February 2019

Welcome to the Spectrecoin February 2019 newsletter and development update. Over the last month, there have been some major shifts in the exchange landscape as far as Spectrecoin is concerned. On 14/01/2019 our main exchange, Cryptopia shut down after a serious hack and theft of coins. You can read more about that HERE and HERE but in short, Cryptopia may or may not open again for business. Nobody seems to know and although I have asked Cryptopia for an update on Spectrecoin wallets and funds, I have not received any information from them. We simply do not know for sure if the Spectrecoin wallets have been compromised or if / when users will be able to access or withdraw their funds. This is very unfortunate but outside of our control. We are also aware that Livecoin deposit/withdrawals have been down for a long time with no real explanation, although trade is active. In addition, CoinPulse is shutting down. We have however been able to add two new promising exchanges. We have also submitted a full application for a listing on Binance and Poloniex. See below for more details.

Despite the exchange problems, the general crypto bear market and negative sentiment around crypto, our developers @Tek and @Helix are amongst the busiest around, working hard on fine-tuning the code in preparation for the release of Spectrecoin v3.x w/ our novel “Proof-of-Anonymous-Stake” (PoAS) aka. “Stealth Staking“. Spectrecoin remains high in the Cryptomiso ranking of GitHub commit history of 347 cryptocurrencies based on the most popular repo. We are currently #42 in the 3-month chart and #47 in the 6-month chart and ahead of mainstream names like Monero and IOTA for development activity. Not bad for such a small team.

In addition to working on the v3 testnet and “Stealth Staking“, Spectrecoin v.2.2.2 was released a couple of weeks ago. The v3 testnet has been through numerous changes and adjustments and is currently functioning as expected and our dedicated beta testers have been busy testing every aspect of the v3 software and “stealth staking” and we will be able to open the testnet to the public very soon to expand the tests. Follow updates if you are interested in running the v3 wallet and get some testcoins and see for yourself how “Proof-of-Anonymous-Stake” works.

The ‘Spectrecoin Foundation‘ is also taking shape and the final paperwork is being completed for us to become a UK registered company ensuring long term stability and development for Spectrecoin, and we will no longer be anonymous.

We are also working on a new and updated website and we hope to pull it all together for the upcoming major release of Spectrecoin v3 w/ “Stealth Staking” at the end of April 2019.

We are excited to announce that we have added two new exchanges, Crex24 and Amsterdex. Both exchanges are promising for different reasons and we hope they will serve Spectrecoin well. Crex24 is now a well-established exchange and has good security, have a look at THIS report on exchange security where Cryptopia is ranked #60 and Crex24 is ranked #26.

Crex24 is responsive and has a good and clean UI and I have used the exchange for some time and I have not had any issues so far and the support appears to be good and with a prompt response to any problems you have.

Amsterdex is a brand new exchange based in the Netherlands and markets itself as having no KYC (Know Your Customer) requirements and so you can sign up just using an e-mail address. This is a perfect fit for Spectrecoin as the exchange has a strong focus on user privacy.

The exchange also has a clean and responsive UI and we are working closely with the Amsterdex team. I can reveal that the Amsterdex team are working to integrate SPECTRE trading on their platform and testing is already underway. It therefore looks like Amsterdex will be the very first exchange to offer SPECTRE deposit/withdrawal and trade on a no KYC platform. Definitely an exchange to keep a close eye on.

I would like to update everyone on the progress of the code review as I know we have been a bit quiet around this and we have had some questions around it. In October 2018 @Tek and I met with Dr Nicolas Courtois and his student and we agreed on a deal for a code review and we signed a contract worth £10,000,- with delivery dates of 31/12/2018, 20/01/2019 and the end of February 2019. As you are all aware the work was not delivered as agreed. It appears that the work is more complicated than first anticipated by Dr. Courtois and that it will take more time to complete. I have had a further meeting with Dr Courtois at UCL in January where he informed me that the student had withdrawn from the project. However, the collaboration will continue and Dr. Courtois will continue to work on the source code but we can not currently set a firm delivery date. These are circumstances beyond our control and we have to work more or less on his terms in order for this code review to be completed. What I can say is that it will be done, but we cannot specify exact dates but you all have my assurances that I will keep you updated as soon as I know anything further.

Spectrecoin is introducing a bug bounty program, so If you believe there is a bug or a problem with the Spectrecoin software, you can submit a report / fix and contribute to making Spectrecoin better and more secure. However, before you submit a report, search our issue tracker on GitHub to see if the problem has already been reported / discovered or is being worked on. If the issue has not been described, then follow the instructions at the end of this document for how to submit the issue / bug you have found. Please do not report security / critical vulnerabilities publicly.

We are putting up the bounties to make the Spectrecoin software better and more secure and we believe that active participation by the community will help to achieve this and benefit us all.

Different levels of bounties will be awarded depending on the type of bug reported and when it is reported. Bounties are paid out in XSPEC, based on the current value in GBP.

There will be a special newsletter in the coming days with further details on the bug bounty.

This is the official release schedule for Spectrecoin v3.x w/ ‘Proof-of-Anonymous-Stake‘ and to the best of our knowledge, this is realistic and will take into account the possibility of some minor, yet undiscovered bugs and cosmetic adjustments. As you can imagine, the work on ‘Stealth Staking‘ (PoAS) is quite complex and is bringing up the need to update certain aspects of the code base to accommodate the expected huge amount of ATXOs generated and the processing of this data. We can say that the actual ‘Stealth Staking‘ mechanism works as intended and appears solid and this has been running on the test-net for a while now and we do not expect any issues with this. What is left to do is to ensure that the increased demand for transaction processing does not slow down the system and that this increased processing demand is optimised and efficient. This is quite complicated and has the potential to cause issues when ‘Stealth Staking‘ goes live on the main-net, so it’s vital that we get this nailed down and tested properly. Further technical details will be available in the upcoming white paper.

The official release schedule for v3 is therefore:

Now: Private beta test is ongoing as you can see from the test-net explorer.

Late February 2019: The public beta of v3.x will be live with v3.x wallets to download and run on test-net and test-net coins distributed to interested parties. We would like interested parties to get in touch and also agree to test and report back any issues.

Late April 2019: Production release of Spectrecoin v3.x ready for ‘Stealth Staking‘. The final version will be released around 1 month ahead of the planned hard fork to give everyone ample time to update and get support with any issues.

Late May 2019: Spectrecoin v3.x goes live on the main-net with a hard fork. This will be announced on all our outlets and details of how to update and how to use the updated v.3.x wallet will also be published in time for the hard-fork.

Website: https://spectreproject.io/
GitHub: https://github.com/spectrecoin/spectre
Block explorer (v2): https://chainz.cryptoid.info/xspec/
Testnet explorer (v3): https://chainz.cryptoid.info/xspec-test/
Coinmarketcap: https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/spectrecoin/
Crex24: https://crex24.com/exchange/XSPEC-BTC
Amsterdex: https://amsterdex.com/exchange?market=xspec
Livecoin: https://www.livecoin.net/en/trade/index?currencyPair=XSPEC%2FBTC
Discord: https://discord.gg/ckkrb8m
Twitter (official): https://twitter.com/Spectrecoin
Twitter (official): https://twitter.com/XspecRising
Bitcointalk: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4434053.0
Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/XSPEC/
Telegram: https://t.me/spectrecoin
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/spectrecoin/