THE STATE AND FUTURE OF BITCOIN PRIVATE
Out with the old, in with the new chain.
On November 17, 2019, David Akers published via Twitter his article entitled “No Sunshine, No Rainbows”.
In said article, he declared that “a number of coins have been introduced into the circulating supply above and beyond what is expected from mining alone.” He estimated that around 1.2m coins have been introduced from the shielded pool into the transparent pool.
With this discovery, the partner exchanges of BTCP such as Graviex, TradeOgre, and TopBTC were immediately notified and requested to monitor several suspected wallet addresses. Thus, trading, deposit and/or withdrawal of BTCP were immediately suspended by these exchanges.
Meanwhile, the veteran contributors of BTCP and its community deliberated on the way forward. After months of brainstorming and intense deliberation, a decision has been made favoring the suggestion of J62.
Because of the numerous problems that the current chain of BTCP encountered, it was agreed that a chain swap should be performed. This time around, instead of the ZCL code, the new chain will be based on the latest code of Zcash, which now carries the needed fix to the vulnerability that has plagued BTCP. The new chain will also have an improvement in terms of supply and mining rewards since it will no longer include the UTXOs of the burnt coins and will have higher mining rewards. Although the new chain will be based on the latest Zcash code, it will be slightly tweaked so that it will have Sapling but no Sprout.
In order to protect the BTCP community’s interest, a snapshot will be performed at blockheight 680000. Any transaction after blockheight 680000 will not be supported by the new chain. New BTCP coins will later be airdropped to wallet addresses of persons holding BTCP at the time of the snapshot. The new chain will be released when ready. However, the timeline for this is not known at this time.
It should be noted however that only the transparent wallet addresses will be covered by the snapshot. Thus, all BTCP holders are advised to move their BTCP from their shielded wallet address to their transparent wallet address before the snapshot. Furthermore, considering that it is not yet known which exchanges will support the planned chain swap of BTCP, everyone is therefore advised to transfer their coins into a full node transparent wallet or a paper wallet.
In the coming days, the veteran contributors shall strive to enlist the support of the partner exchanges of BTCP, wallets and pools. Cognizant of the decentralized nature of BTCP, the community is therefore encouraged to help by reaching out to these exchanges, wallets and pools in order to assist in obtaining their support.
Resignations and replacements in the treasury.
As some of you may already know, Matt Pass and Justin Bruce have stepped down from the treasury although they are still staying with BTCP to help it in some way other than as treasurer. Although we are saddened by the departure of these two highly-capable individuals from the treasury, however, we are happy to announce that an active and extremely competent BTCP veteran in the person of Jamie Owens a.k.a. J62 and a longtime member of the BTCP community named Jaime Wartgow a.k.a. loosenutz are taking over the seats vacated by the resigned treasurers.
The new composition of the treasury is therefore as follows:
- Jay Pujanes
- David Akers
- Daniele “Robotica” Monteleone
- Jamie Owens
- Jaime Wartgow
In view of the transition, new multi-sig electrum wallets have been set up to store the funds consisting of 3.66690884 BTC and 12,574.1168979 BTCP. However, because BTCP Electrum wallet is currently in need of an update, only the funds consisting of 3.66690884 BTC have been moved to the new BTC wallet address, which is as follows:
bc1qv382wzzj0m495wmajvf0gh94d2d64ahggpumyth6cf2nzdz3yh9sk34q8v
As to the 12,574.1168979 Bitcoin Privates, they still remain in the old BTCP treasury wallet address, i.e., bxh2Ams3hcQsK44dAqD3oJL7jG9o4wHSXHH. But once the BTCP Electrum wallet has been updated, the BTCP shall be moved to the new treasury wallet address, i.e., bxvPYFbB8KgnfEYqUtZmA2wCp7YDvFfPU3o.
In the previous treasury update, it was reported that there were 4.70082699 BTC, 12,564.11709440 BTCP and $6,193.62 USD left. Of the $6,193.62 that was reported under the USD funds section of the last treasury update, $3,602.83 were used to pay for Gcloud charges while the remaining $2,590.79 were converted to 0.20452188 BTC and sent to the BTC Multi-sig Wallet of the past treasury composed of Jay Pujanes, Matt Pass, Justin Bruce, David Akers and Daniele “Robotica” Monteleone. Thus, the past treasury received a total of 4.90258425 BTC.
With the implementation of cost-saving initiatives by the past treasury, only 1.01567541 BTC was spent for General and Administrative Expenses like Gcloud and VULTR charges. The past treasury, however, incurred development expenditures amounting to 0.22 BTC as it paid devs to work on fixing Sprout, implementing the long-awaited algo change and removing the dreaded difficulty bomb. Hence, out of the 4.90258425 BTC that was received by the past treasury, only 3.66690884 BTC remains and this is the amount that was turned over to the new treasury.
Below you will find an update to the Bitcoin Private treasury as of December 29, 2019.
As BTCP enters its second year of existence, it carries with it many important lessons that will serve extremely useful when it launches its new and improved chain. But for this new chain to succeed, the support of the BTCP community is crucial. Therefore, just as the veteran contributors have continued fighting for BTCP, we call on every member of the BTCP community to stay with us and continue the fight for financial privacy via the truly decentralized, community-driven and private cryptocurrency that is BTCP!
