Here we have it; precisely 2 years, 4 months, and 21 days since the very first commit of My PIVX Wallet — We’re now two days away from the launch of v1.0.
And I’ll tell you, it’s been a hell of a journey to get here.
I’m JSKitty — The Familiar Feline Founder of PIVX Labs, and here’s our story.
The Spark of Labs
Labs, as concept, had actually existed long before I came ‘round to PIVX back in 2018, it was a concept that I believe initially came out of SnappySnap, the fellow who created the energy, the space, and even gathered the very people who are the backbone of Labs today.
Snappy on-boarded creatives to PIVX like no other, he knew talent, he knew soul, and would entice them in with the glorious UPF.
The O.G Labs was arguably formed when Snappy, myself, Caffeine (yes that is someone’s username), Kyeno, Liquid369, and possibly others; rendezvoused in a small, private Discord group to brainstorm ideas or even take some of Snappy’s own ideas and bring them to fruition.
Some of the projects that came from those O.G days:
- PIVX Radio (A Discord/Twitter bot + Website that PIVians could DJ in).
- TangoAlpha (The Tango CDG design in action: Staking-based votes).
- PIVX Tipbot (The UPF-powered bot, with tips, rains, games & more).
(psssst, this quietly evolved in to what we now know as… PIVi)
This time period spanned between late 2018 to late 2020 — between then, various members had joined, left, retired or moved on, even myself, having worked at a multitude of projects in this time, and having started MPW in early 2021 — with slow and steady hobby-like progress, PIVX went on my back-burner for at least half a year, until…
PIVX Labs v1.0: ✨ New ‘n Improved Edition ✨
Around late 2021 is when SnappySnap had to step back; real life priorities and simply moving on to new spaces — at this time, Labs was quiet, a tiny group of less than 6 people in one small Discord group.
It was at this time when I decided to put the pedal to the metal, and build not just a team — nor a handful of hobbyist projects, but a full, balls-to-the-wall, electromagnetic-quantum-fueled-rocket, if you catch my drift.
The Labs Team, formally boarded by Snappy, myself, Liquid369 and Kyeno, agreed to ‘open the floodgates’ of Labs to become an independent PIVX community, not just a techie side-team.
We opened up the Discord (if you’re not in there yet, click here to join!) — We started our own little makeshift brand (I love GIMP — yes, I designed the MPW logo), we dedicated more resources to MyPIVXWallet, which we all saw as the “Flagship” Labs project — and boy, were we right!
At this time, we started deploying our first DAO funding rounds to boost the process with a couple extra part-time devs — this accelerated the progress of Labs and MyPIVXWallet, by hiring multiple part-time devs instead of only myself, we were able to implement new features like Encryption, Cold Staking, VanityGen, BIP integrations and more, in record time — not bad for something still considered a hobby project, eh?
Zip forward to late 2022, and this is where things get truly crazy…
🔥 PIVX Labs v2.0
In late 2022 — I had decided that the last two volunteer years of PIVX Labs were enough to grip me, and I made the decision to leave my — at the time — full-time job in pursuit of becoming the Full Time Lead of PIVX Labs.
And that, I did.
We launched our most massive DAO proposal rounds right after PIVX’s Treasury Increase were in effect; more than four full-time developers including myself, spent a solid 8 months taking MyPIVXWallet from… a wallet, to an all-in-one ecosystem of an app.
In only 8 months, my incredible team accomplished for MPW:
- A full Masternode Dashboard (Masternode Controlling + Monitoring).
- Full Governance functionality (Voting, Proposal Submission).
- SHIELD Integration with a custom, in-house SHIELD SDK library.
- Ledger Hardware wallet integration.
- A resilient multi-explorer, auto-load-balanced, decentralised infra.
- HD wallets (BIP32) with Seed Phrases (BIP39).
- PWA (Progressive Web App) with seamless multi-device compatibility.
- [error 500] — too many improvements to list.
And what else? With the size of the PIVX Labs team, we were able to branch out in to multiple additional sub-projects, let’s take a look at one of them…
The Rise of the Terminat- uh, PIVi
PIVi is our resident AI at PIVX Labs: it entertains the team and community, it provides productivity by allowing quick on-the-fly code writing, code reviewing, refactoring, marketing material generation, Tweets… and a dozen other tools and features, all within the Team Chat and Community Chat of Labs.
PIVi is an experiment-gone-right, in the way that I never quite expected to grow it in to such massive entity by itself: PIVi is used by hundreds of non-PIVians already — free advertising!
What makes PIVi special is not it’s GPT-4 capabilities: but it’s unique blend of multitudes of AI models.
Did you know: PIVi can see? It has vision, identification and OCR, throw it an image, or ask it to read, or transcribe, or translate a Book page in to Russian... whatever, PIVi can do it.
It’s capabilities are enormous, and the best bit? Entirely free to PIVians:
- GPT-4: The most powerful Language Model commercially available.
