Just adding encryption would be easier, but I rather like the idea of porting the whole thing to 0.8.x.
There are a ton of improvements that the bitcoin folks have added since the 0.3.24 version. A lot of vulnerabilities have been patched.
I think we seriously have to consider a 0.8.x version. That way, not only do we have the latest and greatest client, but we can also take advantage of other stuff that is available for bitcoin like the Armory client.
There are also additional things that need to be fixed like we have to remove the hard limit of the number of coins minted. It ends in 2015 which is a bit too early. IXCoin is already exploiting merged mining so we don't want to lose that support. So maybe after 2015 the subsidy drops by 1/2 and extends out to 2033 like bitcoin.
No way, I do not want to mess with the protocol. The hard limit has to stay and so does the year end date of 2015. I have the most to lose here, it seems, so I'll take my chances with the current protocol and end date.
I do not want to turn ixCoin into another crypto turd coin with infinite coins. The biggest advantage ixCoin has right now is that it's identical to Bitcoin, you change that 21 million coin hard cap and you'll get rid of the biggest advantage ixCoin has.
And I'm not an ixCoin millionaire, I was not Able to buy anywhere close to even 1 million ixCoins, even with all the out of pocket money I spent. So although I am serious about this I simply cannot afford to pay programmers to do all this work for which a premine was done and allocated.
If wallet encryption can be added for around 15,000 ixCoins and the people who offered to pitch in are still good for their word, then we'll do the encryption, but if that's not possible then I'm gonna wait a few more months because I feel by then ixCoin will be much more valuable and if that happens then I will be able to pay for all the upgrades myself.
But right now that's not possible, Christmas is around the corner, I'm broke, I still haven't found a job and there's no way I'm paying tens of thousands of ixCoins out of my pocket for these upgrades which can wait, especially when I think about that idiot dev who did a secret premine and then promised these coins for bounties and now he doesn't even have the character to speak up and pay those coins out.
So then - unless encryption can be done for a good price then we'll just have to wait to do it all together but no way I wanna touch the protocol in any way, we have to let it be identical to Bitcoin as that's its strongest selling point. There is currently no other coin besides ixCoin which is identical to Bitcoin - you get rid of that and you get rid of any chance ixCoin has to survive.
Maybe you fail to realize that this is a merged coin and that what gives it value as compared to other coins. If you remove the miners subsidize then merge miners will drop this coin and nobody will be moving the transactions.
I studied the code a bit, it appears that best case, I can get an update 0.8.x version out in a week!