(graphics courtesy of DreamTim)
Preamble
Ahoy Pirates! November was a great month for Pirate. In addition to project highlights on the PiratePay app, we have had some really terrific and insightful podcast interviews last month. Don't miss out on the Pirate Chain interviews on The Survival Podcast and the Gold, Guns 'n Goat podcast. This is also the last monthly newsletter for 2020, so we've updated our roadmap to highlight Pirate's accomplishments despite this tumultuous year. The editorial at the end of this newsletter reviews some of the noteworthy achievements from each month of 2020.
Project Updates
PiratePay is in beta testing
The Pirate team is proud to announce that PiratePay is in beta testing.
What is PiratePay? The PiratePay Payment Gateway application is a fully decentralized, open source payment gateway that allows stores to accept $ARRR on their websites and online stores. PiratePay removes the need for a middleman and is built with the utmost level of privacy and security in mind.
The PiratePay app is designed to be more intuitive and more secure by powering the $ARRR wallet with an interface that offers price conversions, transaction records and increased security features such as Oauth2 authentication, all on an elegant and clear graphical dashboard. Importantly, a job queue manager monitors transactions and communicates with your store’s API to update the status of order payments.
There are several benefits for accepting $ARRR as a form of payment/donation together with PiratePay. First, risk is reduced as $ARRR cannot be charged back. This means no hefty chargeback fees, penalties, suspended accounts or fraudulent transactions to deal with. Second, there are no middleman fees. By using PiratePay the store owner processes all transactions in house thus saving on a myriad of third party fees including transaction, processing, or service fees. Using PiratePay as a gateway empowers the store owner to be in full control of all wallets, coins, and keys without risking having a third party in control of the coins. All your transactions will transfer from your customers’ wallets directly to yours. Meaning no third party will ever be in control of your coins. Perhaps of most value, is the ease of use of PiratePay. Once setup, the PiratePay app starts processing and monitoring all transactions without effort needed. The app instantaneously relays order status and updates saving the store owner time and effort.
Sign up for beta testing or follow the progress in the discord pirate-pay-testing channel.
Wallet Updates
Easy 1-click Wallet Installation Scripts
Firstmate Kaks has created scripts that simplify first time installation of Pirate Ocean or the third party Verus desktop wallets. There are two scripts:
The wallet script will automate,
- wallet and bootstrap download,
- bootstrap extraction,
- zcash parameters installaion, and
- wallet auto-launch with fast block syncing.
The bootstrap script will automate,
- bootstrap downloading,
- deleting existing (block and chainstate) folders, and
- bootstrap extraction.
How do you decide which script to use? Here's a guide,
The wallet script is for you if,
- You are a first time wallet users (i.e. you have never had a pirate wallet before), use this script and everything is automated for you.
(Note: if you are already running a pirate wallet and only just downloaded an update, you do not need to use this script)
The bootstrap script is for you if,
- You are are a more advanced user who already downloaded and installed the wallet successfully and wants to accelerate the blockchain sync, or
- You have issues syncing the blockchain with your wallet (for both current and new wallet users)
On our github, you can download the latest Pirate Ocean wallet and scripts for your operating system, and you will also find windows/linux/mac instructions on how to run the scripts.
To make it even simpler for you, Kaks created video tutorials for Windows and Linux operating systems
Video Tutorial For Windows
Video Tutorial for Linux
Thank you, Kaks for simplifying the process!
New Discord Bot
We have a new tipbot on discord! This fun "reactdrop" tipbot allows you to tip anyone who reacts to your post within a specified time and with a user defined emoji! Activate the tipbot with the command !arrrtip reactdrop [total ARRR to distribute] [time limit] [emoji reaction].
In the example here, Firstmate Diablo activated the tipbot with a total of 100 ARRR to be shared between everyone who reacts with the :treasure: emoji within 5 minutes. Try it out, share some ARRR or hang out in Pirate discord to catch the next ARRR reactdrop!
Pirate Roadmap update
The Pirate Chain Roadmap has been updated to reflect all our accomplishments for 2020 and some of the irons we have forging in the fire for 2021.
Here's a snapshot of the roadmap. Bookmark the roadmap page and check back later to follow the progress.
Pirate Fireside Chat meeting replays:
Catch up on the weekly Pirate Fireside Chats,
- November 4th, interview with special guest Mogul discussing internet privacy.
- November 11th, interview with Verus team discussing defi and the potential for ethereum-wrapped ARRR.
- November 18th, interview !Ratstang discussing the PiratePay app.
- November 25th, interview with Komodo discussing AtomicDex.
Social Media
New Social Media launch ARRR Contest
Flote: https://flote.app/pirate Mastodon: https://mastodon.social/@arrr
We will also be uploading most of our videos first on Bittube https://bittube.tv/profile/Pirate
Follow us on these 3 alternative social media platforms, submit your usernames on discord, and 5 lucky random winners will get 100 ARRR each.Phenomenal Draeth interview with The Survival Podcast
This is a fantastic podcast between Draeth and Jackspirko. Listen to their thoughts and discussion about human rights and the importance of privacy in the pursuit of liberty.
