Spectre V2 is Coming Soon

Looking towards the future, we are excited to welcome you to a special newsletter concerning the upcoming update to Spectre V2 and some exciting news about Stealth Staking. The update to Spectre v2 is a mandatory update that includes changes to the consensus mechanism and algorithms and once activated will lock out older wallets that are not updated. We will release the exact date and details for the update as soon as it has been finalised and give everyone time to update their wallets.

What will change in Spectre V2

If you are a regular follower of the Spectre story you will know that there has been an ongoing discussion over the last few weeks on how to fund the continued development of Spectre and take the project into the privacy cryptocurrency premier league. We are already confident that we have some of the best tech in the industry but we are so far flying under the radar for the majority of crypto enthusiasts and serious investors. This is about to change over the coming months. We will announce a novel version of ‘Stealth Staking‘ and a dynamic system for anonymous SPECTRE coin supply. We are also working hard to further analyse the code base and we are working towards a professional review and update and improvement of critical code related to the anonymous transactions. We are also looking to approach some well know larger exchanges that require us to hire a lawyer and go through a formal application process. In order to achieve this we also need professional PR to make Spectre known and to make Spectre a household name when people think about privacy and anonymous cryptocurrencies.

Spectre Development Fund

We are implementing a new algorithm to secure stable funding directly from the network. We call this”Development Contribution Blocks” and once this update is activated every 6th stake reward (every 6th block) will be contributing to the future development of Spectre. These “Development Contribution Blocks” will ensure a min funding of around 500-550 XSPEC per day or around 15,000 XSPEC per month. In addition there is still the option to chose to donate more from the wallet of your stake rewards by using the “Donation Slider” from 0 to 100%. The implementation of the minimum funding will form part of the blockchain consensus mechanism and is a fair way for the whole network to contribute to the development which in the end benefits the users. Although 15,000 XSPEC per month does not seem much given todays value, there are some factors that we believe will contribute to creating value for Spectre investors and the project; (1) In the future, all our developers and contributors will be paid exclusively in XSPEC and encouraged to consider this as “stock options” and contribute to the value of the project through their work and only sell part of the pay for BTC to cover costs and necessary salaries; (2) We will release some unique tech in Spectre v3 that will put us on the map and contribute to the value of the project and (3) part of the funding will go to more professional marketing and PR. We are still adamant that a development fund will create value for investors and stakers.

The impact on users will be minimal as the funding burden is effectively shared between all the users staking on the network. This system also allows for a minimum, predictable development fund regardless of how many users are staking at any given time. We will obviously continue to be transparent around how the funds are used and who gets paid to work.

This is therefor also an excellent opportunity if you think you can contribute in any way to the development of Spectre and get a share in the project along the way.

Mandatory Update

The update to Spectre v2 is mandatory. This means that you must update to v2 to be able to stake or conduct transaction on the Spectre network after a certain date to be set. All previous versions of the wallet will be rejected by the network after this date. We will announce the exact date when the new wallet is ready to download from GitHub. In addition, we will implement a mechanism know as “replay protection” to prevent any transactions from being valid on the old blockchain and vice versa. This implementation is with Wisp in mind and will allow the Wisp community to continue working on the old version of the blockchain and develop a separate coin with their own design philosophy and goals. If the Wisp community takes this opportunity it will result in users being able to claim 1:1 balance of XSPEC / Wisp at the time when the update is activated.

Governance

We still consider that Spectre is in a transitional period and we aim for a future model of inclusive governance where input from the community will be part of the decision making. We are discussing setting up focus groups working within different areas and also have a regular team of dedicated beta-testers. We will also discuss the process for decision making with regards to features of the software. We will not however, deviate from the stated goal of delivering one of the best private cryptocurrencies in the market and the thrust of the development effort will be towards this goal. That also means that the majority of the decision making around technical issues will be a discussion between the core team and the programmers. Anyone is always welcome to contribute as we have stated before. Watch this space!

Stealth Staking

We have conducted extensive testing and an in depth study of the Spectre source code related to the anonymous transactions over the last few weeks. We have prepared detailed schedules of the code and the process flow and submitted this as the first stage in the audit process we are undertaking (there will be a separate update on this). During this phase we have gained new insight into the possibility of implementing ‘Stealth Staking‘ and it has become apparent that we can design a novel version of ‘Stealth Staking‘ for Spectre based around already existing tech.

The concept behind the ‘Stealth Staking‘ can be realised by using the same cryptographic functions involved when conducting an anonymous transaction with SPECTRE coins. In addition, any ‘normal‘ XSPEC coins would also stake using the already existing mechanism. So, in effect the ‘normal‘ coins and the ‘anonymous‘ coins will both be used to stake and generate rewards for the users. We call this ‘Proof-of-Stealth’ for the time being. This will follow some other changes to the anonymous transaction system that we will discuss in a later newsletter. The implementation of ‘Stealth Staking‘ is expected to be released as part of a major release for Spectre v3. It is important to understand however that this needs to go through several phases of coding and testing before it can be rolled out. Although there is still work to do on this concept and we need to get v2 out first, we will keep you updated!

So, in a nutshell, the ‘Stealth Staking‘ we are planning will use your ‘anonymous‘ SPECTRE coin balance for staking using a new ‘Proof-of-Stealth’ staking mechanism along side the ‘normal‘ coins’ staking using the existing PoSv3.

Stealth Staking is coming!

The next newsletter will be published in week 29 (16/07 to 22/07)