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Dec 22, 2020PIVX Development Update - Week 3, December 2020

This update covers the PIVX GitHub development from Week 2 of November 2020 through to Week 3 of December 2020 in addition to any extra announcements and/or news provided by the core development team.

The past 5 weeks has been a milestone-hitting period for PIVX. So this update is packed full of good news! Simply put, we are now just weeks away from releasing our highly-anticipated 5.0 wallet with SHIELD User Data Protection feature!

SHIELD Testnet Wallet (TR2) Released! (DEC 9)

After weeks of intense internal regtest testing, the official SHIELD test release (TR2) of the highly anticipated pre-5.0 core wallet has been released to the public, and the testnet has successfully hard forked and activated SHIELD on the network on December 9th 2020! 

For more info on what SHIELD is, please scroll below to the More About SHIELD section.
 

SHIELD Testnet Wallet (TR2) Testing Phase Completed! (DEC 18)

In the past 2 weeks, TR2 testnet testing results have been very favorable with no issues with the blockchain since the hard fork with SHIELD transactions being active. The wallet’s GUI also had no serious issues and all functions worked as it should. 

During this period, there have been numerous bug fixes and optimizations that have been implemented. One particular change involved a new consensus (PR #2068) change to limit our blocks to include a maximum of 750KB shielded transactions. This was required as slower devices took longer to process a lot of shielded devices and caused an issue with our 60 second block time target.
 

SHIELD Testnet Wallet (TR3) Released! (DEC 21)

A new testnet5 network has been started and TR3 is now available for download! As it started a new network, the previous testnet4 folder will not be used, nor will the coins and configurations carry over. So use the faucet to start with new coins again. 

More About SHIELD

SHIELD is our name for the new user data protection protocol that has been in development for the past 9 months. It is specifically customized for the PIVX blockchain and has been enhanced in a number of areas to have better performance and usability.

(Although not versioned specifically, I will call the first release as SHIELD v1 for simplicity)

SHIELD v1 will allow transaction data protection capability for the sender and receiver alike using zk-SNARKs for zero-knowledge-proofs to enable provable transactions over the blockchain without revealing personal information such as sender or receiver address, the amount send or received, and the held balance of the addresses involved. 

Simply put, those that weren’t part of that transaction are not able to see anything about that transaction. This is all done in a very logical and intuitive way that involves 2 specific address types. Transparent and Shielded. 

SHIELD v1 also allows sending and receiving of encrypted messages of up to 512 bytes long within the shielded transaction. So the sender can attach any text based message that only the receiver can see. This can be very useful in providing proof of the transfer and/or receipt, and it is stored on the blockchain to provide immutability. 

We are expecting the final 5.0 with SHIELD v1 to be released in the first half of January.

More info about SHIELD here: https://pivx.org/privacy-protocol

SHIELD v2 in the works already!?

While SHIELD v1 hasn’t even been fully released yet, our developers have already hinted on what is coming next (aka SHIELD v2). That’s right. Shielded Proof of Stake (aka Shielded Staking) is coming and has already been said publicly that the development is progressing well! (as mentioned by PIVX core developer random.zebra in a public discord channel)

What this means is that PIVX will have fully protected Proof of Stake, including the block reward! It’s like having the cake, and eating it as well! 

Lastly but not at the least, SHIELD v2 may also include Shielded Masternodes! More accurately, it would mean the enablement of both the shielded masternode collateral, and its rewards. 

Now, Shielded Masternodes being part of SHIELD v2 is going into speculation territory as it sounds too good to be true to have both massive features coming at the same time, but going by our developer’s track records, I wouldn’t be surprised if they do!

Another great feature mentioned that’s coming post-5.0 is the Deterministic Masternodes. This feature allows the masternode list to be fully derived from the blockchain data, making it part of the consensus and thus truly decentralized. 

All in all, expect all the puzzle pieces coming together in 2021, making PIVX one of the most advanced and capable cryptocurrency in existence! 

Complete GitHub Activity

(November 14, 2020 – December 21, 2020)

Excluding merges, 9 authors have pushed 333 commits to master and 335 commits to all branches. On master, 253 files have changed and there have been 10,605 additions and 12,769 deletions.

2 Releases published

113 Pull requests merged

13 Pull requests opened

5 Issues closed

2 Issues opened

Major Development Targets

DEC 2020 - PIVX Testnet Wallet TR5 release
JAN 2021 - PIVX Core Wallet 5.0 mainnet release
JAN 2021 - SHIELD Activation on mainnet
Q2 2021 - SHIELD v2 with Private Staking

Note: Above target dates are subject to change and is not a complete list.

Please also check our roadmap page for more info on what else is planned.

Want to contribute?

Anyone and everyone is welcome to contribute to our code on GitHub, and they will all go through the same process of multi-dev peer review and will be if it gets enough ACKs! Oh, and if it does get merged, you may also receive a contribution bonus depending on its contribution level!

Language Translation Needed

We also welcome all translators who can assist in making our wallets multi-lingual! PIVX core wallets will include support for languages that are at least 80% translated on Transifex. https://www.transifex.com/pivx-project/

development

Screen Shot 2020-09-25 at 8.46.35 PM.png
Jay Kim

Advisor, Business

jakiman#8633

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