Today is the first day that I start work on the Feathercoin 0.13 client, I’m very happy to be back in Feathercoin development as I’ve been away from it and crypto in general for quite a while and only just returned last summer.

To quickly update those who do not know where I’ve been I went to work for Hullcoin over two years ago under contract, the contract did not allow me to work on other projects, they hit a funding hiatus in Summer 2017 breaching my contract allowing me to return. Afterwards I contributed to the 0.9.6.2 release getting NeoScrypt to work properly for Scrypt hashing, update getwork for NeoScrypt, restore CheckProofOfWork with NeoScrypt profile as well as a few other changes. The rest of the time I’ve been working on commissioned projects to pay the bills, as well as progress UFO development, I was brought in to work on UFO in 2014 and have now adopted it as my own. UFO uses NeoScrypt and I took on commissioned work for Guncoin because it also uses NeoScrypt, it is an excellent updated version of Scrypt and it deserves to get more attention.

During the last half a year I’ve earned enough to cover myself for the next quarter of a year, at the end of that period we would hope to have a bigger user base and the kind of success that demonstrates the merits technical development. This will help us crowd fund to bring in additional skill sets and progress the tech in multiple directions at once or secure direct investment, there are good ideas out there but to see them implemented we need to be able to pay for developers time. These are concerns for later as we can now progress with the next client which will bring us up-to-date and drive development forward.

Feathercoin 0.13 is the client that I am starting on today, that version of the Bitcoin codebase has all the soft fork logic for the IsSuperMajority and Version Bits methods for soft forks. With the 0.13 client released we will be gaining the soft forks for OP_CHECKLOCKTIMEVERIFY, CHECKSEQUENCEVERIFY and everyone’s favourite, Segregated Witness. We certainly do not need the increased capacity that comes with SegWit but this will allow us to use other tech built on top of it like the Lightning Network which I believe is currently in the RC1 stage.

Once we have 0.13 and all soft forks enabled we can follow Bitcoin’s codebase more closely to keep us at the very front of developments, pursue other technology like Lightning Network and find some unique solutions, some suggestions have been made like adding Smart Contracts, this is an area that needs its own investigation as there are simple and complex solutions to this request.

There are many other changes between the current stable 0.9.x release and 0.13 the most notable of are the following.

Headers first synchronization
Dynamic transaction fees
Hierarchical Deterministic Key Generation
REST API interface
Improved signing security
Native Watch-only mode
Separate feathercoin-tx binary
Memory usage optimization
Stream isolation for Tor
Disable wallet transaction broadcast
Block file pruning
Signature validation using libsecp256k1
Notifications through ZMQ
NODE_BLOOM service bit
Wallet Pruning
Opt-in Replace-by-fee transactions
Direct headers announcement
Compact Block support

You can contact me on this forum via PM or by one of the following.

Email: [email protected]
Telegram: https://t.me/Bushstar
Skype: https://join.skype.com/ftH7FgL5Qw4k
BitcoinTalk: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=63238

The Bitcoin 0.13 codebase has been ported to Feathercoin to the extent that it now fully syncs with the blockchain. The 0.13 client so far has block subsidy, hard forks, NeoScrypt, blockchain parameters, seeders and networking updated, just enough to get it to sync the entire blockchain. From the genesis block to the top of the chain it took 2 hours and 30 seconds to sync which is very fast compared to the existing client.

Here’s a few screenshots of the 0.13 client.

This really is a good news. I went to Switzerland to meet with the other members of the Foundation about a month ago before I signed on as a member myself. This does not change the way that Feathercoin Core development works but will pursue work external to it. Think about how Bitcoin works, there’s Bitcoin Core and then there’s lot of other options for users and services to choose from, Core acts as the backbone and the many other solutions in give people the freedom and choice to interact in whichever way is most appropriate for them. The Foundation will help provide these options to users and services to lower the bar of entry for Feathercoin use across end users and businesses.

I’m very excited for Feathercoin and after meeting the rest of the team in person have every confidence that the Foundation will help rapidly progress development and adoption.

