It has been a little over three months since we shared an important update: This is because we have been working on stabilising our reference client, fixing issues and building new things. In this update, you will learn about our development progress and plans.
Recap — The Past
Last December we announced the launch of the first release of our reference client called ELLD — The blockchain client software that enables anyone to join the Ellcrys network, create transactions, participate in proof-of-work mining of blocks and query the state of the node via a JSON-RPC 2.0 and Javascript console interfaces. We put the client to test by launching a test network to know how it performs and to gather feedback. We also released a block explorer for browsing and analysing the test network.
Notables — The Updates and Releases
We have several important updates to share:
SafeHold — A Desktop Wallet & Network Client
Early this year, we started work on a desktop wallet and network client to make accessing Ellcrys easier for people who are not familiar with the command-line environment. With SafeHold, you can safely store Ellies, transfer them, create and manage multiple accounts and run the in-built CPU-miner. The feature set of SafeHold is expected to increase as we implement more of our consensus model to accommodate more network participants. SafeHold will help us improve accessibility and inclusivity barriers as we work to build a strong network participant base before the main network launch.
- You can find pre-built binaries for Windows, macOS and Linux on our latest release page.
- You can find the source code on Github.
- We have a new page for SafeHold on our website.
Like all the software and tools we have released, SafeHold is an alpha software; This is because of the dependency on ELLD which is an alpha software too: What this means is that it may be subjected to significant changes. If you encounter any issue, please let us know by creating an issue here.
Spell — The Official Javascript Library
Spell is the official Javascript library for accessing an Ellcrys network node. Like the web3.js library, it provides an API binding that allows developers to access a node’s JSON-RPC 2.0 endpoints to build applications that will interact with our network. With Spell, you can execute the same commands that are available in ELLD console. Spell is used in SafeHold to provide the SafeHold engine with an interface to communicate with an embedded instance of ELLD it is running.
- Find spell on NPM package repository.
- Check out the repository on Github for documentation.
White Paper — Consensus, Collaboration & Governance.
As a project building a technology that will bring freedom, transparency and accountability into the way the world creates and runs software and internet organisations, there is a need for continuous research and experimentation. Since the inception of this project, we have released several documents that outlined technical ideas and design directions with each document improving on the previous. Today, I am sharing a more detailed, more explicit and ambitious technical paper to complement the PeopleMint paper released last year. It includes information about our consensus mechanism, collaboration, governance and more. We have opted to host the paper on Github for easy versioning.
ELLD — Improvement & Stability
ELLD is the base upon which our full protocol will be built. It is the reference client that future third-party clients will replicate in other languages. We released the first version on November 29, 2018 (announced in December 2019), and since then we have released 14 other versions on the v0.1 stage (“Inception”). We continue to make improvements and fix issues as we find them.
- Check out our Getting Started guide on our website.
- Our documentation includes a lot of information on ELLD.
- Head to the release page to download pre-built binaries for macOS, Windows and Linux systems.
- Or you can just follow the guide on the official Github page to build from source.
What is Next?
Several things should remain constant as part of our day-to-day activities: Software and protocol development, marketing and community engagement and development. A year ago, we decided to focus exclusively on software and protocol development because we wanted to:
- Know first-hand the technical requirements necessary to deliver the technology.
- Understand our mission, the industry and competitors better. We needed to know what is (not) important.
- Have real products that users can interact with and provide us with actionable feedback.
- Increase overall project credibility by doing the work as opposed to brandishing an idea everywhere.
It is time for us to expand our focus. The first thing is to fulfil our duty to our early contributors who have been amazing, by providing more information about our main token sale.
Main Token Sale
In July 2019, our main token sale will begin. The exact date, token supply and token offering type will be communicated in June. The offering type could be an Initial Exchange Offering (IEO) or an Initial Coin Offering (ICO). We are currently consulting and watching the industry and trends to know what is best for the project (protocol, contributors and team). It is important to note that whichever offering model is selected, the available supply will be quite minimal (enough to fund the team for the next milestones).
Distribution Network (Dist.Net)
The bulk of the public allocation will be allocated through a distribution network that will directly precede the main network launch. The distribution network is a more inclusive and equitable model designed to achieve a broader dispersion rate of the initial coin supply. While it will be accessible to everyone for free, it will still be competitive and costly (requires scanned banknotes, time and network fees). Dist.Net is set to launch in Q3 2019. You can learn more about how we plan to achieve equitable coin distribution by reading this article and this section of our white paper.
Consensus Upgrade
At the moment, ELLD — Our official network client features Nakamoto Consensus for nodes to reach agreements within the network. Nakamoto Consensus is the first step towards our hybrid system of proof-of-work (BitcoinNG) and proof-of-stake. We expect to have the first implementation in ELLD in Q2 2019. To learn more, check out the consensus section of our white paper.
If you are looking to get into Ellcrys and don’t know where to start, you should check out our Getting Started section of our website.