I will be honest when I got this interview request I was not really excited. I thought oh boy another crypto, big deal. Tune in today so see why this is actually one of the biggest steps to true liberty to be taken in a long time. https://t.co/OaPdoW6aOz
— Jack Spirko⚡️ (@TheSurvivalPodc) November 4, 2020
Listen to the podcast here
Gold, Goats 'n Guns podcast interview with Crypto Rich
"Bitcoin is all the rage right now, angering gold bugs, drawing attention of corporate sponsors. But what is lurking below the surface is the issue of privacy. In a dramatic push for the end of privacy governments and corporations around the world are deep into building a medical passport system that bypasses national and local governments and makes a mockery of the ideas of human individuality and dignity.
Into this discussion are the so-called 'privacy coins' within the cryptocurrency ecosystem. What are privacy coins, which are the best ones and how does the technology at the 'layman plus' level work? That's what my friend Crypto Rich attempt to unpack for you today.
Because with them building a technocracy of ultimate control the only way to fight that is by removing as much capital from their system as possible, preserving not only wealth by vitality and spirit for the future."
Listen to Tom Luongo's podcast here.
Roderick Brackett reviews Cryptovigilante report on Pirate Chain
Many Pirates have heard about the famous 72 page report on $ARRR by the Cryptovigilante group. While the report is exclusive only to Cryptovigilante subscribers, Roderick Brackett goes over the report here on his Youtube channel!
BPSAA Announcement
Last month, the Blockchain Privacy and Security Adoption Alliance (BPSAA) announced it's 8th newest member, Burstcoin!
Burstcoin was the first cryptocurrency to use the Proof-of-capacity (PoC) consensus algorithm to harness the free space on your hard drive for mining and receving a passive income. Notably, Burstcoin was the first cryptocurrency to implement Turing complete smart contracts, and the first to run a program on top of a blockchain. It also has the distinction of being the first to successfully perform an Atomic Cross-Chain Transaction (ACCT).
Burstcoin possesses all the features that are needed to run decentralized programs and services on its public blockchain. Current development efforts are focused on making Burstcoin’s smart contract functionality more accessible by creating code libraries. The team recently leveraged the marketplace and asset exchange functionality to create a decentralized peer-to-peer cryptocurrency exchange, BTDex. Pirate Chain is proud to announce that as its first activity upon joining the BPSAA, Burstcoin added $ARRR to their BTDex!
Last words from the editor
In this last edition of the newsletter for 2020, I want to review some of the highlights. Despite the turmoil in the world, the Pirate Chain has made significant advances this year. Let's take a look back on this year.
In January, we started the year with the release of the Pirate Chain Whitepaper 2.0. Named The Pirate Code, this treatise was a collaborative effort between Captain Draeth, Fishyguts, JL, Kosius and Flexatron. This is a comprehensive whitepaper covering every fundamental and technical aspect of Pirate Chain and explores the history of monetary privacy and presents the need for privacy in digital currencies. The paper provides an easily digestible explanation of how Monero works and highlights some misses. The superiority of the zk-SNARKs algorithm, and the inadequate implementation by ZCash to protect privacy. In the second half of the paper, we recap the origins of Pirate Chain and explore the key components of Pirate Chain
Take a look at this excellent piece of writing put out by the Pirate team here.
February saw two landmark events for Pirate Chain. First, Pirate underwent its third halving. Mining rewards were programmatically reduced from 128 to 64 on February 28th, increasing the scarcity of $ARRR. The second important event was the formation of the Blockchain Privacy and Security Adoption Alliance (BPSAA). Together with co-founders Sentinel, Ether-1 and TurtleNetwork, Pirate Chain formed the BPSAA. Today, the BPSAA is an incorporated non-profit organization that has doubled in strength to 8 members including Komodo, Ergo, Burst and DragonChain. At its core, the BPSAA is a thinktank consisting of luminaries from every member project. The BPSAA also boasts of a social media reach of over 325,000 across all platforms.
In March, the privacy focused GhostShip Operating System was released. Ghostship was the visionary idea by firstmate Lootz. Designed to be an operating system bootable from a flash drive, Ghostship is a private and secure environment enabled with VPN and Tor capabilities to encrypte and obfuscate all outgoing traffic. The initiative was first ideated to protect Pirate wallet users from common weakness points where privacy may be compromised. Today, GhostShip 2.0 is actively under development.
April was a month with multiple announcements. First, let’s revisit the rousing Pirate video and theme song
I can never get enough of watching this video.
