Today marks the 9th release of the LocalCoinSwap platform, and we've made a number of important new updates.
Our Monero implementation has been upgraded to properly support integrated addresses in deposits and withdrawals, bringing the platform in line with the latest best practices from the Monero team. After a small amount of unexpected downtime, withdrawals and deposits for this currency are now fully functional. We apologise for inconvenience suffered this week as we brought the systems online. Due to the private nature of the Monero Blockchain it's more time-consuming than normal to diagnose issues. However, we have implemented some administration practices to speed up the support process for any future issues.
We have now begun work on the process of implementing Ripple, the 3rd largest cryptocurrency by market capitalisation, and one that is not currently supported by any other peer to peer exchange.
We've also implemented some safeguards for the upcoming Bitcoin Cash hard fork, to prevent any possibility of the loss of user funds. As previously announced, withdrawals will be disabled on Wednesday, in advance of the beginning of the Thursday fork. We will continue to monitor the Bitcoin Cash ABC and Bitcoin Cash SV Blockchains as the fork progresses, with the aim of supporting both chains. However, as the fork is likely to be highly contentious, Bitcoin Cash withdrawals will not be re-enabled until there is a clear distinction between both chains, and the risk of a replay attack is eliminated.
As far as possible, LocalCoinSwap endeavours to take a neutral stance on which cryptocurrencies to support. The arguments between Bitcoin Cash ABC and Bitcoin Cash SV regarding the upcoming fork have been extremely vicious, and pitted many community members against each other. However, LocalCoinSwap will support both chains if possible, and allow the community members to decide individually which cryptocurrencies to trade.
On the frontend side of the site, we now have custom notifications which can be selected by users in the options menu. Users can select under which circumstances they will receive notifications, or opt out of notifications altogether. We've also added a consent box on user registration, to bring the platform in line with European email regulations.
We've also fixed a number of bugs related to the frontend of the trading process, which were causing some issues replying to contracts.
Lastly, we completed a comprehensive backend audit of user wallet systems, to ensure the integrity of user transaction history. We are please to announce that no issues were found, and all users wallet balances and funds are correctly accounted for. In the future we will conduct automated audits on a regular basis.
Over the next week we will continue working on our major upgrades to the homepage, and the process of posting a trade. Once these updates are completed, we will be able to give a firm date for hard launch, which at this point looks likely to be in January. Although the journey to hard launch certainly feels like a long time, please keep in mind that the date will be less than 6 months after soft launch - a rare achievement in any major software project.
After only 9 weeks of operation, the site is already vastly improved compared to when we first launched. We will continue to work at a fast pace, and are confident that in 9 weeks time even our current platform will appear obsolete in comparison!
Thanks for the support everyone.