Quote
Cloak Community,
First and foremost - THANK YOU to everyone who has helped with the RC1 Public Beta tests! They have been successful and we've got some great info from them
We wanted to post a little update on the RC1 Public Test and the ongoing Internal Cloak Security Audit. Testing has gone very well indeed and we have collected a lot of data (and a few new bug reports) to help us fine tune the Cloak Shield settings for release. The bugs discovered during testing have all been minor GUI issues apart from a Cloak Shield packet relay issue discovered during testing. We believe that fixing this issue will also improve the PoSA transaction negotiation problems which were causing the occasional PoSA3 send to fail, meaning that the user had to manually retry the send. We also have some GUI changes to make for the 'status' area at the bottom of the wallet. Currently we use a series of numbered PNG images, but the 'final' incoming wallet release will create these icon images dynamically at startup.
The security audit is now nearing completion and we've been receiving regular status updates from the auditor. No weaknesses or potential exploits have been found as yet, but there are one or two small tweaks to make with the initial connection of nodes to the PoSA network in order to avoid leaking a PoSA session key. The auditor will cover the issue and proposed solution in the audit report.
Now, let's talk about 'Open Source'...
There has been some discussion on the current 'closed source' nature of the latest Cloak updates (CloakShield and PoSA3 specifically). Those of you have been in the Cloak Community for some time, will be aware that the original team abandoned the Cloak project in Autumn of 2014, and many of them got involved in ShadowCoin (SDC). Since then, Cashmen has worked hard to assemble a talented team of people from the Crypto scene, who have have been working hard on making good on the original grand promises made by the previous Cloak Team. The hard work has certainly paid off, and PoSA3 is now ready for full release on the 'live' CloakCoin network. Our concern with open sourcing the project at this point in time is primarily related to concerns of instant 'Cloak' clones, using our PoSA3 technology. We'd like to avoid 'PenumbraCoin' popping up anytime soon, but we also appreciate that technology, like knowledge, wants to be free
We've been having some internal development discussions relating to open sourcing and have been mulling over ideas that would go some way towards pleasing everyone. We've been considering open-sourcing portions of the code or possibly using a delayed release schedule for sourcecode releases. This would mean that source for previous releases is made available as a new release is made public. Handling releases of sourcecode in this way will enable Cloak to retain a period of exclusivity for new features, while still allowing the larger cryptocurrency community to benefit from our work. We've avoided the need for external [venture] capital to be injected into funding development so far. We feel that this is important for maintaining freedom within the Cloak project, to innovate and adapt without the fear of funding being pulled if we move in a direction our investors don't agree with. If people wish to donate to the project, then that will of course help greatly, but we will not 'extract' fees to fund development and marketing. Aside from the sour taste this would leave in our mouth (we're freedom junkies!), it also leads us a few steps down the road towards a legal quagmire. In a way, you guys are our backers, you're the ones who have chosen to put your faith in us, and the original promise of the CloakCoin project. Some of you have held onto your stash of Cloak, despite the cries of 'fool!' and 'bagholder!'. Others have followed the progress of the Cloak project, in the hands of a new development team and decided to come along for the ride. To all of you, thank you for the support. You are Cloak as much as we are Cloak. This project is ours to shape, and together we will make something beautiful! Let's continue to work together, to talk to each other and make this a success for us all. Honesty and openness was always a pre-requisite for us taking over this project, and we will continue to be frank and open with the Cloak Community. PoSA3 may not require trust, but for success, the CloakCoin project must be built upon it.
In the interests of transparency, you should be aware that everyone on Team Cloak holds some amount of CloakCoin. This should be fairly obvious and shouldn't be a cause for concern in our opinion. Personally, we would be far more worried if a development team had zero vested interest in a project's success. We've dreamed of using OneMarket with PoSA3 from the early days, and we will make this a reality. If we were just a bunch of bagholders, we would have coordinated a pump and dump and hyped a load of non-existent product. That is not our way. Many of the Cloak faithful (and of course us, we are only human after-all) have been burned in the past by cryptocurrency and we will do everything we can to avoid that happening again. We're here to innovate and 'do cool shit', not get rich at the expense of those who believed in us in the beginning, when we had only our promises to give you.
The Internal Security Audit results should be published in a few days, which marks the imminent release of the Cloak - PoSA3 Final. As we've discussed previously, the community funded marketing drive will start after the release and we'll share this with the world. We also need to get started on some lovely new promotional videos for the big release. Oooooooh! it's so exciting!
Peace, love and thanks for the testing help and support,
Team Cloak
)
?
