TL;DR: Crypto Dev Digest (CDD) documents cryptocurrency development, highlighting the projects and persons working under the hood. Action-packed installment this go-round includes a massive first public testnet from Ava Labs. Bitcoin Cash can be used to snap up Steam gift cards for gamers. Nethermind 1.8.1 is released, allowing WebSockets and HTTP on the same port; and developers continue pumping out great work even during a pandemic.



Ava Labs First Public Testnet

Cornell University computer scientist Emin Gün Sirer and his project Ava Labs announced the first release of its testnet, Cascade. It’s the first of two planned testnets, with this round allowing for “participants to connect to a global network of validators and participate in high-velocity transactions. Reaching speeds of thousands of transactions per second and payment finality of under two seconds, AVA provides comparable throughput to top payment processing companies,” according to press materials. They’re shooting for mainnet “later this year.”

The press release hits all the major buzzwords: DeFi, cutting-edge, and so on. In truth, the Avalanche consensus protocol, after which AVA is named, captured the imagination of developers across platforms, including those of Bitcoin Cash (BCH). And, more recently, BCH dev Tyler Smith left for AVA.

However, Sirer and his crew found an early home within the Ethereum community, which was among the first embraced decentralized finance and skepticism toward the longterm viability of proof-of-work (PoW). “AVA is designed to be backward-compatible with out-of-the-box support for existing Ethereum-based DeFi applications,” the presser insists. “Migrating decentralized applications to AVA grants open finance the power to deliver its promise to a mainstream audience.”

Purchase Steam Gift Cards Using Bitcoin Cash

Introducing https://t.co/e3oO2u5dAwhttps://t.co/BUjWhqQ5GU allows you to purchase Steam gift cards easily using Bitcoin Cash. Anonymous, no sign-up. Simply enter an email address, purchase a card, and a Steam gift card code will be emailed to you. pic.twitter.com/T7VmZUmhHD — pokkst (@pokkst) April 17, 2020

Nethermind v. 1.8.1 Released

What a wonderful day for an #Ethereum release! Nethermind 1.8.1 (prefer 1.7.18 for more stable and tested version) comes with a rewrite of the synchronization management so receipts, bodies and state can be synced in parallel.

And it can run WebSockets and HTTP on the same port! — Nethermind (@nethermindeth) April 16, 2020

ElectrsCash v1.1 Released

New version of ElectrsCash, v1.1 released. Written in Rust for Bitcoin Cash. https://t.co/2tHQIHZwKI — Dagur (@dagur) April 7, 2020

Permissionless Software Foundation

The bch-api REST API available at https://t.co/FPN1rhcu6L added the first ElectrumX and Fulcrum endpoint for retrieving spendable UTXOs. Same tech behind @electroncash More soon! `curl -X GET "https://t.co/8i5vDMcIEl" -H "accept: application/json"` Docshttps://t.co/Ofd4H2InxO — Permissionless Software Foundation (@PSF_DAO) April 7, 2020

Importing Badger Wallet Into Electron Cash

https://t.co/vdBS4oTFBv — bch 'make Bitcoin cash again' protocol upgrade (@btcfork) April 7, 2020

New CashFusion Builds

Why Did We Do This Big Song and Dance About SegWit?

Soooooo Schnorr signatures can NOT be malleated? So why did we do this big song and dance about SegWit? Involving extra coinbase commitment / merkle tree / sig extension block (an "evil fork" attack) / block weight computation?? Could have just shipped OP_Schnorr?@LukeDashjr — Paul Sztorc (@Truthcoin) April 8, 2020

Mint New Features, Bug Fixes Will Take a While

An update regarding Mint: it will stay at https://t.co/h6JVzGersA as is, but we will not maintain it full time anymore, so the new features and bug fixes will take a while. It's an open source project, help us out:https://t.co/TDvg4SVh30 — Andre (@alcipir) April 8, 2020

