This is not a major release announcement, just a note that the grin core gui is now set up for released builds, with the very first tagged version available here:
This is the first time I’m spreading this into the wild, so there’s a better than average chance you’ll run into issues trying to use it. But I’d appreciate if as many people could try it as possible, and open up issues in the project for everything and anything you come across.
A few notes:
Windows is a first-order citizen in this project, so there’s a (very minimal) MSI installation provided. Note it’s not signed so you’ll need to fiddle scary-looking permissions to use it (checksum provided, obviously)
Mac and Linux (ubuntu-latest) builds completely untested by me, but will get there over the coming days.
You should be able to create main or testnet wallets from the gui, as well as link existing ones (though you may run into problems existing linking wallets, please report)
There is a lot of experimental contract-workfow transaction building work in this wallet, as well as other functionality build on top of it (such as early payment proofs). You can switch to contract workflow in the main settings menu. Note that contracts remains highly experimental, and not yet recommended for use on mainnet. So, to be clear, DO NOT USE CONTRACT WORKFLOWS ON MAINNET. You have been warned.
And while we’re here, though I won’t scream this in caps I highly recommend you stick to testnet with the gui wallet for now, even using legacy workflows.
That all being said, I’d appreciate if as many people could give it a try as possible! Remember this is not a tested release, and the purpose of getting this out there is to start soliciting feedback and finding/fixing issues.
Firstly, I’m really appreciated for what you have done.
I did some quick tests, for the moment I did not see any bugs. I just have few comments like features to enhance user experience:
1: Embed logo for grin-gui.exe
2: Options during the installation:
Able to create shortcut start menu/desktop
Have wizard to allow user to select the directory to store the chain_data, for now, the default is C:\users<user_name>.grin\main\grin_node\default\chain_data
Receive address field should display full address.
When checked the ‘Close to system tray’ and Close, the tray icon is transparent, we can’t see the grin-gui icon.
Thanks,
This is a great progress. I’ll play a bit with it next week and encourage everyone to try it. It’d be good if we find bugs.
I’ll echo this so people don’t miss it. It might even be a good idea not to use them with a mainnet account linked in case accounts code is not working properly. It’ll likely take a few iterations to fix bugs and apply security patches as this wasn’t the focus on my end when I was doing it. But we’ll get there.
Great to see the Grin GUI wallet out in the wild. Looks fantastic, thanks. After completing sync step 2/7, the wallet crashes every time. Any suggestions?
Same issue, it happens at 99%, then when restarting, it showed 100%, so up to the horizon it was all downloaded. Then after a 1-3 minutes, it crashed, basically at the point you would expect sync step 3/7 to come into screen it crashes.
Just before the crash it shows the hourglass for a split second in the gui, like it is loading something. I will file a bug report.
Thanks, I’m trying to look into this one, but haven’t been able to reproduce locally. If everyone could post as much detail they can into the github issue it would help.
All other suggestions have been great, it would help a lot if everyone could add them as issues to the github project to keep them all in one place
Exactly, that is the main difference. Both have been security audited in the past and should be safe to use.
there are some minor differences though. Grin GUI aims to be minimal and robust and has support for Parallel Initial Block Downloading (PIBD).
Grin++ does not yet support PIBD but tries new features requested by the community like generating a new slatepack address and has to my understanding better support and documentation for bypassing censorship in countries like China and Russia:
