328 GRC bounty: notify users in Gridcoin wallet about important issues (new mandatory version, ...)

in gridcoin •  7 years ago  (edited)

We've an open issue in the bugtracker since 13 months (August 2016) :-(

This is a feature we need with each update/upgrade for Gridcoin:  

  • currently we do this - manually - over the existing communication media, but:  
    • this is slow
    • may not reach everyone


Current discussed approaches are:  

  1. monitoring a burn address
  2. making an "alert"
  3. in case none of the mentioned/coming ideas work:


  • think about an option that is "unsafe" but works (e.g. activate in  options, but tells clearly: "some of your data may leak for this feature  to work correctly" or so) :-(


If you would like to sponsor this issue, please send your GRCs to address (this resides in my wallet):  


As public sponsor your name will be listed in all related announcements:  

  • e.g. you could also come to IRC  and tell me in private beforehand  how much you will donate, it might be hard to get your details  otherwise. My IRC nick is: Erkan_Yilmaz
  • You can of course also donate anonymously.


Current sponsors:


The bounty will be paid out to that person that:  

  1. sends a merge request to the offical repo that works AND
  2. is implemented in Gridcoin also:


  • about 2.: e.g. option3 ("unsafe impl.") above might not be accepted?  
    • needs discussion: security of network vs. security of individual  (personally, "security of individual" is more important to me: I added  option3 only so we can "move forward" with the issue. Also, I link to  the fork warning which seems so far to prevent the issue going forward?)
    • if option3 would be selected: after discussion also needs voting on  community? but if it is per default off AND gives user clear info about  consequences when enabling: then probably not...


More bounties for Gridcoin can be found here.


Originally posted here.


Erkan (find me on IRC and twitter)


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  ·  7 years ago (edited)

What about sending a message with a very small sum of GRC from the Foundation wallet to each user wallet whenever a significant event occurs?

I'm not sure how much it costs to send a message, as I have never done it before...

Something like this ? cc @tomasbrod

Thanks for the link - looks like it already exists! Great news.

There are two good channels to send such message:

  • alert protocol
  • contract message

Note that the transaction does not need to be sent to each individual, wallet will pick up the contract even if sent to burn address.

  ·  7 years ago (edited)

Do you see any problems with this method of sending messages out to all active users?

At face value it appears like a very simple way to reach everyone who is active on the network, but your familiarity with the code base may yield a better alternative.

Alert protocol is perfect for this situations, it is fully implemented, except that the messages are not shown on the GUI.
Contract messages are not, but only a little work is needed to get them done. But Alerts are better: they work across forks.

Gridcoin Stats seems to be able to track what version of the client creates each block. If that information is available in the blockchain, then the presence of blocks that used a higher version could also be used as a signal to update.

yes, that info is available in the blockchain, e.g. in last 100 blocks were created currently by:

I suggest that only addresses authorized by Gridcoin poll should be able to launch this messages. I am not sure how difficult would be to program that but I think it is the best way for preventing spam.

I have made a request to extend this idea and implement Feed / News tab on the wallet. Similar, or even assimilating the voting/poll list tab. The data can be gathered from blockchain (news, polls), from alerts, but also from wallet internal things (eg warning: you beacon will expire).

great, thank you :-)

nice post @erkan

  ·  7 years ago Reveal Comment