PIVX community leader Jakiman had this to say about the major milestone release:
“PIVX core 3.2 wallet includes a number of new industry-first features that makes its Zerocoin protocol privacy more usable than ever before. Basically, zPIV will now take seconds to send instead of minutes, able to stake more efficiently resulting in a fairer chance of winning a block reward and be accessible on a mobile phone for privacy on the go. It’s a whopper.”
Join us as we dig into the release notes and pour over a few highlighted features and updates that 3.2 has to offer.
Keeping It Private
Privacy is number one for the development team at PIVX, that’s why with the 3.2 release comes a big upgrade on privacy, times three!
Zerocoin automint addresses.
Here’s how it works.
Normally when you receive PIV, you need to either manually mint them into zPIV, or set an automint threshold, such as 15%. While these two scenarios will work for most people wanting privacy, we wanted to give another way for individuals to get total control.
With automint addresses, you can set up a receive address where all PIV received there are automatically minted into zPIV! This feature is ideal for those who receive regular payments such as merchants or businesses, or for traders who want their incoming PIV to be automatically minted in zPIV once it arrives at their wallet. The possibilities are endless, and anyone who wants to remain private can make good use of automint addresses – that’s why we’re so excited about the feature.
Fewer Orphans, More PIV, and Faster
We get a lot of questions about how staking works with PIVX, especially how it relates to zPIV. Once question that comes up a lot is how do the different zPIV denominations (1, 10, 50, etc) affect one’s likelihood to stake? And what’s this I’m hearing about older zPIV transactions being harder to stake?
Precomputed Zerocoin Proofs
Thanks to a new feature called Precomputed Zerocoin Proofs, or PZP, all these concerns are history. With version 3.2 onward, all denominations of zPIV will more or less have an equal chance of successfully staking. Further, zPIV pre-computing will make older zPIV transactions (more confirmations) just as likely to stake, meaning you won’t need to re-mint your zPIV to remain competitive.
As this PZP feature will make staking zPIV more efficient, it could result in more people staking it than ever before, thanks to the higher zPoS block reward. More people using and staking zPIV would mean that the zPIV supply should increase, resulting in a much larger (and even more secure) anonymity set than we have now.
In the end, this means fewer orphan stakes, and increased chances for everyone to earn more stakes when staking zPIV.
Zerocoin Light Node Protocol (zLNP)
Perambulating Privacy Power
Next up is an incredible update to our Android mobile wallet. We’ve been talking about this for months, but with the 3.2 release, this feature is now a reality. So, what the heck are we talking about? Android wallet users and soon desktop Light Node Wallet users, can now mint and spend zPIV on the go! And it’s all thanks to what’s known as ZLNP, or Zerocoin Light Node Protocol.
The official release notes say it best. ZLNP “allows the PIVX Android wallet to mint and spend zPIV for the first time and have the same level of PIVX zPIV privacy on the go.”
In the past, zPIV could only be handled on a full desktop or laptop wallet. But that’s all changed, and total privacy can be in your pocket once you update to 3.2. That means you can send zPIV to your friend, pay a merchant, or do anything else you want with zPIV all from the convenience of your Android device.
Your Vote Counts
PIVX is a true DAO, decentralized autonomous organization. As such, we fund our own development and marketing through a budget system. That budget system runs on the votes of masternode operators. These votes can change the direction that PIVX as an organization moves. That’s why this system is so important to our future.
In the past, voting on budget proposals was a fairly cumbersome process that required some skill with console commands and codes. That’s all changed now, as masternode owners can now vote directly in the latest wallet through a user-friendly graphical interface. Forget cutting and pasting code that you’d need a Vulcan translator to understand – voting is easy now! All you need to use this feature is to have your wallet act as a controller for your masternode.
But Wait, That’s Not All
The 3.2 update is, as Jakiman stated, “a whopper!” The amount of updates, fixes, and features is almost too many to count. We’ve got countless bug fixes, stability enhancements. Some of the menus and tabs have been cleaned up and tweaked, and overall the entire experience has been improved.
Atomic Swaps
Another big feature for this release in the inclusion of BIP65. The BIP65 (CLTV) consensus standard has been implemented for atomic swaps. Atomic swaps is a feature that enables trustless cross-chain exchanges with other cryptocurrencies. In other words, it’s a potentially fast and easy way to trade cryptocurrencies with other users – without the need for a centralized exchange.
Cryptosi, the PIVX governance guru, described the addition of BIP65 by saying version 3.2 “installs the building blocks for awesome future features, adding CLTV will allow PIVX to potentially use cross-chain atomic swaps in the near future.”
Regression Test Suite
Our test suite has been revamped for better development testing with adaptations of existing functional test scripts, an improved base for highly customized tests, and a working RegTest network mode.
We’ll be sharing more details on all features including BIP65 and atomic swaps as all they continue to develop.
So if you want the full low-down on all the features, check out the full release notes here. Otherwise, we’ll see you in the downloads section!
PIVX Core v3.2.0 is a mandatory update for all block creators, masternodes, and integrated services (exchanges). Old version 4 blocks will be rejected once 95% of a rolling 7 days worth of blocks have signaled the new version 5. Masternodes will need to be restarted once both the masternode daemon and the controller wallet have been upgraded.
