warren, can you tell what development has been made before I actually donate? There are a few people on this "dev" team that don't even code at all, so I'd like to see the advances being made. Atm, all I see is asking for money.
Simran, really? You of all people? How about you take some of that rather large round anonymous donation you have received mid last year for your projects and share that with the dev team?
Have you bothered reading other posts where Warren describes the work that has been done?
Warren has been working 24/7 non-stop for weeks porting code to 0.8.2; Fixing numerous issues, identifying and fixing various network vulnerabilities, strengthening relationship with people involved in Bitcoin development, running a plethora of tests and simulations of different fee algorithms (and eventually coming up with what I think is a genius implementation for a fee structure that will strengthen the health of the network long-term).
We all are really really lucky that Warren has taken the helm here. I don't know how much Coblee would have been able to pull by himself. This is a huge and a very complicated project where a single mishap can cause serious problems to everyone.
As for other people who "do not code", have you been following the scene lately?
Here are some items that come to mind:
- We redesigned http://litecoin.org with multiple languages. Since then, out of ~4,000 visitors per day, 8% of them are from China (site peak has been at 10k visitors/day, which IMHO is not bad)
- We migrated wiki to http://litecoin.info and implemented LitecoinCryptoPayment spam protection (http://litecoin.info/Special:CryptoPayment - you need to login to use that)
- We have developed a custom block explorer in effort to gather statistical data from the blockchain http://ltc.block-explorer.com/charts (this platform is in beta and will be used in the future to provide additional services)
- We have implemented a p2pool scanner which allows people to find public p2pool nodes in their countries so that they can mine on p2pool without having to set anything up http://p2pool.litecointools.com (currently under maintenance)
- We have implemented a whole bunch of custom internal tools - for example, all our sites are monitored for downtime and potential hacking attempts.
- We have established plans to develop blockchain monitoring solution similar to that ran by LukeJr which allowed him to detect the May 12th fork on bitcoin blockchain.
- During the last two weeks have found and fixed two vulnerabilities in external pool software which allowed bad miners to submit fake shares making pools think that these miners were providing much higher hash rates then they were (pooler, you rock!)
- We have been moderating forums from various scammers & spammers posting trojans etc.
- We have established contact lists for developers, supporters and major pool operators so that everyone can be reachable IRL.
- We have setup 4 DNS seeds much needed for the network, especially since IRC seeding has been removed.
- We have re-established a healthy working testnet (which is actively used for in-house testing); this also includes DNS seed servers for testnet.
- We have been working with variety of service providers discussing and supporting their integration of Litecoin.
- We have been actively providing support and responding to plethora of inquiries sent to [email protected], handling press, redirecting users to appropriate places containing information they seek or simply helping them with their problems.
- We have been actively working with members of our community to ensure that information they publish and work they do is oriented toward the same vision.
- We have worked with p2pool developer forrestv to make appropriate modifications to the p2pool in effort to increase long-term health of the network (hence the upcoming new version of p2pool)
- I myself have put together a site to help new developers get started http://litecoindeveloper.com
I do not like to speak, but when I speak I prefer that it counts. I hope this brief overview satisfies your criteria for donation. By donating, you ensure that the development team has resources to support the server infrastructure and to get external help in effort to implement variety of projects much needed to expand the reach of the network.
Also, if anyone is wondering, donations are strictly tracked and every expense is discussed and agreed upon by the majority of developers.