Verus Desktop v0.0.8-Alpha

The first application with self-sovereign, friendly-name, revocable, recoverable, quantum-ready blockchain funds addresses and identities, using the VerusID identity protocol.

Verus-Desktop GUI was redesigned from the ground up to elegantly introduce a number of unique features, including:

• Verus ID support
  • Identity creation, revocation, and recovery
  • Identity GUI details and dashboards
• Multiple wallet profile support, each with their own default wallet screen and active coins
• Numerous performance/usability improvements
• Redesigned Verus logo

Worldwide Verifiable Digital Signatures for All!

Verus digital signatures, based on Verus ID, offer the first worldwide verifiable, decentralized, single or multi-sig friendly-name signatures for content such as messages and files, authentication, and attestations, with full support for revocation and recovery in case of key loss or theft.

Bitcoin, which was first to enable worldwide, P2P decentralized blockchain transactions, and most of its derivatives, offer ways to sign messages with specific private keys that can be verified against public addresses. While that does offer some limited signing capability, it does not offer capabilities that can compete with centralized services offering more sophisticated key management. A single public/private key pair lacks critical capabilities to make it suitable as an actual identity, most notable and obvious being the ability to recover from loss or theft of private keys, but arguably as important are friendly name aliases, modifiable multi-sig signing, updates, privacy, and the association of signed attestations by other identities to statements about properties of the identity.

Verus Desktop makes it easy to digitally sign any message or file on your PC and to validate signatures, against either the original messages and files, or optionally just the hash of a message or file, to enable more efficient validation in applications that leverage this technology.

Verus ID enables free verifiable digital signatures for all through the Verus ID protocol as just one of the many new capabilities it enables. It is also the foundation upon which many new applications and additional capabilities can be built.

For example, using Verus ID, it’s possible for any journalist anywhere to sign photos, videos, and content, establish a reputation for authenticity, and counter the potential for deep-fakes to make the truth harder to find. Open source projects can now create their own identities and digitally sign their binary releases, ensuring that not only can a file be verified by hash as the one downloaded from a particular server, but by signature as the actual file initially signed by the developer or release engineer. Signatures also form the basis for any attestation of one party to the validity of another. In fact, there are so many applications for digital signatures, from things listed already, to physical entry systems, to workflow applications, to new earning opportunities that a full discussion of use cases would overwhelm these release notes.

In any case, we are happy to release digital signatures for all, and we hope you enjoy using this new, simple capability, maybe even think of a new use case you’d like to pursue yourself as a business opportunity on the Verus Network!

Verus ID

Verus IDs are a fully functional blockchain protocol, not just an ID system. There is no corporation involved in the protocol, unlike most blockchain ID implementations. Verus IDs provide plenty of opportunity for identity applications. Specifically, Verus ID provides:

Quantum-ready friendly crypto-addresses on the worldwide Verus network

VerusIDs can be used to receive and send funds, which are controlled by the single or multi-sig addresses specified in the identity itself. If these controlling addresses or the single or multi-sig properties are changed, which can be done by the controller of the identity, all future spends of UTXOs sent to that identity follow the updated spend conditions and are subject to the updated keys. Although Verus 0.6.2 does not include quantum resistant signatures for transactions, VerusIDs are themselves resistant to quantum attack with known algorithms, and we have already started to integrate a quantum secure signature scheme, which we expect to activate on mainnet early next year. When that is available, it will be possible to change an ID and have all of the funds sent to it made retroactively quantum resistant. Verus IDs can also be used to publish ID->destination address mappings on other blockchains, but only the Verus ecosystem has the ability to revoke, recover, inherit, funds in existing UTXOs.

Fully Decentralized Protocol

Anyone can create one and have complete, self sovereign control over it without permission to do so. All costs to create an ID go to miners, stakers, and ID referrers. Verus IDs are:

• Revocable -- each ID includes a revocation authority, which defaults to the identity self, and which has the permission to revoke the identity, which creates a valid transaction that, once mined into a block, prevents the identity from being used to spend or sign until it is recovered, effectively freezing all of its funds, for example, in the case of key theft.

