PRE-ANN.txt

[PRE-ANN] Wisp Project [WISP] - SpectreCoin fork - Community driven - Anonymity


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[size=20pt]Wisp Project [WISP][/size]

[img]https://raw.githubusercontent.com/wispproject/graphics/master/Wisp_Logo-200x200.png[/img]
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[size=12pt][u][b]Links[/b][/u][/size]
[list]
[li]Discord invite: https://discordapp.com/invite/2YUewTX[/li]
[li]Github Home: https://github.com/wispproject[/li]
[li]Documentation Wiki: https://github.com/wispproject/doc/wiki[/li]
[li]Twitter: https://twitter.com/WISP_Project[/li]
[/list]


[size=12pt][u][b]Overview[/b][/u][/size]
Wisp will be a fork of [url=https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2103301.0]SpectreCoin[/url] (XSPEC), a privacy-focused cryptocurrency. This is a [i]preliminary announcement[/i] (PRE-ANN) of Wisp, that should give you a general idea of what this project is about. A more detailed introduction of the project will follow after the fork has been implemented and the wallet has been released.

The Wisp project is an initiative of a group of individuals with the goal of developing a privacy-focused cryptocurrency in a community-driven manner, without a central leadership but based on collaboration. The active Wisp community consists of developers, blockchain fundamentalists, anarchists, freethinkers and artists. We believe in privacy, freedom and decentralization, and we want to build the technology, infrastructure and ecosystem for a cryptocurrency that implements these ideas.

Wisp is not to be confused with [url=https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2561885.0]Wispr[/url] (WSP), which has a similar name but is an entirely different project. We kindly apologize to the Wispr people for choosing a similar name, but we found that our name was a reasonable choice because Wispr (from [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whispering]whispering[/url]) and Wisp (in the sense of [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will-o%27-the-wisp]Will-o'-the-wisp[/url]) are two different words for two different things, and both come with their own connotations that are suitable for the respective topics of the two projects.

We use Discord as our main communication platform (invite link above). The purpose of the channels should be self-explanatory; additionally we have a "contributor_chat" channel that can be used by [i]approved contributors[/i] for focused discussions regarding the development of the project. This channel is readable for everyone for the sake of transparency. There are no hidden/private channels in our Discord to make sure that everybody can get the full picture of what is going on in order to contribute.


[size=12pt][u][b]Background[/b][/u][/size]
Unfortunately, the past months have been very rough for SpectreCoin, which has ultimately lead to this fork. There has been a lot of FUD regarding our core developer JBG, who is now a member of the Wisp project. The FUD was mainly based on a supposedly low speed of development and a lack of progress, which then escalated into personal attacks and criticism against JBG himself.

At the same time, the original founder of SpectreCoin, [i]Mandica[/i], came back after a long time of absence and reclaimed the leadership of the (prior to this) community-driven SpectreCoin project. Along with that, she also announced her new plans for the project to implement a new funding method and hire additional devs. This method would have meant that a certain percentage of the block reward of each block would go to a wallet held by the SpectreCoin leadership. For some of the SpectreCoin members who strongly believe in decentralization (among them JBG) this was unacceptable, so we decided to continue making a coin without such a fee.

At the current moment, the plans of SpectreCoin to implement such a funding method seem to have subsided, but we decided to fork anyway because there are too many personal differences and incompatible philosophies regarding the project and its development strategy.


[size=12pt][u][b]About the fork[/b][/u][/size]
The fork will be a typical hardfork, which means that all balances on the SpectreCoin blockchain will also be valid on the Wisp chain, at the moment of the fork. The exact date of the fork has yet to be announced (in the upcoming official announcement), but we expect it to happen within the next few weeks. In order to receive your Wisp balance, you will need to have your SpectreCoin balance in your local SpectreCoin (or Wisp) wallet at the moment of the fork.


[size=12pt][u][b]Outlook[/b][/u][/size]
We are currently in the process of preparing the fork and launching the new project. The fork is being implemented by JBG. In the meanwhile, we are setting up our collaboration platform on Github, which will be used for code, documentation, the website, graphics and feature requests. As many people in our community are not familiar with Github yet, it will take some time for everyone to get used to it. A very basic introduction to how we are using Github for Wisp can be found here: https://github.com/wispproject/doc/wiki/Using-Github

After Github has been set up, we aim to offer bounties for development tasks (or other creative work) in order to incentivize many developers to join our project, which is necessary to decentralize development and to achieve wide collaboration for our common goal of creating a widely used private cryptocurrency.

After the fork has happened, JBG will continue his previous work on overhauling the wallet interface. This will be a standalone sub-project of Wisp, referred to as [b]Wisp UI[/b] for now, that will be portable across all cryptocurrencies compatible with the Bitcoin RPC interface (including SpectreCoin, for example). This will further drive the collaboration with other projects, in order to build an intuitive user interface for privacy-centric coins, which is one of the key challenges for achieving mass adoption of cryptocurrencies nowadays.

Further, our plan is that Wisp will be exclusively listed on decentralized exchanges (DEX) like Bisq (https://bisq.network/), as these are the only way to provide a truly private and decentralized ecosystem to our users. Making these DEX the only option will bring the necessary volume to these markets, and will hopefully also drive the general adoption of decentralized exchanges! :)

If you are interested in joining our project, please join our Discord server linked above. Important announcements will also be made here on Bitcointalk. Stay tuned!  ;)