The next Feathercoin release based on Bitcoin Core 0.16 is complete but needs to go into closed testing before being released. As this release requires SegWit to be active on the network the source is not available until after activation which should be in two to three weeks time. The 0.16 client defaults to SegWit addresses and also has native bech32 address support, the new addresses begin with fc1.

bech32: https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0173.mediawiki

If anyone wants to test the 0.16 client I do have some versions bolted to the testnet where SegWit is already active. If you do want a copy of the Feathercoin 0.16 testnet client then send me a PM on the forum or Telegram @bushstar

This new client is a requirement for developmental work by the newly formed Foundation.

Feathercoin Development Foundation: https://forum.feathercoin.com/topic/9620/ann-feathercoin-development-foundation-rise-of-the-phoenix

Here’s some screenshots of the 0.16 client showing the version and bech32 support.

How about a road map without a specific time line, just the future developmental plan?

Probably the most important step is to work on a 0.13 client, this will include CSV/SegWit and BIP66 though that shows that it should be active in the 0.11 client though there will be no miner support for it so that needs to be considered. I was under contract with Hullcoin but as they’ve hit a funding hiatus and have breached contract I’m now free to roam the wilds of crypto again.

I will make an effort to start porting the 0.13.2 codebase to Feathercoin.

There’s lot being restored to Feathercoin but I’m posting some of the more major changes. CAlert was removed from Bitcoin in the 0.13 release, something to do with Twitter being more effective to get the message out but it was probably a bit more political than that. In Feathercoin 0.13 CAlerts are restored so we can warn the network directly in case of problems or if there’s an updated client, this feature has proved to be very useful in the past.

I’ve been looking into the 0.9 release and will be performing the following maintenance work.

• Reimplement NeoScrypt: NeoScrypt can handle Scrypt as well as NeoScrypt, currently it is only being used for NeoScrypt and the old Scrypt files are being used for before the fork. Current implementation needs to be removed and the latest version from Ghostlander added.

• Remove CheckProofOfWork by nHeight used for NeoScrypt/Scrypt workaround and use regular CheckProofOfWork which takes hash and bits as arguments. NeoScrypt and Scrypt profiles toggled inside the CheckProofOfWork function.

• Define checkpoint keys, fork heights and times in chain parameters. This makes handling these items in the code easier as conditionals are not required to test for mainnet, testnet or regnet.

• Fix getwork, currently does not handle NeoScrypt so 0.9 cannot be used to solo mine.

Anyone who wants to download and try the new 0.13 release is welcome to get the binaries from GitHub where I posted them yesterday.

https://github.com/FeatherCoin/Feathercoin/releases/tag/v0.13.0.0

A small bug was reported in the about page which has been fixed. If you spot any other problems then please let me know here and I’ll take a look, there’s a brief changelog on the 0.13 release page which I’ll replicate here.

• BIP9 Version Bits which starts on block 2120000
• Segregated Witness BIP9 Soft Fork
  • Elimination of unwanted transaction malleability
  • Capacity increase
  • Weighting data based on how it affects node performance
  • Signature covers value
  • Linear scaling of sighash operations
  • Increased security for multisig
  • More efficient almost-full-node security
  • Script versioning
• CHECKSEQUENCEVERIFY BIP9 Soft Fork
• CHECKLOCKTIMEVERIFY Legacy Soft Fork
• Faster synchronization
• Compact Block support
• Hierarchical Deterministic Key Generation
• Dynamic transaction fee
• RPC Access Control Changes
  • -rpcallowip=192.168.1.* becomes -rpcallowip=192.168.1.0/24
  • -rpcallowip=* becomes -rpcallowip=::/0
• REST interface with -rest flag
• Watch-only wallet support
• Block file pruning
• Memory usage optimization
• Reduce upload traffic
• Direct headers announcement
• Notifications through ZMQ

ACP on 0.13

Let’s stay on topic and resolve this issue.

Things have got a little lost in translation.

ftcorbsup gave Mirrax 100k with instruction to sell at 9500, when the market hit 9500 it was realised that Mirrax had sold at 4000. I’m told that the two agreed this was in error and Mirrax agreed to send back the 4 BTC but nothing has arrived.

Mirrax you said to ftcorbsup in this chat “Your funds are safe”, at this point I would simply return the funds to the address given by ftcorbsup to resolve this whole issue.