• Recoverable -- each ID also includes a separate recovery authority, which also defaults to self, and which can recover the identity through redefining its primary state and the recovery state as well, though it cannot modify the revocation state, or vice versa, unless they are both controlled by the same underlying authority.

• Private - Each ID contains a set of zero-knowledge private addresses, which can be used as messaging, financial, or voting endpoints, and each ID also contains a content map of key-value hashes, intended to be used alongside applications and various identity policies to provide everything from private yet selectively provable claims and attestations to selectively provable components of a strong passport, attested to with a quantum secure signature when that is available.

VerusHash 2.1

VerusHash 2.0 was the first algorithm to significantly equalize FPGAs dominance over CPUs, once they were introduced on the Verus network. While FPGAs were intentionally not blocked completely, which would simply drive the performance battle to the higher end and further into secret, the VerusHash 2.0 algorithm was developed to explicitly equalize FPGAs and modern CPUs and has met its original goals in keeping FPGA performance for the price under 2x of CPU. VerusHash 2.1 introduces an adjustment to the equalization technology, which we expect to tilt the balance a bit more favorably towards CPUs, while still enabling FPGAs to operate on the hash algorithm with minor modifications. Verus Developers have proactively reached out to FPGA manufacturers and made the new algorithm available to them, so that everyone will have an opportunity to mine and stake when the Verus economy starts to roll and identity rewards, which will not inflate the currency, but should far exceed the potential for block rewards, begin streaming from the network.

Although you may choose to use this wallet as your primary wallet rather than Verus Agama at this time, there are a couple features still pending for us to consider this release a full replacement for every feature in Verus Agama. The following features that some may consider important are not yet in Verus Desktop, and will be added before it is considered a full replacement:

• Komodo interest - currently Verus Desktop does not enable claiming of Komodo interest, which should be introduced by the next version
• Coinbase shielding - while Verus Coin no longer requires shielding coinbases before they are used in transparent transactions, other supported blockchains, like Pirate/ARRR, may benefit from this feature, and older coinbase rewards on the Verus network, including older time locked coinbases, still need to be shielded before being used. Coinbase shielding should also be available in the next version of Verus Desktop.

Other than those two features, we consider the feature set in Verus Desktop complete, and if you don't need those features, it should serve as a fine primary PC wallet for daily use.

Verus Desktop supports full node or lite mode wallets for Verus, KMD, ARRR, and other KMD ecosystem coins. It also supports BTC, Zcash, Dash, ETH, and ERC20 tokens in lite mode as well.

We hope you enjoy creating, managing and using your very own friendly, self-sovereign, fully-decentralized, quantum ready identities.

Disclaimer

This is experimental and unfinished software. Use at your own risk! No warranty for any kind of damage!
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The enclosed copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

MacOS:
https://www.virustotal.com/#/file/0eb89dfac00b15b8a9773c8befee73750bb74b74bd02d2d099a19b36a12f8a8a/detection
Linux-AMD64: https://www.virustotal.com/#/file/0eb89dfac00b15b8a9773c8befee73750bb74b74bd02d2d099a19b36a12f8a8a/detection
Windows:
https://www.virustotal.com/#/file/0eb89dfac00b15b8a9773c8befee73750bb74b74bd02d2d099a19b36a12f8a8a/detection

Avast and Kaspersky may flag the software as "not-a-virus" or "PUP". These are warnings that you are installing mining software, which may be installed by a third party to exploit your PC.
To find out more about the false positives, review the following resources:
https://blog.malwarebytes.com/detections/pup-optional-bitcoinminer/
https://www.kaspersky.com/blog/not-a-virus/18015/

Verifying Downloads

A txt file containing the signer, standard sha256 file checksum, and signature, is included for each download. These packages have been signed with the identity "Verus Coin Foundation@".