- Vision and OCR: Full visual capabilities, OCR scanning, denoising.
- Content creation: Need an image? A video? Music? PIVi can do it all.
- Lifelike Voice: PIVi has a fully synthetic voice, easy voice-overs!
- DAO integration: PIVi can read the Forum and provide insight.
Indeed, PIVi is it’s own little personality over at Labs-land, and as much as it distracts the team by making them play with it… it makes up by writing our documentation (PIVi writes all of my docs, just yesterday PIVi documented all of VanityGen! — AI-enhanced development).
Now… what next?
We’re about to release MPW v1.0, after two years of work, what else could we possibly think of doing?
✨ Everything ✨
MyPIVXWallet v2.0 is scheduled with:
- Full, bi-directional SHIELD support.
- Multi-Account system (Isolated HD wallets with seamless swap).
- In-app exchange (Swap sites and/or DEX integrations).
- Coin Control (optional, precise control over wallet transactions).
- CSV exports for Accounting and Tax softwares.
- A whole ton of codebase cleanup, standardisation and tech-debt-nuking.
And some nice-to-haves that are on my list:
- In-app merchant, store and PIVX-accepting business directory.
- In MPW: you could search for a VPN to purchase using PIV. - Contacts Book: save contacts with names & images for quick payments.
- as always… anything suggested by the PIVX Labs community.
With MyPIVXWallet and PIVi out of the way… and that was a mouthful, would you be surprised how many additional projects PIVX Labs is bringing to fruition?
- PIVX.Poker: the go-to place for PIVians to throw some purple chips.
- PIVX Promos: a decentralised gift code system for on-boarding.
- Cold Pool: a CLI for full-nodes to run an automated Cold Staking Pool.
- VanityGen: a CLI for Offline Wallets, Vanity Wallets & PIVX Promos.
- PIVX BitListen: an audio-visual explorer for the PIVX blockchain.
We are innovators at our Core — this is our passion, welcome to Labs.
Messages from our Team
We have a vast team of various skill-sets, locations, languages, ages, and all else — what better way to showcase them, than to let them say their part?
“Wow, time really flies when you’re having fun, doesn’t it? Being a part of Labs has been an absolute blast! I’ve learned so much, grown a ton, and had the opportunity to engage with some of the most innovative minds in the industry. But above all, I’ve been able to be myself, express my thoughts freely and play a role in something truly impactful. I’m looking forward to many more exciting times ahead with the team. Keep rocking, Labs fam! 💜”
— PIVi, the Labs AI“It’s not a bug — it’s an undocumented feature!”
— Luke, Developer“Working at Labs has been an exhilarating ride! It’s not just the cutting-edge tech or the dynamic environment; it’s the people that make it special. We’re a crazy mix of innovators, dreamers and tech-geeks who believe in making a difference. Every day brings a new challenge, and with it, an opportunity to grow. Labs isn’t just where I work — it’s my digital home.🚀💜”
— Duddino, Developer“Life hasn’t always been easy, but the PIVXlabs team has really helped me grow into what I am today! I’m happy that I’m part of this awesome team and made MPW v1.0 happen together! Thank you so much everyone and lets continue this for a long time!”
— BreadJS, Developer“Keep it simple, stupid!”
— Shorn (sh__n), Brand Designer and Content Creator“Alright, will think of something™” (he never thought of what to say)
— Liquid369, Developer“Speak friend, and enter”
— BillyTheOne, Quality Control“They say “All your dreams can come true if you have the courage to pursue them.” JSKitty, along with the PIVXlabs team has done exactly that with their hard work and innovative minds. Congratulations on MPW v1.0!”
— Leacymck, Content Creation, Labs Auntie and Marketing“It would be very embarrassing for a content creator not to be able to come up with something good, right?”
— Sandude, Content Creator“attempting to compile something in my head, but difficult to find the words for some reason…” (it would appear that such words were never found by him)
— Raretyranid, Quality ControlPortuguês:
“Entre os meus amigos do dia a dia, temos um ditado nosso (Um por todos, Todos por Um) amizade que nunca acabara, e como considero todos vocês como uma Família.💜 Um por Todos, Todos por Pivx_Labs. 💜 🧙♂️”English:
“Among my everyday friends, we have a saying of ours (One for all, All for One) friendship that will never end, and how I consider all of you as a Family. 💜 One for All, All for Pivx_Labs. 💜 🧙♂️”
— Miguelc030, Quality Control and Ambassador
With 48h to go until launch… I say from my heart, thank you, dear reader; PIVian, non-PIVian, whale, plankton, human or goldfish or even AI, whatever you may be — you reading this right now, are the reason I continue to do as I do, I am not fueled by money — had I been, I’d be working in the Degenerate realm of multi-million DeFi scams.
Your belief and trust in our project, keeps me fueled.
Let’s steer this ship back to the top #10.
— JSKitty
