We have many updates for the community after this weekend, so we decided to write up an official statement on our progress:
The local fork simulation occurred over the weekend and went very well. No errors were observed. Next weekend we will do a public fork simulation. More info on how to join is forthcoming.
Alpha testing of the ZClassic Electrum wallet occured in our public discord over the weekend. We tested the wallet on Mac, Windows, and Linux. The testing went extremely well: a few issues were discovered and have now been corrected. This wallet is still only capable of transparent transactions; our developers are hard at work on getting the shielded transactions working. Pending any roadblocks, a fully functional beta should be released for public testing later this week.
We have been addressing the issues in the Eleos wallet as well and are preparing to release a final version of this for ZClassic soon.
Our Operations Lead, @CryptoJake22 will be presenting at a conference on Jan. 27 about Bitcoin Private and its utility for business owners. Bitcoin Private will be sponsoring the event so that registration is entirely free. We are extremely excited to be involved. See the event here.
We have named multiple project leads for Bitcoin Private, including Lead Blockchain Developer (jc), Lead Wallet Developer (ch4otic), Lead Marketers (Giuseppe and Mike), Lead Designer (JosephT), and Support Team Lead (Denni). These BTCP contributors had all shown exceptional commitment over the last few weeks and made it abundantly clear they were perfect for these positions. Each lead is actively recruiting users on our public discord so please go there and reach out to them if you are interested in working with us.
We also have legal counselors on staff now (Jesse and Peter).
We have been thinking a lot about how to ensure BTCP is supported by exchanges. Given the current crypto environment, this is not an easy task. The exchanges are overloaded by new registrations and verifications. Based on this, we have decided to have the fork occur 4 weeks after the fork date announcement. We want to be clear: the fork code is ready for implementation, but this added lead time will drastically increase our chances of getting onto exchanges. If anyone in the community has direct contacts at exchanges they would like to share, we would be very grateful. Most exchanges charge a BTC fee which can be quite substantial and speaking directly with an exchange representative will allow us to get more accurate information on how to get listed.
We are launching a large fundraising program in order to pay for exchanges (50% of fund), development (25%), and marketing (25%). If you are interested in investing, please use the addresses on the right side of this page. You can also reach out directly via our telegram or discord if you are interested in investing.
Finally, we are going to launch a program titled the “Voluntary Miner Contribution Program” in order to raise funds. Essentially, we are asking ZClassic miners to donate their hashing power to us until 50,000 ZCL is raised. For every ZCL earned, the miners will receive 1.25 BTCP after the fork is complete. In conjunction, we will be setting up a multi-signature wallet to be governed by the community (2 people from the community and 2 from the miners) to ensure these raised funds are spent properly and transparently. We have reached out to the mining pools to gauge interest and are working on the code required to make this happen. Hopefully it can be launched within the next 10-14 days.
Regards,
The Bitcoin Private/ZClassic Team
https://www.reddit.com/r/BitcoinPrivate/comments/7s09tb/1212018_bitcoin_private_update/