Viacoin Development Update — 12/2017

6 min readDec 19, 2017

Two months ago we released our first development update. Due to the huge amount of positive reactions we have decided to frequently publishing similar updates. During the past few months we have made several announcements about Viacoin Core 0.15, Trezor integration, Vialectrum 3.0.2. and more. Even though the past months have been very turbulent for altcoins we feel like Viacoin has made a lot of progress in the field of development and expanding the Viacoin team. The coming months will be all about delivering our promises and releasing everything we have announced!

Latest announcements:

Viacoin Puzzle

At the end of October we unveiled our epic Viacoin puzzle. The puzzle was made by YT (Coin_Artist), a talented artist known for developing incredible puzzles using art, cryptography and cryptocurrency. Solving the puzzle will win you 1337 VIA. Numerous people have tried solving it but it has remained unsolved so far. Join the Viacoin Puzzle Telegram group and see if you have what it takes to beat our puzzle!

Polymerbit

Polymerbit is known for designing highly detailed paper wallets, printed on polymer using printing processes similar to genuine banknote printing. Since 2016 they have established themselves as one of the top paper wallet creators. We contacted them a few months ago and introduced them to Viacoin. Polymerbit showed great interest and they agreed on collaborating with us and design a line of Viacoin notes. The company plans to continue the current series dedicated to the cryptocurrency, as well co-develop projects for the future.

Marketing

At the beginning of November we added James to the Viacoin marketing team. James is a digital marketing expert with a background executing successful business development strategies and establishing key relationships in the business-to-business space. His specialties include PPC & SEO campaigns, marketing strategy planning and launching online marketing campaigns. Working together with James has been a pleasure so far and we’re sure 2018 has a lot in store for Viacoin!

Events

Viacoin attended the ‘ e/d/t x blockchain’ event’, an an event centered around blockchain, which hosted on November 22nd in Amsterdam. We were pleasantly surprised to see that one of the speakers used the Viacoin 2017 roadmap in their presentation about technology that persistently develops and completes tasks.

Viacoin and Groestlcoin sponsored Crypto010, an event held on December 16th in Rotterdam, where people got to meet the Viacoin and Groestlcoin development team. We had a great time meeting Viacoin fans and answering their questions. We handed out custom made Polymerbit NFC notes, loaded with 10 VIA each.

Hashrate

Over the past two months the Viacoin network hashrate has increased from 10 TH/s to ~45 TH/s, which is a 350% increase. The increased network hashrate results in more power, security and capability of the Viacoin network.

Coin development:

Viacoin Core 0.15

In our last development update we mentioned that we are aiming to release the Viacoin Core 0.15 update. We have moved the release Viacoin Core 0.15 to Q1 2018, due to the extensive amount of testing that needs to be done. Viacoin Core 0.15 is the biggest Viacoin update so far and is packed with features like M.A.S.T., Schnorr signatures and several performance upgrades. We have finished most of the code and we expect to start testing very soon. We will soon release an article about all of the Viacoin Core 0.15 features, explaining them in everyday language, to explain why Viacoin Core 0.15 is such a groundbreaking update.

Vialectrum 3.0.2

The development team has started working on updating Vialectrum to Vialectrum 3.0.2, which will be available on Windows, Linux and OSX. We are planning on developing Vialectrum for Android and iOS (once Electrum releases their iOS app) in 2018. We have made quite a bit of progress so far and we hope to finish the update soon. Keep an eye on our official Twitter for frequent updates!

Vialectrum 3.0.2 changelog:

Code migration from Python 2.7 to Python 3.x.
Code migration from QT4 to QT5.
Segwit support:
- Native segwit scripts are supported using a new type of
seed.
- Native segwit scripts are represented using bech32 addresses,
following BIP173.
Auto-connect to Tor node (when running).
Force headers download if headers file is corrupted.
Add websocket to Windows builds.
Multiple Chain Validation: Vialectrum will download and validate
block headers sent by servers that may follow different branches
of a fork in the Viacoin blockchain.
Qt GUI:
- Network dialog uses tabs and gets updated by network events.
- The GUI tabs use icons.
Kivy GUI:
- Separation between network dialog and wallet settings dialog.
- Option for manual server entry
- Proxy configuration
Daemon: The wallet password can be passed as parameter to the
JSONRPC API.
Various other bugfixes and improvements.

Trezor

In our last development update we announced that we started working on Viacoin integration for Trezor hardware wallets. We have made a lot of progress and we are glad to share that we have finished the code. We are now working on compiling a new Viacoin block explorer, which is needed for the Trezor integration. Once that is finished we will forward the code to the Trezor development team for their final review.

General Bytes

In order to further spread the global adoption of Viacoin our development team worked on Viacoin integration for General Bytes ATMs, one of the leading cryptocurrency ATM manufacturers. General Bytes has sold over 1000 ATMs, which are located in over 39 countries.

Our vision is that Viacoin is going to perform very well on ATMs. The current downside to Bitcoin transactions is the long confirmation times. Selling BTC on an ATM, without confirmations, exposes vendors to double-spend attacks. Viacoin’s 24 second block time greatly decreases the waiting time, making the whole process a lot more convenient for both the seller and the vendor. Our developement team has finished the code and we are waiting for General Bytes to review it.

Upcoming releases

We hope to release our 2018 roadmap very soon. The roadmap content has been forwarded to our in-house graphic designer. Our new website is also under development and we will soon share the progress we’ve made so far. We have decided to overhaul all of our graphic assets and have outsourced this to a professional graphics company.

Furthermore, in 2018 we will be focusing on mobile applications, partnerships and onboarding partners so Viacoin can used as a payment method in various places. This process started with General Bytes’ ATM support and we looking forward to sharing more exciting news soon ;)!