Interstellar v4.0 (Voyager Update) is out!
Prelude
The spacecraft, named Voyager 1 and Voyager 2, were launched in September and August of 1977. They were instrumental in accumulating the vast amount of knowledge we have on our solar system which we take for granted today.
Even though the Voyager mission was meant to explore our solar system, something groundbreaking happened decades after.
Voyager became the first — and indeed the only — mission to take humanity into Interstellar space and became known as the Voyager Interstellar Mission.
In August of 2012, 35 years after it was launched, Voyager 1 passed though the heliopause and entered Interstellar space.
In December of 2018, Voyager 2 joined its sibling in Interstellar space, around 11 billion miles (18 billion km) from Earth.
Stuff like this inspires our team at Interstellar and we see parallels between the Voyager programme and what we constantly try to achieve with our Interstellar app — pushing boundaries and going beyond our comfort zones. We launched the Interstellar app two years ago in October 2017, as a decentralised payment platform, and since then we’ve gone above and beyond our original mission with Proxima Centauri, Sirius, Pathfinder, Vega, and our latest Interstellar v4.0 release, codenamed VOYAGER in honour of the Voyager Interstellar Mission.
Press Release
Today, we release Interstellar v4.0 (codenamed Voyager) to the general public. The Interstellar app provides a complete digital currency experience for individuals, professionals, organisations and even IoT devices. Using Stellar blockchain technology, Interstellar allows anyone to easily create, send, receive, swap, secure, and trade Digital Currencies and other Tokenised Assets at the speed of light. Available on all major platforms, at home, at work or on the go.
According to the CEO, Ernest Mbenkum,
“The best way to predict the future is to invent it. Interstellar v4.0 (Voyager update), is our team’s latest effort in building blockchain tools and services for the future where everything will be tokenised not just for humans, but also for IoT devices and AI analytical purposes. We are getting ready for the Fourth Industrial Revolution”
According to the CTO, Fritz Ekwoge,
“Interstellar v4.0 (Voyager update) is our most ambitious release yet, without sacrificing security, and the decentralised nature of our platform. We are getting closer to one our goals of providing decentralised financial inclusion tools for the underbanked and unbanked. "
Other than major UX and performance improvements, Interstellar v4.0 achieved two other major milestones.
Firstly, our all new All-Spark is the best new way for Interstellar users to transfer assets between themselves, without the need for trustlines and funded accounts. This is an issue which had long plagued many Stellar users. Secondly, our SEP6/SEP24 integration now empowers Interstellar users to have easier access to even more third party non-Stellar asset gateways (anchors), and allows users to interact with those non-stellar asset gateways without leaving the app!
This is all very powerful and liberating stuff, and we are making this major Interstellar update available to the public today.
Interstellar v4.0 is immediately available on the web at https://interstellar.exchange. Mobile versions are also available on the Apple iOS and Google Play stores. Windows and Mac desktop app updates will follow shortly.
New Features in Interstellar v4.0 (Voyager Update)
Interstellar v4.0 (Voyager update) comes with a lot of new features including:
- New Languages. Our Interstellar app now supports 11 new languages. (Chinese, Russian, Hindi, Spanish, Filipino, Italian, Turkish, Japanese, German, Korean, and Portuguese). Our app has been downloaded and used in 166 different countries, so these translations will help to improve the overall user experience. We now support 14 different languages and more will be added in future.
- All new All-Spark feature. Any Interstellar wallet owner can now send any non-XLM asset to anyone else on the Interstellar platform even without a trustline. The receiving account doesn’t even need to be funded! As a security measure, both sender and receiver need to sign the generated transaction for the transaction to go through.
- Extra Security Measures. Wallet owners now need to sign every outbound transaction with their session passwords. Additional security options are available under our settings menu.
- Most comprehensive SEP6/24 Integration. Wallet owners can now deposit and withdraw any SEP6/24 compliant digital asset without leaving their Interstellar wallet! SEP6 (SEP0006) and SEP24(SEP0024) are Stellar blockchain enhancement proposals to allow deposits and withdrawals of assets from third party anchors (asset providers).
- Most comprehensive SEP10 Integration. Wallet owners can now sign the necessary transactions needed to grant them access to SEP0010 access restricted tokens. SEP10 (SEP0010) is a Stellar blockchain enhancement proposal to verify ownership of a Stellar account.
- New Asset Focused Wallet UI/UX. In this brave new world where everything will be tokenised, digital assets are king. That’s why our brand new wallet layout puts emphasis on assets for rapid access to your most used assets. You do not even need a trustline to include any Stellar tokenised asset into your portfolio.
- New Trader Focused Exchange UI. We revamped our trading UI to make it easier for advanced traders to quickly perform their trades. Just like on other centralised trading platforms. There’s also a new feature that allows you to delete multiple pending orders in a single transaction.
- Multiple Accounts. Interstellar has always supported multiple wallet accounts. This time around, the app remembers your last used wallet account so that you can quickly access the account even when you log out, and login again.
SEP6/SEP24/SEP10
SEP6/24
We are very pleased with the level of SEP6/24 support we’ve integrated into our Interstellar app. SEP6/24 permits users to deposit and withdraw asset-backed tokens without leaving the wallet!
True to our decentralization mantra, any anchor that properly implements SEP6/24 gets to see their anchored assets immediately available for deposits and withdrawals within the Interstellar wallet! No permissions required.
