Funding Campaign - Grin++

1

TL;DR: 20% of nodes now run Grin++. Need more contributors and reviewers. Also begging for money for security audit of critical parts of the code.

When I first started writing Grin++[1] 7-8 months ago (called CppGrin, at the time), it was an ambitious, yet hopeless little project that seemed destined for failure, much like the several attempts at an alternative node that came before it. But thanks to encouragement from everyone in the community, I pushed onward and Grin++ persisted, reaching one milestone after another. Grin++ went from the first ever grin node to run on a windows machine[2], to the first ever Grin GUI wallet on Windows[3], and now has become the fastest and one of the most widely used wallets/nodes on windows and mac. 20% of all nodes[4] on the network are now running Grin++, which is an awesome testament to how much has been accomplished! For me though, it’s also a sobering reminder that Grin++ is still very much in its infancy. The code could really benefit from a few more sets of eyes reviewing it, and my hope is that I’ll soon be able to pay for an audit of the codebase to look for any security weaknesses I hadn’t thought of.

So far, the donations received have just barely covered the costs of the truckloads of red bull that has fueled development. I’ve also incurred significant personal costs from buying dev licenses and signing keys for mac and windows, and various hosting expenses for p2p testing and for running the support service that allows users to submit bugs. And that’s ignoring the countless hours I’ve spent designing, coding, testing, fixing, deploying, and supporting Grin++. Adding the significant expense of a code audit is not something I would be able to cover on my own. That’s why I need your help!

I’m setting up this funding campaign with the following initial goals:

  1. Pay for a security audit of critical parts of the Grin++ code (wallet and p2p).
  2. Cover any software hosting expenses.
  3. Offer small bounties for dev tasks to encourage others to contribute to the codebase.
  4. Whatever money is left over will be spent on fast cars and whiskey. And the rest of it I’ll just waste.

Thanks in advance for your donations, and for those who are unable to contribute, please do what you can to help spread the word! Thank you!

[1] https://grinplusplus.github.io/
[2] Grin++ - Grin for Windows
[3] Announcing the Grin++ Wallet! (finally!)
[4] https://grin.drexl.me/v1/peers/all

GOAL: $20-40K - Waiting to hear back from potential auditors about the costs.
STATUS: NOT MET
BITCOIN - 0
GRIN - 1.5
BEAM - 1801
ZCASH - 1

BITCOIN DONATION ADDRESS

3G39h3G7HneymYL4kdgkDFLoB9uQ536Cw1

GRIN DONATION ADDRESS

Grinbox: gVvGhkjfh279RDrVpdNRBTuGT14e3kvNfBLrBEHiV2DLb3HGZ3v5
http: https://grin.gateio.live/deposit/gateiogrin/0029162b7762fa4e
Or send me a slate file: davidburkett38@gmail.com

BEAM DONATION ADDRESS

3c8c4e09e293768a3c86f56ccd8fef8ad4ffb1d5b38bfa83e9b1d6e92fbf58beb34

ZCASH DONATION ADDRESS

t1UAWwqfU7cc8KWEiQSFjuhpmaBabHwDfzq

8 Likes
2

Great project! I donated a little :grin:

A little feature request: I’m using multiple Grin wallets, it would be great if the blockchain’s location was configurable, so I don’t need it twice on my machine. I didn’t even find out yet where GRIN++ is actually storing the blockchain :sweat_smile:

3

Thanks for your donation! And that’s a great feature request, but for performance reasons, Grin++ uses a completely different data structure than every other wallet. So it won’t be able to share with other wallets. The chain data is at %userprofile%/.GrinPP/MAINNET/NODE

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4

Ah ok. Well for now the chain is so lightweight, it’s not so important.

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5

Best of luck with the fundraising, @David!

20% of all nodes [4] on the network are now running Grin++

Source for this is: [4] https://grin.drexl.me/v1/peers/all . What’s that? Can you share a bit more info on the data and where it came from?

6

It’s all the peers that a long-running node has seen. I’ve checked with several different nodes and they all say more or less the same thing. Right now, 509 of the 2543 peers the node has connected to have a user agent starting with Grin++. That’s almost exactly 20%. There’s nothing special about that node, other than it’s the one I found with the greatest number of peers. All the others I’ve seen gave the same percentage +/- 1.5%

7

Thanks! In other words, it’s not 20% of the current nodes on the network, right?

8

Grin++ nodes tend to align more with users than with exchanges/mining pools/etc, so in general, they stay online much shorter times, often only long enough to sync and send/receive payments. Over the past week, I’ve witnessed anywhere from 5% to 12% of currently connected nodes being from Grin++. A good place to check is https://grin.report/d/jeTROiqmz/peers?orgId=1, where you’ll see spikes of usage from early afternoon until late evening in the US.

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9

sent small amnt Beam to assist with paying for audit.

TeamTOGETHER
TeamTOGETHER.png512×512 278 KB

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11

Received! Thank you so much :smiley:

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