Calling community coders

We have some jobs for you!

If coding’s not your thing please page down to the What’s next section.

Artem and Ashot are working as hard as funding permits on the NFT framework and codebase updates. But there are a bunch of open issues in Gitlab which they may never get the time to look at. Issues which while not even remotely critical could make everyone’s Crown experience just a little bit smoother if they were fixed.

Some of the open issues in Gitlab

One of the areas most often asked about in Discord or Telegram in terms of improvements and updates is the GUI wallet. And a lot of the low priority open issues are GUI wallet issues. None of them will make the wallet more beautiful or sexy, but they would make it a little more useful.

If the mere prospect of coding anything Qt related gives you the heebie-jeebies fear not, there are other issues which could be tackled in shell script or Node.js or PHP or any other coding environment you’re familiar with.

A few days ago I made a pass through the open issues list and identified a bunch which would be ideal for weekend coding warriors to have a go at. They have all been tagged with a yellow “Community” label and some of them can be seen in the screenshot above.

This post is an open invitation to anyone in the Crown community, or even outside of it, to fire up their favourite IDE, clone the Crown repository and exercise their skills on one or more of the “Community” tagged issues.

You don’t need a Gitlab id to be able to see the repository or clone the project. The issues list is here and you can clone the repo by

git clone https://gitlab.crownplatform.com/crown/crown-core.git

You don’t need to be a top-class developer, anyone with a bit of git experience and the ability to compile the code themself is welcome to participate. There are no bounties available but you could conceivably make an application by a proposal for some Crown reward if you do a particularly good job on one or more issues or tackle one of the harder ones.

This is one of those “ask not what Crown can do for you, rather ask what you can do for Crown” things. Your reward is basically satisfaction at a job well done, a bit of kudos and community appreciation and perhaps knowing you’ve done your bit to protect your investment in Crown.

If you don’t have a Crown Gitlab id you can express interest in working on an issue using the Discord Gitlab updater bot. If you get to the stage of wanting to open a merge request reach out to us in Discord and we’ll sort out a Gitlab id or some other way to test and if successful, merge your code.

Alternatively, many of the open issues were recently copied from Gitlab to Github so if you have a Github account you could fork/clone the repo there and submit a pull request there. If you fix any of the open issues we’ll make sure your code ends up in the right place.

In addition to the primary benefit of getting some issues fixed sooner than they might be otherwise, any increased Gitlab or Github activity reflects well in our FCAS rating. This can help encourage new investors and ultimately drive up the price of CRW.

What’s next?

Looking further ahead we are starting to think about which projects to pursue after the NFT framework and codebase updates.

Some possibilities include:

• NFT trading. Registration is only the first step. NFTs need to be tradeable to maximise their utility.
• On-chain governance. The Dash-inherited governance code is complex and inefficient. On-chain governance would record proposals and votes directly on the blockchain, providing an immutable and deterministic account of the governance system at any point in time.
• Crown Masternode Tool. This is a fork of the Dash Masternode Tool and builds on the Trezor integration which we really hope will finally arrive in Trezor’s January 2020 firmware update. The tool would allow for control of masternodes and systemnodes whose collateral is held in a Trezor hardware wallet. walkjivefly is working on porting the Dash code as and when he gets a chance.
• BTCpay server integration. For Crown to be a usable currency there needs to be an easy way to spend it. BTCpay server is an open-source tool which lets service providers and retailers raise invoices and receive payments in a range of crypto-currencies.
• BlockDX integration. Trading on centralised exchanges is what everyone is used to but is fraught with problems including hacks and exit scams and ever more KYC. BlockDX is a true decentralised exchange with peer-to-peer atomic swap trades.
• QT wallet makeover.

What would you like to see Crown concentrating on once the current projects are delivered? Join us in Discord or Telegram and let us know.

If you’re reading this and English is not your first language feel free to translate it to your first language and re-post it in the Crown channel(s) you normally use.