TL;DR: Crypto Dev Digest (CDD) documents cryptocurrency development, highlighting the projects and persons working under the hood. We catch up with Calin Culianu about releasing Fulcrum 1.0, new Electron Cash SPV server software written in C++. The first Bitcoin Cash developers’ meeting of 2020 is in the books. Crescent Cash wallet is now available on Google Play. CashFusion UTXO consolidation. CashScript 0.3.1 has been released, and a ton more in this digest installment.



Fulcrum 1.0 Released: Calin Culianu Breaks it Down Exclusively to CoinSpice

Calin Culianu wrote the entire new Electron Cash SPV server software in C++, though he admits he “had testing and packaging help from others.” The last time we spoke with Culianu, he explained a legendary counter-attack he authored during the May 2019 Bitcoin Cash upgrade. He noticed the attacker(s) left themselves wide open. He went from being frustrated to telling himself, “Damn, it felt good to hit the attackers back,” having pruned their addresses of funds used to act maliciously toward the BCH community. It’s a fun read.

The European-based dev’s occasion for an interview nearly a year later is Fulcrum 1.0. “The basic motivation behind writing it,” he stressed, was the simple fact of ElectrumX being “the #1 server everyone uses […] or the ElectronX fork we maintain over at Electron Cash. This is what all Electron Cash clients connect to. And it’s written in Python, which is a great language for client-side work.”

For server-side work, he insisted, “it’s fundamentally limited by execution speed and the fact that it’s single-threaded (it can only really use 1 CPU core!!!). In a nutshell: Python is garbage on the server-side, basically. It can’t scale basically to large address histories or to what we want to do going forward. If BCH were to take off and SPV were to be common — ElectrumX would fall over and die because [of] Python. So we needed something faster .. written in a compiled language to bring us into the future. Fulcrum basically replaces ElectrumX as 100% compatible protocol-wise and admin-wise,” Culianu explained.

His work on Fulcrum is designed to last, hoping it “can take us forward into the 2030s […] by not being slow. Because it’s written in the fastest language known to modern software engineering: C++. And not one of the slowest: Python,” also noting how bitcoind, which powers Bitcoin Cash, is itself written in C++ for a reason.

Step Up and Contribute More to the Foundation

I hope that in 2020, we will all step up and contribute more to the foundations of our ecosystem – be it documentation, bug reports, donations.. anything that is helpful is welcome.https://t.co/JJtOnsexA8 — Jonathan Silverblood (@monsterbitar) January 12, 2020

CashFusion UTXO Consolidation

CashScript 0.3.1 Released

#CashScript 0.3.1 has been released! What's new?

– ✨ Improved error handling

– 🔍 Insight into contract opcount and bytesize

– ⚠️ Warnings when exceeding limits

– 🐛 Bug fixeshttps://t.co/zcD5lSZU5y pic.twitter.com/tqsOo6i5E3 — Rosco Kalis (@RoscoKalis) January 14, 2020

Bitcoincashj and SLP Integration

“To make things much simpler for development I opted to use bitcoincashj’s internal UTXO management system rather than write my own for managing SLP UTXOs. By default, bitcoincashj does spend dust UTXOs when it can. This is both an issue in regards to SLP tokens, and privacy with dusting attacks. So I made a change in bitcoincashj to completely ignore dust outputs when spending,” explained anon dev pokkst in, Bitcoincashj and SLP Integration.

Executive Hashpower

“Miners are the Executive Power of Bitcoin,” Javier Gonzalez in Executive Hashpower. “And Executive Hashpower is what happens when miners decide to act, no following markets. Temporarily, ignoring short-term profit, because of thinking in an imaginary future profit (monetary or reputational), in an infrequent but decisive act of business creativity.”

Dublin, Ohio in the House!

Excited to have this opportunity to talk more about Dublin's Digital Identity! pic.twitter.com/nAcmp5zAHy — Joshua Green (@joshmgreen) January 16, 2020

Become a CashFusion Tester

“Have you heard a lot about this new CoinJoin scheme called CashFusion on Bitcoin Cash but have no idea what it is or how it works and want to try it out? Now is the time! The alpha version has been polished enough so that it can be used by power users to get an initial feel of the tool and to test the protocol for stability and robustness. We are actively looking for more people to test,” anon dev sploit invited.

Gentle But Firm Pressure

In response to gentle but firm pressure from the Zcash community, the Electric Coin Company has been investigating the possibility of converting to a non-profit: https://t.co/koYvvCdWuc — zooko (@zooko) January 17, 2020

HONK Now Available on Tipbitcoin.cash

We are excited to announce that the $HONK SLP token is now available on https://t.co/xZNdTrmJcA! 🤡🎪🤡🎪🤡🎪🤡🎪🤡 pic.twitter.com/uHvjxy6mbY — tipbitcoin.cash (@tipbitcoincash) January 17, 2020

Simplecash: Developer API to Simplify Non-Custodial Bitcoin Cash Payments

So I started working on a Bitcoin Cash project exactly a month ago and I’m finally releasing it after making sure everything works as expected. Introducing Simplecash, a developer API to simplify Bitcoin Cash payments in a non-custodial way:https://t.co/xfzV2xNUpb — Merwane Draï (@merwanedr) January 17, 2020

Love It!

Got to poke around the closed beta of https://t.co/JXnO1VHF8r

Love it! The interface and workflows really do live up to its name. Got a store and subscription service up running in no time, and subscribed to myself for 2 months. Looking forward to the SLP integration! pic.twitter.com/wWoCTkFh4U — Fiona Kobayashi 🧠 (@fifikobayashi) January 18, 2020

First Bitcoin Cash Developers’ Meeting of 2020

“The 1st Bitcoin Cash Development video meeting for 2020 took place on January 16th, 2020 at 20:00 UTC,” according to its show notes. Participants included Amaury Séchet, Antony Zegers, Jason B. Cox, and Mark Lundeberg of Bitcoin ABC; Fernando Pelliccioni of Bitcoin ABC/Bitprim, Matias Garcia of BitPay, Josh Ellithorpe and Tyler Smith of BCHD, Andrea Suisani of Bitcoin Unlimited, and Chris Troutner of Bitcoin.com. Hosted by David R. Allen, the goal of the meeting was to discuss the May 2020 upgrade items, BCH Specification, Avalanche and more, including:

1. Libsecp256k1 library announcement

2. May 15th Upgrade

– SigChecks

– OP_ENDIAN_REVERSE

3. BCH Specification update

4. Avalanche discussion/progress update

Crescent Cash Now Available on Google Play

v1.11 of Crescent Cash is now available on the Google Play Store! This features a new UI design, many bug fixes, and a completely rewritten SLP wallet system! pic.twitter.com/VeIeIMtjhN — pokkst (@pokkst) January 18, 2020

CONTINUE THE SPICE and check out our piping hot VIDEOS. Our podcast, The CoinSpice Podcast, has amazing guests. Follow CoinSpice on Twitter. Join our Telegram feed to make sure you never miss a post. Drop some BCH at the merch shop — we’ve got some spicy shirts for men and women. Don’t forget to help spread the word about CoinSpice on social media.

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.