For the past several months the Bytecoin Team has been working on a series of very important features and innovations in the Bytecoin software. A lot of work has been done and now it is possible to put the release dates of these features on the timeline. Here is the Roadmap for the Bytecoin project for the end of 2018 - the beginning of 2019:
December 12, 2018 is the date of the release of version 3.4.0 Beta. This major release of Bytecoin software brings a series of crucial innovations to the Bytecoin Desktop and the Bytecoin Daemons. All of these additions have appeared as the result of the research and development carried out by the Bytecoin Devs.
These additions are: the anticipated HD wallets, unlinkable addresses, the new design of signature scheme, minimal anonymity enforcement, enhanced P2P protocol and auditable wallets:
An HD wallet - or Hierarchical Deterministic wallet - is, in full, a wallet that contains a tree-like structure that establishes parent-child relationships between keys. Apart from many technological advantages, it also allows for several usability and safety improvements. For instance, users can generate their cryptographic keys from a “mnemonic”, a set of meaningful words that are much easier to remember and manage than a long string of computer-generated characters.
The research into cryptography has produced another useful innovation - new, unlinkable addresses. This new cryptographic scheme allows to generate addresses that are practically impossible to link together. In addition, all new Bytecoin addresses start with the letters “BCN”, clearly indicating what kind of address the user is dealing with.
The new design of signature scheme brings much more compact signatures and allows for savings up to 50% inside the block for a more useful payload - more TXs.
This release also introduces the new minimal anonymity requirement. From the point of adoption of this feature, all transactions will be sent with a minimum anonymity of 3. The Bytecoin Devs have long noticed that a lot of users prefer to send TXs with 0 anonymity, probably aiming to pay a smaller fee for a smaller TX. While convenient from an economic point of view, this tendency contributed to reduction of effective anonymity of coins in the Bytecoin blockchain. This is by no means a negative phenomena - the Bytecoin Devs were surprised to see so many people liking Bytecoin for its performance and ability to send regular coins but nethertheless, have decided to enforce a minimum level of anonymity to keep Bytecoin true to its roots - anonymous, untraceable payments.
The improved P2P protocol should contribute to faster blockchain sync speed, more reliable connections between the nodes, and the overall network performance under the hood of the Bytecoin blockchain.
In addition, the new release introduces auditable wallets. What they facilitate are public deposits that can be viewed from multiple view-only wallets. The Bytecoin Team anticipates a lot of use cases for this feature.
It is important to point out that that all of these features will be available in the Stagenet first. With this statement, the Bytecoin Team announces hardforks in the stagenet and in the mainnet. All features, apart from the improved P2P, will be available only after the corresponding hardforks:
December 12, 2018 - the Stagenet hardfork
March 6, 2019 - the Mainnet hardfork estimated date
The next big announcement from the Bytecoin Team is the release of an updated bytecoin.money web wallet on the 18th of December. This popular resource will be redesigned and optimized.
Finally, on the 14th of February 2019 the Bytecoin Team will release the Bytecoin beta software for hardware wallets. Hardware wallets are becoming increasingly popular and are a perfect solution for security-conscious users. Ring signatures are difficult to implement on specific hardware, so this is a major milestone for the Bytecoin ecosystem.
The upcoming roadmap is probably the most diverse and innovation-rich roadmap so far. Stay tuned to the upcoming events.
Best regards,
The Bytecoin Team