Final binaries of Navcoin Core 6.0 are now available to download
The launch of our very much awaited new private coin xNAV was kickstarted two weeks ago on January 1st with the publishing of the Navcoin Core 6.0 release candidate binaries.
After being able to get the builds battle-tested on mainnet during the testing period, the builds have shown to be stable and with no major reported issues.
As of today, we are ready to make the final version available for our community to download from our Github releases page.
What’s new
Our latest release brings improvements to governance and security, and also allows NavCoin to make significant upgrades to privacy and coin utility through the development of xNAV, our new private token. xNAV is supported by our novel blsCT protocol which brings an efficient and privacy-respecting currency to life, and allows anyone to take control of their financial transactions while retaining their anonymity.
User security is greatly enhanced by the introduction of full wallet encryption allowing wallet transaction data to be fully encrypted. This works in unison with our cold staking functionality, which allows staking to be carried out by offline wallets, further reducing the risk of security flaws and helping to secure all users’ funds.
Pull Request 745 proposes a consensus change that will allow the excluding of stakers from DAO voting. Here, nodes which may be exchanges activating staking or any users who do not want to participate in voting procedures, will be able to exclude their staked blocks from the quorum by indicating their position. Nodes will also be able to automatically label their blocks to be excluded anytime the staker has been inactive in any of the last 10 voting cycles which had an active vote.
You can read the full release notes here.
How to upgrade
Simply download the pre-built binaries for your operating system from our Github releases page and proceed as normal. No extra actions are required.
You can verify the integrity of the binaries by verifying the Gitian signatures available here against the public key 2782262BF6E7FADB (keys.gnupg.net) or by checking the SHA256SUM of the distributed packages against the one we’ve published in our Github releases page.
If you wish to build from sources, you can find full details on our documentation site.
When do I need to upgrade? Is it mandatory?
We recommend everyone to upgrade as soon as possible and participate in the votings to decide for the activation of the new protocol rules. The votings will start on February 1st. Once a majority of 75% of the staked blocks signal a positive vote for any of the protocol upgrade proposals, during a period of 20160 blocks, such upgrade will get locked in. When reaching such state, every node MUST upgrade to NavCoin Core 6.0.
20160 blocks after the block where any upgrade is locked in, the new protocol will come into effect and every node running an older version will stop staking and accepting new blocks. Nodes upgraded which voted no for any activated change, will still continue to function normally and accept the new consensus rules.
In no case the activation would happen before the 15th of February. The concrete date will depend on how fast the network upgrades and the count of positive votes each of the changes is able to get. Once a new consensus rule gets locked in, we will announce it through our communication channels.
How can I vote for the new protocol rules?
Navcoin Core 6.0 will vote “YES” by default to both the xNAV and Exclude Blocks upgrade. If you wish to change your vote for any of the proposals, you will be able to do it introducing the following entries in your navcoin.conf file:
For voting ‘no’ to xNAV:
rejectversionbit=10
For voting ‘no’ to Exclude Blocks:
rejectversionbit=12
Do I need to set up anything different if I’m an exchange operator?
Please add the following options in your navcoin.conf file:
excludevote=1
blsctmix=0
