July 4 marks the third anniversary of Bytecoin, the world’s first CryptoNote-based cryptocurrency. The Bytecoin team has unveiled an expanded roadmap detailing their future plans for the coin.

Bytecoin

Bytecoin is the first CryptoNote-based cryptocurrency that enables absolutely anonymous transactions via ring signatures and one-time keys. Unlike Bitcoin, it offers certain unique properties such as smooth block reward, difficulty adjustment and ASIC resistance. (GPU mining provides efficiency of the same magnitude as CPU mining.)

The Bytecoin platform allows for implementing colored coins and smart contracts by means of the network itself, without any add-ons. “The work on these functions is already in process,” Bytecoin developer Joseph Lin told Cointelegraph. “The upcoming releases will include wallet improvements, block explorer high-level API, aliases and more.”

The Road Ahead

The generation of Bytecoin’s first block coincided with America’s Independence Day on July 4, 2012. Now the development team has prepared an updated roadmap revealing their plans for Bytecoin in the near future. Additionally, the team has started working on colored coins, which will later serve as the basis for implementing smart contracts.

The features that would be implemented with the next releases include:

Bytecoin platform expansion

As an addition to the existing API (“IWallet” and “ITransaction” APIs for handling transactions; “INode” API for daemon functionality), they will release the block explorer API. This will allow developers to get native access to the blockchain data.

Code refactoring

The next releases will include a new network library with network code operating significantly faster than the existing solution. Moreover, block synchronization speed and block relay speed will be enhanced.

Enhancing wallet usability

The Bytecoin Wallet will include an integrated block explorer and provide ability to mine BCN directly from the wallet. Also, e-shops will be able to issue invoices that will be shown in the user’s wallet. It will only take one click to pay merchants.

Multi-addressing feature will be integrated into Bytecoin RPC Wallet

Exchanges, payment processors, online shops and others will have the ability to create a unique address for incoming payments from individual users.

Increasing the transaction processing speed

Real-time transaction synchronization is a feature allowing all network nodes to have identical lists of unconfirmed transactions. This update will further increase the speed of transactions processing.

Aliases integrated into blockchain

Aliases will allow for mapping the Bytecoin address to any convenient string. For example, you can donate some funds to the “Tor.Project.” This address will be automatically resolved to:

22k6qhj6X8FZkwPDbpswnUescZm63tGArYj5fAkjLvG5f8wZcdXvMxmK5gKrufqTM1As722mmKTftd1sz8Ng2rBy8jgfgYD

“Bytecoin already allows users to make secure and private financial transactions and create businesses in the fields, where financial privacy plays an important role,” explained Senior Developer Lin to Cointelegraph. “We are planning to develop Bytecoin even further. Our long-term goal is to help Bytecoin become a very comprehensive financial system.” Lin continued: