Skycoin Call for Developers

Published in

Skycoin

7 min readDec 22, 2018

Calling all coders, software engineers and developers!

Are you sick of paying exorbitant amounts for your cable internet connection, increasing year-after-year with no improvement in the service or connection quality?

Have you had your YouTube or Netflix connection throttled by your ISP?

Are you angered by increasing censorship of centralized web platforms like YouTube, Twitter and Google that arbitrarily silence certain voices and viewpoints?

Are you concerned about mass government surveillance and the shrinking island of digital privacy that we seem to be standing on these days?

Have you had a payment blocked, credit card denied, or money seized with no due process?

Are you looking for an open source project to make a contribution?

Do you believe in the free flow of information between people online?

Are you sick of dedicating your software coding talents to a project that has no positive effect on the world?

Are you just a cog in a giant corporate machine that is entrenching a centralized, corporate or consumerist world?

Are you looking for a side project that has the potential to radically shift the balance of technological power back to the individual?

Are looking to start coding a blockchain-based game?

Have you heard of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies but haven’t yet taken the leap to begin understanding or buying them?

Do you work for a government or company that is continually being hacked and having data stolen by state or non-state actors?

Are you concerned about a lack of understanding about encryption by your non-technical colleagues and worry about the future digital safety of your people?

Are you sick of your government’s unfair money printing and redistributing your country’s wealth to a powerful few, eroding the value of hard-working citizens’ savings with hidden inflation?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, then don’t just accept the status quo! Stand up and help build a solution — you are among a special few who can make a difference. By contributing to the Skycoin project you can help build neutral, stateless and trust-less solutions to these problems that transcend national borders and affect all citizens of the world.

What is the Skycoin Project?

Skycoin is six-year-old blockchain project originally conceived to solve the problems of Bitcoin, the first peer-to-peer internet money. It was founded by project figurehead Synth, an early contributor to Bitcoin who joined together a disparate band of cypherpunks seeking to re-design Bitcoin from the original principles.

Since then, the Skycoin project has widened to encompass several other vital components that are necessary to preserve individual online freedom in the world of tomorrow. Each component of the Skycoin ecosystem has been meticulously designed to overcome every hurdle to worldwide adoption of trustless digital money.

Skycoin is driven by a vision of liberty that is enabled by encryption, decentralization and peer-to-peer networks — the same values that lead Satoshi Nakamoto to develop an electronic monetary system beyond the control of governments and other trusted third parties.

We have not strayed from this founding vision, but we also know that ease-of-use, usability and great applications will be essential in driving adoption of these technologies for the vast majority who are unaware of the cypherpunk origins of the project.

That’s why we need you — developers who can build the numerous components of the Skycoin ecosystem and ensure that the best digital money, most secure decentralized internet protocol or most private messaging service is also the easiest to use.

What are the details of Skycoin development?

Skycoin is written in Golang. All development happens through Github. We currently have 39 active public GitHub repositories, building out every component of the Skycoin ecosystem. The Skycoin core repository alone places SKY in the top fifteen most active cryptocurrency projects.

Components of the Skycoin Ecosystem

Skycoin, the blockchain foundation of our ecosystem, is the most complete cryptocurrency that offers a stateless digital store of value beyond the jurisdiction and arbitrary seizure of governments. With a fixed supply of one hundred million coins released in a tapered distribution over the next twenty five years, its monetary policy is dependable and transparent. It uses a new consensus algorithm called Obelisk which moves past Proof-of-Work and Proof-of-Stake to achieves block consensus in a highly secure and power-efficient manner.

Skywire, our flagship blockchain application, is a new peer-to-peer decentralized networking protocol designed to run on wireless mesh networking hardware to create a new censorship-resistant internet that will free people from dependence on Comcast, AT&T and other corporate ISPs.

CX, our dedicated programming language based on Golang, answers the need for a deterministic language built specifically for blockchain applications. It has been designed with several key features in mind — including suitability for high-fidelity, low-margin-of-error applications and to allow mass onboarding into blockchain coding from conventional languages.

CXO, our peer-to-peer self-replicating database, will form the foundation of decentralized file storage and sharing applications. It uses immutable tree structures of Golang objects with cryptographic hashes store information and allow it to be shared extremely efficiently.

Fiber, our enterprise solution that offers fully independent blockchains leveraging every feature of the Skycoin ecosystem. Fiber provides companies with their own highly customizable blockchain, tailoring of block consensus, block creation and token creation to specific needs. The horizontal scaling of Fiber blockchains places no dependency on the Skycoin main chain, ensuring security and throughput.

Skycoin BBS, a peer-to-peer replicated social media application built using immutable data structures (CXO) on top of the Skycoin platform. It will be a decentralized, uncensorable alternative to Twitter, 4chan and Reddit, with planned features including tipping for content with Coin Hours and Skycoin, and public keys that let users filter out spammers, bots, and untrustworthy users, to name a few.

KittyCash, a next generation blockchain game developed on Skycoin’s Fiber blockchain, combines a crypto-collectable and tamagotchi-like game where you can trade, breed, feed, and play mini-games with your kitties. KittyCash is a proof of concept for the future of blockchain gaming and non-fungible digital assets.

Hardware — we have a suite of hardware projects under development, including the Skyminer, a personal cloud computing device made up of eight computing boards that currently run as nodes on the Skywire network, forwarding encrypted internet data packets. We also have a suite of hardware wallets in development that require firmware contributions.

Sit Up and Code, Developers of the World

If you have ever been wronged by cable companies, contribute to Skywire and help bring about decentralized community ISPs as quickly as possible.

If you need a fast, encrypted alternative to the current internet that rewards users and contributors with Skycoin, contribute to Skywire.

If you have ever had your funds frozen, delayed by your bank or been charged excess fees, contribute to Skycoin to help build out a new, supra-national financial system.

If you have ever had your social media accounts deleted or removed for exercising your right to free expression, contribute to Skycoin BBS and CXO.

If you are a games coder and want to build the next generation of blockchain-based games on the most advanced blockchain platform, contribute to KittyCash or write your own game in the CX language.

Join the Skyfleet as a Developer Now!

To begin developing join the respective Skycoin Telegram group and make contact with our existing devs. No contribution is too small, and every bit counts!

By contributing to the Skycoin ecosystem, you can shape the future of humanity to preserve the ideals of freedom and liberty for decades to come.