This Month in Conceal (June 2020)

Welcome to the Conceal Developer updates for June 2020. Before we detail the work the team has been focused on over the last month, let’s rehash some of the major accomplishments that took place for all the new Conceal.Network community members. Onward!

Rehash

Social Announcements

• We celebrated our 2nd year anniversary with a live stream hosted by SavageMine on May 23rd via Youtube. The Conceal Core team answered several questions on so many different topics. The live stream now has timestamps, so don’t wait to check it out. If you want to view, click here. Special thanks and a props to SavageMine for hosting our 2nd year anniversary.

• D. G. ALTMAN from TheDailyChain, published an amazing interview to highlight Conceal.Network. His spirited writing creativity was a breath of fresh air and offered readers an in-depth look at the project and team. Go check it out!
• A new and improved Discord bot was introduced for our community that includes several new features including Tipping, Rains and Giveaways. To use the bot simply type “.help” in our Discord to receive a list of all available commands and make sure you register a wallet so you can participate in getting some free $CCX!

Conceal.Network Announcements

• We introduced a brand new community operated mining pool: CCX Community Pool. The pool offers both PPLNS and Solo mining options and has a variety of ports to meet your needs. So, if you are new to Conceal and would like to contribute your hash to the network, pick a port and point your mining rigs here (pool.conceal.community)!
• Check out our new InstaSwap integration! Consistent with our goal of making Conceal more available to everyone, we have added the ability to purchase $CCX directly from our website.

• Just go to our website and click BUY CCX (example above) or type https://swap.conceal.network in your browser in order to buy $CCX via @InstaSwap_io.

Developer Update

Conceal-Core & Desktop Release

We released our newest version (v6.2.0) for both Conceal-Core and Conceal-Desktop wallets. Several unique improvements are included in this release. Below is a summary of the new features included.

• Sets Anchor Peers — This feature sets two random existing connections as Anchor Peers and will be the first two attempted connections on the next restart of the daemon.
• Uses Parallel Hashmaps — This feature provides a more efficient method for looking up values in parallel directly in memory to avoid slowness.
• Improves Exit and Disconnect Events — Now, all connections are immediately closed on exit, reducing crashes. The cache is rebuilt when restarting the node (code and wallet).
• Upgrades Transaction Pool — A recent malformed transaction prompted a code modification that includes a fix that now prevents any malformed transaction from making into a block (in addition the transaction will be ejected from the pool after 12 hours).
• Uses Index Recovery — This feature uses an index recovery (loading shards from a disk and making it usable for any query operation) and attempts to recover the indices after a crash providing a smoother boot up transition.
• Uses GitHub Actions and Artifacts — GitHub Actions now work across all four supported platforms, and includes Artifact support, which keeps a copy of every binary created during build checks associated with the commit under Actions.

Conceal-Guardian Release

We released the new version of Conceal Guardian (v0.5.3). For those of you that are new, Conceal Node Guardian is a process that monitors the conceald daemon. It catches daemon errors, monitors the block count and, in case of an error, it restarts the daemon and can notify you on Discord via webhook, sends an email, or both. Conceal Node Guardian also has an ability to connect to a pool with other nodes for the purpose of infrastructure monitoring or running a remote node with a fee listing. This new version includes:

• Improved API path handling — The API was properly sandboxed to allow for loading guardian web dashboard files.
• Better child process handling — Now, the guardian first waits for the daemon to properly stop, and if it fails, the guardian terminates it. This fix eliminates wait times due to the daemon not properly disconnecting from peers because of being stuck or not syncing.
• Force elevate for batch commands on Windows — Now, batch command calls elevated admin rights in case the user does not have admin rights. Batch command on Windows for guardian control requires admin privileges because they communicate with Windows services.
• Added update batch command for Windows — We continue to improve and expand batch commands for Windows. The majority of nodes run on Linux, however, we want to have as much functionality as possible for users that prefer Windows.

Conceal-Mobile & Cloud

Development and testing continue to integrate the ability to earn interest on your deposits and use self-destructing message features in both Conceal Mobile and Conceal Cloud ​​​​​​(available Q3–2020). Below is a sneak peek of the UI.

Conceal-Labs

One of our valued community members (ThrownLemon) continues work to build an alternate desktop wallet for Conceal.Network, the Conceal Lite Wallet based on Electron. ​​​​​​​ThrownLemon, submitted a proposal to Conceal-Labs that was approved by the Conceal community to help fund his effort.

