With the new year in full swing, we’re taking a look back at what made 2023 such a historic year! We achieved significant milestones, launched groundbreaking features, and strengthened our position in the industry. Not only did we witness the successful implementation of key deliverables, but we also saw our community thrive and expand.
SHELTR
Arguably the most impactful development that we saw in 2023 was the release of SHELTR. This innovative mobile wallet has redefined the user experience within the Ghost ecosystem, offering a seamless blend of functionality and accessibility. As a Progressive Web Application (PWA), SHELTR eliminated the need for traditional app downloads, allowing users to add it directly to their home screens from a web browser, even gaming consoles.
SHELTR’s introduction marked a significant leap in blockchain wallet security and autonomy. With its emphasis on 100% self-custody, users have complete control over their keys and addresses, all of which are generated and stored on their own devices. SHELTR stands out for its robust security measures, including cutting-edge AES encryption and user-friendly mnemonic recovery options that are compatible with ghost-core, offering users not just safety but also peace of mind.
User experience is at the forefront of SHELTR’s design. The platform supports coldstaking with one-click activation, making it the most user-friendly wallet for Ghost. Additionally, features like QR code scanning, URI payment support, and multi-language support has further increased SHELTR adoption. To read more about SHELTR, read the full article about its release, here.
WRAPPED GHOST ON POLYGON
On August 10, 2023, Ghost stepped into the world of web3 with the launch of Wrapped Ghost ($wGHOST) on Polygon, a major addition to our ecosystem and a huge milestone in our history.
Trading under the ticker symbol ($wGHOST), this historic achievement allows users to access endless DeFi possibilities and the enormous liquidity Polygon has to offer. For Polygon, this is great news still to this day, too. There are very few privacy focused projects within their ecosystem. This has given Ghost a sort of first mover advantage over the competition. Transacting privately and across blockchains has never been better. To read more about the launch of Wrapped Ghost, click here.
With Wrapped Ghost live on Polygon, this marked the completion of Phase One, as Phase Two, the decentralized two-way bridge, was gearing up for launch. Months and months of testing and code review went into testing the bridge to ensure security was absolute.
On September 16, 2023, our decentralized two-way bridge went live and was successfully integrated into the SHELTR Wallet. We spared no effort in creating a robust minting and burning mechanism that not only guarantees the safety of your assets, but also places control firmly in the hands of the community. Only approved signers may call the Mint function, thus eliminating the possibility of bad actors. Our bridge leverages cryptographic verifications, signature validation, and access control mechanisms to ensure the security of every transaction. Again, this ensures that only authorized entities can execute the minting process, safeguarding your assets.
With the launch of our bi-directional bridge, users have a virtually endless choice of web3 wallet options when it comes to connecting their wallets with the SHELTR interface. The SHELTR wallet supports all wallets from MetaMask and Trust to Coinbase Wallet and Safe to name a few. In fact, the connection interface within SHELTR currently supports over 280 web3 wallets!
Speaking of wallets, with Wrapped Ghost on Polygon, you can now store your tokens on hardware wallets such as Ledger, Trezor and the likes! What this really means, is that if you wanted to wrap all of your Mainnet $GHOST coins for $wGHOST, you can now store them on any hardware wallet that supports an EVM!
With the release of Wrapped Ghost and our two-way bridge, these achievements have accelerated our growth as an industry player and has opened countless opportunities and collaborations. Our ecosystem is constantly growing as we continue to build on our blockchain’s foundation. Read the full release article on the two-way bridge, here.
Ghost Secret
Ghost Secret, a precursor to the much anticipated Ghost Chat, is an encrypted paste bin for self-destructing messages.
Users can make use of this neat tool by entering a message to be passed onto to whoever. You have complete control over the half-life of the message and access details. Once viewed, the message is permanently deleted, depending on the parameters the author assigned during creation. Ghost Secret is encrypted via AES-256 and doesn’t store any information, cookies, or site data. Discover more, here.
New Exchange Listings
As part of our project’s values, we have distanced ourselves with exchanges who force KYC/AML onto its users. We believe in a free and private exchange amongst individuals without prying eyes. With that being said, $GHOST was listed on two new exchanges last year, NONKYC & CrexSoft.
- NONKYC — Trading pairs include:
GHOST/XMR, GHOST/BTC, GHOST/USDT, GHOST/MATIC, GHOST/ETH. The Monero trading pair is our first trading market of this kind. We are very excited about this market. Special thanks to NONKYC during the launch of Wrapped Ghost as they helped facilitate a marketplace and a makeshift bridge until the decentralized bridge was launched. We are proud to call them an Industry Partner.
