Peercoin Protocol Upgrade Reaches Over 75% Adoption

THE HAGUE, Netherlands and SAN FRANCISCO, CA – The Peercoin Foundation announced today that the Peercoin v0.12 protocol upgrade (Codename Ladybug) is coming into the final stretch, with more than 75% of Peercoin blocks already signaling their support. The v0.12 upgrade is an important protocol upgrade for Peercoin, the original Pioneer of Proof-of-Stake.

As previously announced by the Peercoin developers on February 3rd, the release of Peercoin v0.12 adopts the latest developments in the blockchain space, namely Schnorr signatures and Taproot, both of which will make Peercoin more scalable and its transactions cheaper and far more flexible, while enabling developers to implement more complex functionalities.

75% of block producers signal agreement with the proposed v0.12 hard fork

As of April 21st, over 75% of the last 1000 blocks are signaling support for the v0.12 protocol specification. One of the primary conditions for the fork has already been met, that of reaching the date of April 17th. The only condition that remains is for adoption to reach 90%. When adoption hits 90%, the network will switch to the new protocol rules.

If you are a minter (staker), or a user of the core reference wallet, go to peercoin.net and download the latest version. Instructions for upgrading are provided on the download page. The upgrade is seamless. More information about the upgrade can be found in the official announcement, including our fork watcher tool so you can track the current percentage.

You can also join in and earn 3-5% annually by staking with your peercoin. Here is a quick staking video tutorial to help get you started. If you have any questions, just stop by the community Telegram or Discord and ask. Community would be happy to help.

Latest Developments

Limiting Ordinal Inscriptions 

During the upgrade process, members of the community expressed concerns about ordinal inscriptions and the effect they could have on the blockchain. Ordinals are an exploit which allows users to add large amounts of arbitrary data to a transaction, potentially filling up the entire block space with a single transaction. This schema has recently become popular as a means of implementing NFTs on the Bitcoin blockchain. Since blockchains are not designed to carry such large amounts of data, preventative measures have been taken by Peercoin developers with update v0.12.3, which implements RFC-0027. RFC-0027 defines a new rule: a transaction shall be non-standard if any input has total witness data that exceeds 100kB.

Coinlib

Coinlib is a straightforward and modular library for Peercoin and other similar cryptocoins.

This library allows for the construction and signing of transactions and management of BIP32 wallets. Coinlib development is still in the early stages with first usable releases expected in about three months. Coinlib is being implemented from the ground up to serve a wider Peercoin ecosystem as the go-to library for implementation of all kinds of applications ranging from mobile wallets to second layer applications, as the library aims to implement out-of-the-box support for payment channels.

Marisima

Development of Marisima reaches beta. Marisima is a new UTXO server written in Dart. Marisima aims to be the universal backend for all the light clients, for example iOS and Android mobile Peercoin wallet. Marisima radically improves the developer experience as it is made with streaming and asynchronous communication in mind, allowing for responsive apps that fetch only minimal amounts of backend data.

Both Coinlib and Marisima are part of the ongoing efforts by the Peercoin Foundation to implement a toolset required to build the next generation of Peercoin apps and services. Both projects will be open sourced shortly.

About Peercoin

Peercoin is the original Proof-of-Stake blockchain. It is a decade-old, fairly distributed, open-source, and community-driven project. Peercoin is designed around the concepts of energy and economical sustainability, both made possible by its innovation of Proof-of-Stake consensus.

Peercoin is a peer-to-peer protocol in the truest sense because, unlike most blockchains, all coin owners have the power to run a full node, produce blocks, and earn peercoin as a reward. Proof-of-stake is used for Peercoin’s blockchain security, while proof-of-work is only used to distribute new coins for the purpose of creating a wider distribution. Peercoin’s Project Leader Peerchemist says:

“Peercoin has the important distinction of having a continuous distribution of new coins, ten years after its launch in 2012. And Peercoin’s innovation of proof-of-stake, used to maintain chain security, makes it energy efficient and decentralized.”

About Peercoin Foundation

Development of Peercoin v0.12 and other aforementioned projects are sponsored by the Peercoin Foundation, a non-profit organization established in 2018 with the mission of promoting and supporting the continued development and overall progression of the Peercoin project.

The Peercoin Foundation is sponsored solely from community donations. Please donate to the Foundation to enable it to help improve the general Peercoin ecosystem.

Official Links:

Website – https://www.peercoin.net/

Twitter – https://twitter.com/PeercoinPPC
Blog – https://www.peercoin.net/blog/

Forum – https://talk.peercoin.net/

Telegram – https://telegram.me/peercoin

Discord – https://discord.gg/m294ReV

Foundation – https://www.peercoin.net/foundation

Contact Information:

Email: [email protected] 

Disclaimer: The information contained in this press release is for information purposes only and does not constitute investment advice or a solicitation to purchase or invest. The price of Peercoin can be extremely volatile and can fluctuate rapidly in response to market conditions. Before making any investment decisions, you should carefully consider your investment objectives, level of experience, and tolerance for risk.