See the screenshots below demonstrating deposit and withdrawals options for the BAT asset (from Apay.io’s anchor service), without leaving the Interstellar wallet.
See screenshots below demonstrating deposit and withdrawal options for the BCH cryptocurrency asset (from Interstellar.exchange's anchor service), without leaving the Interstellar wallet (duh).
Our Interstellar SEP6/24 integration also means that you can now directly withdraw from Apay.io’s BTC anchor service, and deposit directly into Interstellar.Exchange’s BTC anchor service without leaving the Interstellar app! You can also directly withdraw from Interstellar’s BTC anchor service and deposit directly into NaoBTC’s BTC anchor service! This is a great way to move BTC-backed assets between the main BTC anchors within the Stellar network. Traders who rely on arbitrage may also find this feature quite useful.
It should be noted that our new SEP6/24 anchor integration isn’t limited to just crypto-backed assets. Compatible fiat anchors are supported as well! Take a look below at the new Cowrie NGNT (Nigerian Naira) fiat integration within Interstellar.
SEP6/24 experts will be pleased to know we do accept markdown input for deposit instructions. Markdown support allows anchors to produce more presentable and detailed deposit instructions for their custom assets, including the use of logos for extra brand recognition. Notice how the logos of MTN and Orange get displayed below on the SEP6/24 deposit instructions for Interstellar’s FCFA fiat anchor (XAF). FCFA is the official fiat currency used within 6 countries in Central Africa. MTN and Orange are two very popular mobile money operators in Cameroon.
SEP10
SEP6/24 is cool and all, but inherently lacks any form of authentication. Anyone can see anyone’s anchor transaction history if they know their Stellar public key. This might be OK for cryptocurrency tokens given their semi-anonymous nature, but might not be OK for fiat assets. Fiat transaction history may expose bank details, location, phone numbers and emails.
SEP10 was created to provide some form of authentication between stellar wallets and stellar anchors. Stellar wallet accounts sign a specially crafted transaction to prove to anchors they control the stellar wallet account, and only then does the anchor show the stellar wallet owner sensitive information like their deposit and withdrawal history.
We are pleased to announce that Interstellar v4.0 (Voyager update) now supports anchors with SEP10 authentication enabled, which keeps the user’s transaction details private and only visible to the stellar wallet owner.
One good example of an SEP10 enabled token on the Stellar network is Interstellar's XAF token, a fiat asset-backed token which pegs 1:1 to the FCFA fiat currency used in Central Africa. Interstellar's XAF anchor does not require authentication for deposit and withdrawal instructions… but it does require SEP10 authentication for deposit and withdrawal transaction history.
The All New All-Spark
There are two major issues new users face when they start using the Stellar network.
- Funding their accounts.
- Setting up trustlines for custom assets.
We created the All-Spark to help Interstellar users send custom tokens to other Interstellar users, even when the recipient doesn’t have a trustline setup for the custom token being sent. But what about sending custom tokens to unfunded accounts, you may ask? All-Spark covers that too!
The way the All-Spark works is quite simple. All-Spark is actually transparently integrated into Interstellar's new asset send workflow.
Send Asset Workflow — Receiving account is funded and trusts custom asset.
- Sender selects the asset they want to send.
- Sender enters receiver's address and amount they wish to send.
- If the receiver’s wallet address is funded, and has the appropriate trustline set up, the Interstellar app sends funds directly from the sender to the receiver’s wallet account.
Send Asset Workflow — Receiving account is not funded, or does not trust custom asset.
- Sender selects the asset they want to send.
- Sender enters receiver’s address and amount they wish to send.
- If the receiver doesn’t yet have a trustline set up for the asset being sent, Interstellar's All-Spark feature automatically kicks in. Here’s where it gets interesting.
- If the receiver’s wallet account isn’t yet funded, 1.5 XLM will be deducted from the sender’s account to fund the receiver’s wallet account.
- If the receiver’s wallet account doesn’t yet have a trustline for the asset you are trying to send, an additional 0.5 XLM will be deducted from the sender’s account to fund the receiver account’s new asset trustline reserve.
- A specially crafted multisig smart contract is created with the signatories of both sender and receiver accounts.
- If sender and receiver approve the multisig transaction, the receiver account gets funded (if unfunded). The receiver account also gets a trustline setup for the asset being sent. Finally the receiver account gets the full amount of the custom tokens the sender sent. All-Spark/Interstellar does all these operations for you without needing you to share your secret keys.
- If either sender or receiver cancel the multisig transaction, the receiver receives nothing. This is useful for end users in that users now get the chance to reject incoming assets they have no interest in keeping.
Exchange Updates
Being traders ourselves, we constantly look for ways to improve our Interstellar decentralized trading platform.
Here’s the new look:
The new look features the following improvements over previous iterations:
- Buy and sell forms are now on separate panels. No need to switch tabs to be in either buy or sell mode.
- The orderbook now appears below the orderform, making interactions between the orderbook and orderform much easier.
- You can now delete multiple existing offers at once in the same transaction.
- By default, all trade transactions now need to be signed with a session password. You can disable this extra security feature in the settings.
i18n
After noticing the increased use of our Interstellar wallet in 166 countries and all continents, we believed it was very important we increased our support for more languages to better serve our local communities. Our Interstellar app has been translated into the following languages: Chinese, English, French, German, Hindu, Italian, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Pilipino, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, and Turkish. More will be added in the months ahead.
You can get the new Interstellar v4.0 (Voyager) right now at https://interstellar.exchange