The Conceal Lite Wallet integrates several Conceal features including:

• Conceal-API Javascript/Node.js interface (RPC/API)
• Conceal-Cloud Wallet service/infrastructure

Conceal Lite Wallet development is currently focused on building an angular application that the wallet will use to communicate to and from the back-end via an API.

Conceal-Live

We are very excited to share something we have been working on that will revolutionize messaging and audio/video communication, Conceal-Live.

Conceal-Live is a truly decentralized and distributed communications app. It doesn’t require any servers to relay data between users. There are many advantages associated with that, including increased privacy, light infrastructure, high scalability, no bandwidth restriction (other than users’ internet connection limits), no size limit for file transfers, and more.

• Secure. All communications are peer-to-peer and end-to-end encrypted.
• Fast. Latency and transfer speeds are greatly reduced thanks to the direct peer-to-peer connections.
• Autonomous. Users who are on the same local network can communicate even if they are disconnected from the internet.
• Anonymous. No personal information needs to be provided when creating an account.
• Unlimited. Without restriction on file size, speed, bandwidth, features, number of accounts, storage or anything else.
• Ad-free. You can communicate without any distracting and annoying ads.

“Clive” is the next level way to privately communicate with family and friends or to have a secure business meeting without the fear of having it recorded or hacked. Conceal-Live will be available Q4–2020.

Social Scene

Turan Khan, a Conceal community member, created a unique video that shows him in the middle of the ocean sending CCX to his brother in Istanbul. A great video showing the speed of Conceal.Network. Check it out (below) and give it a like!

How to transfer Money in the middle of Ocean just in 2 seconds? ( Oh yes it is possible ! )

Lithy, a longtime Conceal community member and recently promoted Guest Dev, wrote a fantastic Medium article titled “Bitcoin is finished… so what next?” that provided readers with a great overview of Conceal. If you are new to Conceal.Network, we highly recommend you read it!

Conceal conducted an AMA, hosted by Respect Trade for our Turkish community via Discord on June 27, 2020. Our head of Marketing, Okanist (aka Okan) was in attendance and answered several questions about Conceal.Network and crypto in general. If you are interested in learning more, please join the Respect Trade Discord here.

Conceal-Labs

We would like to welcome everyone to apply to Conceal-Labs, a standalone division with its own funding and its own projects. Each month a percentage of the community funds is set aside for the labs projects. The amount is variable and based on the needs but maybe capped to not exceed expense limits.

Application for a Labs project can be submitted by anyone that is not part of the CCX core team. The application can be for anything that has a tie to the CCX ecosystem. He/she must provide

• Project name
• Description of the project, so its clear what its aiming to achieve
• Funding needed in CCX
• Deadline and road-map for the project
• Detailed technical specifications that make it easier to decide if the project gets a green light

After the application is made, the core team will review it and decide if its in line with the rules and approved to be voted upon. The core team has a power of veto, so it can filter out applications that they consider would harm the project or are not good enough to go to voting. If the application is approved by the core team, then the application is submitted for community voting. If not, the application can be updated and the review process is repeated.

The community then votes if the application and the project get the green light. There can be multiple applications for the same or similar projects. If all applications meet the criteria, then the voting decides which one will get the green light.

The funding will in most cases be paid upon completion, when it’s also decided if the project meets the goals. If it does not, the project dev(s) may only get a part of the funding or none at all if they failed to reach the minimum standards. In some cases, the project will need funds released in intervals in order to be able to go on. In these cases, it will be decided how many intervals there will be and how much it is going to be released each interval.

If you would like to apply, please let us know and we can provide a sample application to use as an example when creating your own submission.

Recruitment

We need you! We are looking for C++ and QT developers for our community project.

Please reach out to any member of the Conceal Core team if you are interested or please pass this great opportunity on to family, friends or associates that have an interest in design. Remember, we solve problems that matter and develop technology that respects our users’ privacy. If you want to join the revolution or know someone that would be interested, just let us know or send them our way.

Final Thoughts

Being part of something bigger than yourself creates a rewarding purpose for you. A connection between your peers that elevates an everlasting motivation. Being driven not just by your own goals, but by the goals of others around you. Together you form a team, a community, driven to achieve something larger than you ever could on your own.

This unified group of individuals we call our team, our community, constitute the foundation of Conceal.Network. We proudly represent ourselves as freedom fighters, keeping financial and communication privacy alive for everyone, everywhere. Be ready to serve those that deserve your assistance and help spread the influence of dependable integrity and relentless effort, even in the face of adversity.

Your participation is always important. No matter how large or how small, your contributions matter, now and in the future. You have a purpose, you are part of a global team and community that is Conceal.Network.

Until next time.

Learn More: https://conceal.network/