Original OSSRELASE-10 document

Dragonchain Foundation

The Dragonchain Foundation was created on January 17, 2017. https://den.social/l/Dragonchain/24130078352e485d96d2125082151cf0/dragonchain-and-disney/

From what I’ve learned after making an account Pi Network is the first and only crypto currency mineable from mobile. Because of the way the mining works it doesn’t drain your battery/slow your phone. It’s a communication based mining rather than a computational problem solving based mining(that’s how I understood it at least). It’s currently free to mine but is expected to be released into the market for trading and mining cut off within the next year.
The only thing is you need an invite at this stage to create a wallet/account. It seems like a pretty cool idea and I would like to know what anyone thinks about this/it’s future. Also if you’re interested in trying it you can use my invite code to get an account: corourke
I’m not sure if it will actually be worth much when it’s released for trading but at this point it seems like it’s free money just for being part of the beta version of the app. Worst case scenario it doesn’t do anything and I just delete the app lol. People are expecting it to start on the market around the price of doge coin and maybe get up to the level of something like litecoin. It would be amazing if it gets to the value of bitcoin but I’m not sure if that will happen
Invite code Incase you missed it in the post: corourke

Complete honesty, I do not understand Bitcoin. But I had some money that needed to be transferred and I created an account to use bitcoin. I had 750$ sent to the account. I tried to send that money to my wallet, and it never showed up. I can find the transaction on the "block" but no way to access the funds.
Is there someone here who could help me? Happy to pay an hourly rate (within reason)

Please let me know

Bitcoin Wallet (BTC). Create a Bitcoin Wallet. Online ...

Sports Gambling With Bitcoin

CoinSolver -- Profit Switching Scrypt Pool w/Nightly Bonus

HOW TO CREATE A BITCOIN WALLET ACCOUNT IN COINS.PH [TAGALOG]

HOW TO CREATE A BITCOIN WALLET ACCOUNT IN COINS.PH [TAGALOG]

I created a bitcoin Wallet Account 5-6 years ago, I have no idea what Wallet I used. Help.

I created a bitcoin Wallet Account 5-6 years ago, I have no idea what Wallet I used. Help. /r/Bitcoin

$7,500 Bitcoin Giveaway ---> 15 winners will receive $500 in BTC each. Log in with a verified account & connect or create a wallet to enter. Double your chances when you make a trade.

🤠 Win Bitcoin all month long when you create a ShapeShift account or log in and connect a wallet. Winners will be selected on 03/11/20.

🤠 Win Bitcoin all month long when you create a ShapeShift account or log in and connect a wallet. Winners will be selected on 03/11/20.

We’re giving away 30 euro worth of ₿ when you sign up to Bitwala and create a Bitcoin wallet. Starting from Sunday midnight to Monday midnight, don’t miss Bitwala's exclusive CyberMonday offer! Create your own account now at

May I use the same hardware wallet to create multiple seeds? I want to spread my BTC across many accounts. May I reset my Nano and obtain a new seed and then reset it again and again and again? Each time I will create a new seed and have different private keys. /r/Bitcoin

Easy way to get new Bitcoin users... fund their video poker account. If they win big, show them they can create a wallet on blockchain.info. I've successfully initiated 3 co-workers this way!

I'd like to add a bitcoin wallet to my Android app. I'd like users to automatically have a wallet created with their accounts and to be able to easily transmit BTC among each other. What service/app has the best API for implementing something like this?

Celery - a hosted wallet + exchange for Bitcoin, Litecoin & Dogecoin. Create an account to receive a bonus of $1-3 in Bitcoin!

[#51 Score:3 Comments:1] - Celery - a hosted wallet + exchange for Bitcoin, Litecoin & Dogecoin. Create an account to receive a bonus of $1-3 in Bitcoin!

Bitcoin Newcomers FAQ - Please read!

Welcome to the /Bitcoin Sticky FAQ

Key properties of Bitcoin

Where can I buy bitcoins?

Securing your bitcoins

Watch out for scams

Where can I spend bitcoins?

Merchant Resources

Can I mine bitcoin?

Earning bitcoins

Bitcoin-Related Projects

Bitcoin Units

Everyday info sec, hardcore info sec, and DNMs

The greatest wealth transfer of this century! An analysis: British-US-Chinese Empires: Gold, Silver, Bitcoin, Ethereum!

1. Despite the British Empire's claim that it would for ever remain the leading empire,history can serve as a harbinger for what's to come...

2. The US Empire repeats this blueprint by claiming the U.S. Dollar's reserve currency status as its birthright!

3. The Chinese 'digital' empire.

4. Surveillance Capitalism - Insights on the DCEP (Digital Currency Electronic Payment, DC/EP):

5. Sings of hope.

Forward Thinking Friday - 9 October 2020 - Airdrops and Collateral

Airdrops and Collateral

Gridcoin 5.0.0.0-Mandatory "Fern" Release

Highlights

Protocol

GUI

Blockchain

Summary Changelog

Accrual

Changed

Removed

Beacons

Added

Changed

Removed

Unaltered

Superblocks

Added

Changed

Removed

Voting

Added

Changed

Removed

Detailed Changelog

[5.0.0.0] 2020-09-03, mandatory, "Fern"

Added

Changed

Removed

Fixed

Dragonchain Great Reddit Scaling Bake-Off Public Proposal

Dragonchain Public Proposal TL;DR:

Hello Reddit and Ethereum community!

Executive summary

Response and PoC

Live Demo

Source Code

Scaling

Architectural Scaling

Economic Scaling

Scaled Deployment

Flexibility in Scaling

Cost

Getting Started

API Documentation