In this month, contributing developer grewalsatinder announced his project on SubAtomic Swaps (later named Shurli). Shurli is a gui to SubAtomicSwaps (distinctly different from AtomicSwaps), which is an over the counter stream of microtransaction swaps that occur in small increments. This is the backbone algorithm that can SubAtomic Swap apps can be built on top of. Currently, efforts are underway to build a custom PirateDex that specializes in privacy coins only. Another important development this month was the launch of firstmate Kosius’s companion Pirate Chain website, https://www.pirate.si. Notably, Kosius did a great job archiving the birth and history of Pirate Chain on a timeline page. Take a look at the timeline here, https://www.pirate.si/timeline.
In the month of May, Pirate Chain made a monumental contribution to the world of cryptocurrencies. The Pirate Chain team released the world’s first z-z transaction-only mobile wallet. This is an important development as mobile wallets are important for adoption of a digital currency. A mobile wallet untethers the user from the shackles of a desktop computer wallet and currency can now be carried in the pocket and used without geographical locks. To increase awareness and adoption of the Pirate Mobile Wallet, a marketing giveaway campaign was conducted in June for all Pirate Mobile Wallet early adopters.
July was the month where the market maker campaign was initiated by Firstmate Diablo. This effort couldn’t have come at a better time. With the increased interest in Pirate in recent months, the increased liquidity brought on by the market makers has been greatly beneficial.
Every August is a special month for Pirate. On August 29th this year, we celebrated Pirate Chain’s 2nd birthday! As a “birthday present” for Pirate’s birthday CHMEX launched a Pirate anonset website. This site reports the anonymity set of Pirate Chain “live” with every block that is minted. Look at the screenshot below for the latest Pirate anonset at the time of publication. Another notable event in August is the new bot installed that bridges conversatipon between Pirate Chain Discord and Pirate Chain Telegram. With this, communications on both platforms can be had together as one big Pirate family.
September saw the listing of Pirate Chain on Polarity Dex. Polarity is a hybrid decentralized exchange (Dex) where your coins are not held on the exchange as would be done with a centralized exchange. However, the coins are not held on your computer either. Instead Polarity creates a wallet for you in the intermediary Polarity Vault, separate from Polarity Exchange. Think of Polarity Vault as a multicoin wallet that where you control the private keys.
October was an important month for Pirate Chain. In the 2 years of Pirate’s young years, we have never had a dedicated core developer. We are so honored and proud to have onboarded firstmate CryptoForge. Prior to this, he created the Pirate Mobile wallet. In fact, one of his first contributions upon coming onboard was to release the faster Pirate Mobile wallet 2.0.
In November, we released PiratePay for beta testing. As mentioned earlier in this update, PiratePay is a payment gateway app that allows merchants to accept payment with $ARRR. The app is also designed to be intuitive and easy to use, thus saving the merchant time and money.
The most important highlight in December was Pirate’s 4th halving event that occurred on December 2nd. Mining rewards were reduced from 32 to 16, thus effectively reducing the emission supply.
What a year, every highlight was achieved through the hardwork of a Pirate. We are proud of every milestone and we look forward to charting new waters.
Lastly, I want to close 2020 with well wishes to all Pirates and your loved ones.
And to all, for the new year, may we enjoy Fair Winds and Following Seas!
Pirate Anonymity Set
Every newsletter ends with the latest anonymity set size of Pirate Chain at the time of publication. Why is this important? Every privacy technology hides transactions amongst others in an anonymity set. Monero's maximum anonymity set is 11, Lelantus's maximum anonymity set is capped at 65k. The anonymity set of Pirate Chain can be tracked in real time at the Pirate Chain Privacy Stats website made by CHMEX.
At the time of publication, the anonymity set size of Pirate Chain is:
Pirate Chain
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Twitter : https://twitter.com/PirateChain
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Telegram : https://t.me/piratechain/
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Flote : https://flote.app/pirate
Mastodon : https://mastodon.social/@arrr
TikTok : https://www.tiktok.com/@pirateblockchain
Pinterest : https://www.pinterest.com/piratechain/
Reddit : https://www.reddit.com/r/piratechain
BitTube : https://bittube.tv/profile/Pirate/about
BitChute: https://www.bitchute.com/channel/pirate-chain/
Medium : https://medium.com/piratechain
Line: http://line.me/ti/g/e8mOfEV4T7
Keybase: https://keybase.io/team/pirate_arrr
Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/PirateChain
LinkedIn : https://www.linkedin.com/company/piratechain
I just love your work and there is a lot of money waiting ARRRGH to be found, i think the biggest problem is that people don't have any idea how important privacy is. But i think they will learn after they hyperinflate the global Fiat system and central bankers have all the power to go extremely negative on interest rates and they can select the people who are saving too much,no cash no private transaction in mainstream, and they have the old gold/silver confiscations and when AI is reporting every puplic coin owners wallets and report goes to IRS, i mean after all that there would stand only coins like this. What makes you better than WOWNERO and AEON? these are all like MONERO 1.5 or even 2.0?
This reminds me off piratebay torrent giant is there a connection to them?