The opportunity for 9.5 BTC is now lost in the past, the best result is the return of ftcorbsup funds and then everyone can move on from this and forget it.

Thanks for the report, the text is updated in the following commit and will be added in the next update.

https://github.com/FeatherCoin/Feathercoin/commit/5f65375cc8f4599f482347a2468189f2dae625e2

You can also generate addresses in the debug console where you can generate legacy, segwit or bech32 addresses, run “help getnewaddress” for more info.

Please reset and clean your repo…

git reset --hard HEAD
git clean -fdx

…then when you next run configure.ac add the following flag…

./configure --disable-asm

…that will skip ASM compilation and NeoScrypt should compile with everything else as expected.

The next Feathercoin release based on Bitcoin Core 0.16 is complete but needs to go into closed testing before being released. As this release requires SegWit to be active on the network the source is not available until after activation which should be in two to three weeks time. The 0.16 client defaults to SegWit addresses and also has native bech32 address support, the new addresses begin with fc1.

bech32: https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0173.mediawiki

If anyone wants to test the 0.16 client I do have some versions bolted to the testnet where SegWit is already active. If you do want a copy of the Feathercoin 0.16 testnet client then send me a PM on the forum or Telegram @bushstar

This new client is a requirement for developmental work by the newly formed Foundation.

Feathercoin Development Foundation: https://forum.feathercoin.com/topic/9620/ann-feathercoin-development-foundation-rise-of-the-phoenix

Here’s some screenshots of the 0.16 client showing the version and bech32 support.

This really is a good news. I went to Switzerland to meet with the other members of the Foundation about a month ago before I signed on as a member myself. This does not change the way that Feathercoin Core development works but will pursue work external to it. Think about how Bitcoin works, there’s Bitcoin Core and then there’s lot of other options for users and services to choose from, Core acts as the backbone and the many other solutions in give people the freedom and choice to interact in whichever way is most appropriate for them. The Foundation will help provide these options to users and services to lower the bar of entry for Feathercoin use across end users and businesses.

I’m very excited for Feathercoin and after meeting the rest of the team in person have every confidence that the Foundation will help rapidly progress development and adoption.

0.16 cannot be released until SegWit is active on the network as it defaults to SegWit addresses and supports bech32 addresses. The 401 error is the one fixed in the commit linked above.

To follow the progress of SegWit follow it on the page below.

https://www.feathercoin.com/segwit-csv-tracker/

I’d expect SegWit and in turn 0.16 in about three weeks.

0.8 cannot be used to mine blocks as it generates version 2 blocks which are no longer accepted by the network.

Coinmarketcap
https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/feathercoin/#markets

This could be related to an RPC bug that was recently reported to me that affects Windows, the fix for this was applied here.

https://github.com/FeatherCoin/Feathercoin/commit/e66a93d62ad4cd5ffb0e08eee288afb30513635c

This fix has yet to be compiled into a new release and with 0.16 almost complete it may never as this issue is already resolved in 0.16.

For the mean time please consider pool mining. The difficulty is very high at the moment and it might now be a much longer time before solo mining pays out.

Paying a bit more attention now, the CCminer command does not appear to have a coinbase address, so I’m guessing you are mining using getwork instead of getblocktemplate. getwork is not present in 0.13 as it was removed in the 0.10 Bitcoin codebase.

To be honest you will need to pool mine, the difficulty goes from 50 to 150, you will not get any blocks for a long time with that difficulty.

For pool mining there is NSGminer for AMD cards that has been updated for getblocktemplate, for CCminer I’ve seen that someone created HSRminer with NeoScrypt getblocktemplate support. If you want to solo mine then please get HSRminer and provide a coinbase address for the newly minted coins to be sent to.

There were changes to RPC access, try changing the rpcallowip to the localhost IP you are connecting on.

rpcallowip=127.0.0.1

Also make sure that your password is somewhat strong, alphanumeric with upper and lower case and 8+ chars long.

There’s a universal paper wallet generator here.

http://cryptolife.net/upwg/

Select the required Base58 prefix, UFO is 27, and start generating addresses. As it is JavaScript you can save the web page and use it locally.