LBRY Documents Its Progress

Have you ever had the feeling that LBRY has been making a lot of progress? Check out the Authoritative Progress Blog Post for Chart Lovers 📈♥️ documenting just how far we've comehttps://t.co/8eoxAGMwpp 1,000,000 served in March! — LBRY (@LBRYio) April 9, 2020

Latest Release of Simpleledger.info

Latest release of https://t.co/1vncaVnilK is out! New features include clipboard icons next to many items on site, a new transaction graph section, transpilation to reduce errors on some older browsers, and a more condensed design. Enjoy! — blockparty_sh (@BlockpartySh) April 11, 2020

How to Use BIP47 in Crescent Cash

How to use BIP47 Reusable Payment Codes in Crescent Cashhttps://t.co/jmmRI4vQCV — pokkst (@pokkst) April 10, 2020

Transaction Visualizer with SLP Support

Check out this TX visualizer with SLP support https://t.co/JxEa6V9ZoN — blockparty_sh (@BlockpartySh) April 14, 2020

OK Boomer

Anyone who calls themself a "software engineer" should be required to be licensed, have a graduate degree in engineering & carry at least $1 million in professional liability insurance. And certain types of software should only be sold if approved by a software engineer. — Palley (@stephendpalley) April 13, 2020

BCH Devs Continue Working on P2P Electronic Cash for the World

During Covid-19 pandemic $BCH devs continue working on peer-to-peer electronic cash for the world. 3rd #BitcoinCash Public Developer meeting of 2020 video is now available on https://t.co/jg54uZncpy & https://t.co/qnxlgs3b8N QUIC, Avalanche, May 15th upgrade & testnet and more pic.twitter.com/Uk16iSSeTz — Bitcoin Cash (@BitcoinCash) April 14, 2020

Bitcoin ABC 0.21.4 Released

Bitcoin ABC 0.21.4 has been released. This release primarily involves improvements for developers. From this release onwards, we will not be supporting 32-bit Windows. Download it here:https://t.co/gutQLHwj6s Release notes: https://t.co/C0G8tg4N9W#bitcoincash #bch #bitcoin — Bitcoin ABC (@Bitcoin_ABC) April 14, 2020

Remember When

ahh, remember when I proposed a new opcode for Bitcoin Cash, and then in one of my first commits for ABC I simultaneously hijacked a test, and made the test server run out of memory (latter was due to an integer overflow bug). that was great pic.twitter.com/rLkL2leput — Tobias Rrrrrrrrruck (@TobiasRuck) April 15, 2020

Reverse Engineering

I reverse engineered Vin's #JavaScript library, and extracted out the encryption feature using #BitcoinCash addresses. I just prototyped an app to do multi-transaction encrypted messages, which are compatible with @memobch protocol and https://t.co/xmG5dm11j1 UI. Demo soon https://t.co/wm40Vxl3ka — Chris Troutner (@christroutner) April 16, 2020

Haven App is Live on Google Play

Haven update *finally* passed processing and is live on Google Play! https://t.co/JsNqropnHG — Haven App 👐 (@HavenPrivacy) April 16, 2020

Purse.io Closing Fallout

Purse employed a team of open-source developers for several years to maintain bcoin and its related projects. If you use bcoin as an individual or business please reach out to our Developer Advocate matthew@purse.io to discuss the future of the project.#Bitcoin to the moon! 🚀 https://t.co/DWjuWtZlvP — bcoin (@Bcoin) April 16, 2020

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DYOR: CoinSpice is your home for just spicy crypto things. We’re not affiliated with any cryptocurrency project or token. Each published piece is intended for information purposes only, not investment advice and not in the hope of impacting speculative markets. There are plenty of trading sites and coin-specific advocacy journals out there, we’re neither. CoinSpice strives for rigorous accuracy in our reporting. Information presented here is contingent usually on a host of factors, and the ecosystem moves fast — prices change, projects change, and at warp speed. Do your own research.

DISCLOSURE: The author holds cryptocurrency as part of his financial portfolio, including BCH.