Today we are going to announce a small delay of the mega-update and really apologize for that in advance. It was not easy for us and the discussions were quite tense, but we came to this final decision.

What’s the reason?

With the implementation of the update as originally stated we realized, we are putting the whole project at risk. Here is why:

With the recent announcements of the SEC and the EU officials to regulate cryptocurrencies and especially exchanges in terms of preventing money laundering, we see the implementation of the zerocoin protocol into ALQO as a systemic risk for the ALQO — Bitfineon connection.

We see the first privacy coins being delisted from Coincheck and there are rumors that Bittrex is just about to delist privacy coins as well. We think other exchanges which try to tie to the governmental rules and regulations will follow.

Therefore, we made the decision to not rush for this update and to let you — the community — decide what to do in terms of the zerocoin protocol being part of the update.

Option 1: We will make the mega-update without the zerocoin protocol implemented. This will take appr. 1 week after the decision to re-rework the UI of the wallet to release. This will not exclude zerocoin completely out of ALQO, just delay it, until we know the governmental settings which are going to be put in place within the next months.

Option 2: We will make the mega-update as intended with all features (all coding work is done and it’s ready to launch), including the zerocoin protocol, within the next hours after the vote. In our opinion this will put a serious threat for the ALQO-Bitfineon connection on the table.

This is why we think the danger is too high for zerocoin being implemented.

If we would start to implement the zerocoin protocol it will be used by the people. Bitfineon will be a bank tied to the rules and regulations of the government. Usually when governments put a regulation in place, you’ll get a 48h timeframe to change your systems to the new standards.

If the government decides (which is highly probable) that a technical possibility has to exist to track down coins, it will put a huge pressure on a legit exchange like Bitfineon:

1. Sharepool payments cannot be done anymore — no rewards for locking your XLQ on Bitfineon!

2. If ALQO stays with zerocoin, it needs to be delisted from Bitfineon with all the implications.

On the other hand, to be a legit project, ALQO would need to convert all zXLQ immediately back into XLQ and fork the zerocoin protocol out of the code. This would definitely result in a lot of people losing their zXLQ, because of the short 48h timeframe the coin swap would need to happen within. It would put a huge risk on the chain due to the fork and will certainly cause a lot of masternodes going offline due to “not updating” the protocol.

As this decision to delay the implementation of zerocoin cannot be done by the team alone, we hereby announce the vote is being held april 1st 12:00 UTC till april 3rd 11:59 UTC, meaning we will have a 48h voting timeframe.

We know that the delay is not what was anticipated by the community, but as the crypto world changes rapidly we need to stay as flexible as we could.

We hope you can enjoy your easter time with friends and family!

In the name of the whole ALQO core team.