Neutroncoin release v4.1.2 |An introduction & discussing development with “Chaozer” Adam Waldenberg of Swipp, Neutron & Unigrid.
Five days ago hanging out in our management channel on Discord, Adam “Chaozer” Waldenberg, had mentioned we were ready to make the 4.1.2 release for Neutron. After some time of watching this version run on Neutrons seed nodes we knew it was time to put it out in the wild. This version like the past two releases is special in that it is utilizing robin hood hashing. Something relatively new in the way of cryptocurrency function and efficiency. I have enjoyed seeing the progression of everything in development as Neutron’s codebase is organized cleaned up, modernized, and improved. There have been 9 releases in 2020 alone from Neutron. The challenges overcome with the progress made are truly a testament to the developer who has done so much to ensure longevity and a path forward for the Neutron Network.
I wanted to have a chat interview-style with Adam, so I could showcase his experience, work, skill, and vision with you all, as well as talking about some of his current projects. Let's do it! Here we go.
Me: So Adam, what is your background and when did you start developing software?
Adam: So, I started programming when I was 10 years old back on my Amiga 500 and I was active on the amiga demoscene. I worked as a developer before my university studies and studied computer science and human-computer interaction. During my studies, I was active on the cypherpunk mailing list for several years. After my studies, I have worked as a developer, data center operator, and part-time as a teacher in various computer science courses and lately also gotten back into cryptocurrencies.
Me: You mention lately that you have gotten back into crypto, you seem to love a good crypto problem, it's like a mystery to solve to you, at least that's been my observation, what do you like so much about cryptocurrency development?
Adam: I like tinkering with the blockchain code because even though some of the issues that can be encountered can be quite tricky, I find it quite relaxing from my normal daily routine. Most of my time I work in Java and its often a lot of fun to sit down a bit with C++ because it’s so much closer to the hardware and the operating system. It’s actually also one of the first languages I learned.
Me: So, it was pretty recent that you really made some changes in Neutron that made it difficult for some people to compile, it seemed to be related to older Linux distros, wsl2, fuse, modprobe fuse, new dependencies etc, from my perspective there were several people that thought the appimages were broken, and that we had made a bad release. It was frustrating for me as I knew they simply weren't doing things right because the process was different and new.
Adam: AppImages are not something new, it’s just that they have not historically been used by many cryptocurrency projects…. During the last year or two though, more and more projects are using them — which will make people more used to them. Early adoption always makes you stick out and it will always confuse some people. In the end, though, it’s the right direction to take.
Me: At first the appimages worked easily, after a certain change though, they no longer worked for old Linux distros. What was that change? And what was it that people were missing?
Adam: Nothing changed in the appimages themselves and they should work fine on old distros as fuse is loaded (that’s not always true on older distros though) the compilation problems were just caused by the move the new leveldb release which requires certain dependencies which we don’t really control (like cmake). When we update that submodule this may very well change again depending on what changes they make on their end. We no longer bundle the LevelDB code with the Neutron code base. Instead, it’s a git submodule referencing the official LevelDB repository. This will allow us to more easily follow the various new releases. In fact, the robin hood hashing and univalue dependencies are also git sub modules for the very same reason.
Me: And these are improvements that Bitcoin itself has not implemented yet?
Adam: Bitcoin has its own forked version of LevelDB with some local changes I believe. But even they have merged that code with a more recent LevelDB version now.
Neutron is using LevelDB 1.22 which is the last stable tagged release. However, there has been a lot of changes to the master branch. When they tag a new stable release we will update the submodule and move to the new version.
Me: Swipp also features all of these improvements and then some yes?
Adam: Swipp has some of this plus other improvements… But it also lacks some of the things added to Neutron.
Me: So the next step in plans to make Neutron run faster and more efficient as we move along towards the goal of getting away from QT Gui wallets, is to also implement Lightning Memory-Mapped Database (LMDB) — What can you tell us about this?
Adam: In theory, it should make the whole daemon run a lot smoother… and if we are really fortunate it might allow us to remove the memory map for the block index. Think of it as leveldb but with proper thread support and the ability for more throughput so it is completely experimental.
Me: Is there anyone else out there doing this?
Adam: I am not aware of any other bitcoin-derived cryptocurrency project that has implemented this.
Me: Would you say that Neutron is unique?
Adam: Neutron is quite unique but shares a lot of common parts with some other projects that originally seem to have forked from the same code base. In essence, the code base is a mix of bitcoin/peercoin/darkcoin. Some that come to mind are Euno, Swipp, and PhantomX. They are similar, but still not quite the same. Neutron is not a direct clone of anything, it is a bit of a mixed breed that has taken on its own path as we continually improve it.
Me: So, Unigrid, wow. What can we say about Unigrid?
Adam: Basically the goal of unigrid can be summed up with three words:
“fix the Internet”
Me: What are we fixing? What is broken?
Adam: The Internet was originally meant to be decentralized and shared. But as time has moved on it’s more and more in control of big data centers and cooperations like Amazon and Google. It’s hard to compete with them and to offer services to the public. They really have a stronghold on the market. The goal of Unigrid is to re-decentralize the Internet — so you don’t really have to know or care where your services are stored or hosted. Anyone will be able to contribute to the network, regardless of if you are contributing via a mobile phone or a big server in a data center, you can still contribute to the network and get payments back. The network will weigh your contribution and pay you accordingly.
Me: And for the readers what is your position in Unigrid?
Adam: Together with Evan “Dekm0101” Green, I am the lead caretaker and developer of the project. Our plan is to set up Unigrid as an open, democratic non-profit organization.
Me: So with the electronjs based GUI wallet that all three projects, Swipp, Unigrid, and Neutron will be using, I have discussed its functionality and showed some video of it in my last blog, this is another one of your creations correct?
Adam: When it comes to the electron wallet, I made the original implementation in Swipp which you can view in the electron-gui branch of the repository. I think we will eventually document the needed RPC changes and move this into a separate repository so other projects can move away from QT and the old UI implementation that originated from Bitcoin. Lately, Evan has put in a lot of work on the wallet with some pretty amazing results.
Me: Thanks for your time, In closing, is there anything you'd like to say to everyone?
Adam: We need more cypherpunks and/or developers that are interested in the technology rather than the monetary gain that cryptocurrencies involve. For anyone that want’s to join a very open community that wants to do something great for the world, not for monetary gain, but for principal reasons as was the driving motivation back when everybody hung out on the cypherpunk mailing list — I invite them to come join us.
Websites, Exchanges, & Services
neutroncoin.com, ntrn explorer, swippcoin.com, unigrid.org, altmarkets.io, txbit.io, graviex.net, vault.investments, midas.investments, midas exchange moneybyte.org, paws.fund harcomia.com, pandabot.fatpanda.club, masternodes.online
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