- CrexSoft — Trading pairs include:
GHOST/BTC, GHOST/RUR, GHOST/USD. CrexSoft is a Russian based exchange focused on convenience, simplicity and fast service. No KYC/AML data collection and low fees make it a good option for traders who are interested in crypto-fiat swaps.
Ghost + IvendPay
We were over the moon with joy about this partnership. IvendPay has long been an industry leader when it comes to payment systems within the crypto industry. They have over 400+ locations accepting crypto as a form of payment, and $GHOST is among one of them.
In late 2023, IvendPay partnered with Binance Pay. Binance Pay is a payment service offered by Binance, one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges! This partnership will provide IvendPay’s users with exposure to a wider range of supported assets, allowing for $GHOST to tap in to this additional exposure.
This was and still is a significant development for Ghost, as it opens up new avenues for adoption and use in real-world transactions. With IvendPay’s robust payment infrastructure, $GHOST users can now use their coins to make purchases at brick-and-mortar stores, e-commerce websites, and vending machines that accept cryptocurrencies as payment.
More recently, Ghost had a community member travel to India for vacation. This member stayed at the Palm Resort Hotel which uses IvendPay’s POS to accept payments. This person was able to anonymously pay for his hotel stay using $GHOST! This was just one of many examples spawning from the real world use case of this strategic partnership.
Core Maintenance / On-Chain Governance
As we continue to monitor our code and add to our ever growing ecosystem, we learn new things and are able to upgrade certain protocols or areas withing the codebase. Most notable, consensus layer upgrades throughout time. Explicitly speaking, back in 2023, we teased that we were working on getting on-chain governance implemented into the blockchain as part of our commitment to decentralization. The good news on this deliverable is that we completed our research on how this governance model will work, but certain deliverables have taken priority over the development of the actual model. Be that as it may, we are finishing up our testing phase, which should conclude by the end of Q1, 2024.
More on this, earlier in the year, extensive functional tests and logical assessments were conducted to guarantee the smooth integration of On-chain Governance with RingCT, considering that both protocols operate at the consensus level. This meticulous testing phase was crucial to ensure that the Governance mechanisms would be aligned with RingCT’s advanced privacy features, maintaining system integrity and trust. Furthermore, these tests were pivotal in identifying and addressing potential challenges in protocol interoperability, laying a solid foundation for a more secure and efficient system.
In addition, given Bitcoin’s latest releases, we decided to match our codebase to be up to date with the latest upstream. This will include adding Taproot to the codebase, but not fully implemented. We still have to take into consideration on how Taproot will become compatible for Ghost’s code, explicitly speaking, how Taproot will interoperate with RingCT, Bulletproofs, and Dandelion++. With every new protocol added to the consensus layer, rigorous conflicts have to be resolved and tested for in testnet before we ever merge to the main branch.
Ghost turns 3 years old
On June 22nd 2023, Ghost turned 3 years old! We celebrated with another successful baking competition and enjoyed seeing the delicious creations our community baked. The winners of last year’s baking contest are below.
Following our 3rd birthday, as per our consensus, Ghost observed its 2nd block reward reduction at block height 788400! At the time of writing, the current block subsidy is now 10.8 $GHOST, down form 11.4 $GHOST. The current reward distribution is now as follows, 5.400 $GHOST for Veterans, 3.672 $GHOST for the Miner, and 1.728 $GHOST for the Development Fund.
On going research
As we delve deeper into our research on expanding the maximum ring size beyond its current limit of 32, we’re thoroughly assessing the potential implications on the blockchain’s functionality. Specifically, how an increased ring size might affect transaction fees and verification times. Larger ring sizes, while boosting privacy, could potentially lead to higher transaction fees and longer verification times due to the increased computational complexity.
In tandem with our research into potentially increasing the max ring size, we’re concurrently exploring avenues to upgrade Bulletproofs. This is to efficiently manage the heightened computational complexities that would arise from the proposed limit increase. As we delve into this, our focus is on enhancing the Bulletproofs’ algorithm to ensure it can accommodate larger transaction sets without compromising on processing speed or network scalability.
This upgrade is not just about scaling up; it’s about smart scaling, where we aim to optimize transaction verification times while bolstering privacy protections. Our team is actively engaging in advanced cryptographic research, aiming to implement solutions that would allow our network to handle these increased demands seamlessly. This dual approach ensures that any increase in ring size is matched with a proportional enhancement in our transaction proof, keeping our blockchain robust and efficient.
Closing
Its no question that Ghost entered new territory with the releases such as SHELTR and Wrapped Ghost. We’ve created new strategic partnerships that will further grow our ecosystem, cementing our foundation as an industry player. Just as we are looking back, we have our sights set forward and are focusing our attention on our core competencies to continue to deliver on our project’s values.
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