SiZ

Development and Community Resources

Web: http://SiZ.cash Reddit: https://reddit.com/r/SiZ Github: https://github.com/SiZix/SiZ

Introduction

SiZ is a private, secure, untraceable currency. You are your bank, you control your funds, and nobody can trace your transfers.

Privacy: SiZ uses a cryptographically sound system to allow you to send and receive funds without your transactions being easily revealed on the blockchain (the ledger of transactions that everyone has). This ensures that your purchases, receipts, and all transfers remain absolutely private by default.

Security: Using the power of a distributed peer-to-peer consensus network, every transaction on the network is cryptographically secured. Individual wallets have a 24 word mnemonic that is only displayed once, and can be written down to backup the wallet. Wallet files are encrypted with a passphrase to ensure they are useless if stolen.

Untraceability: By taking advantage of ring signatures, a special property of certain types of cryptography, SiZ is able to ensure that transactions are not only untraceable, but have an optional measure of ambiguity that ensures that transactions cannot easily be tied back to an individual user or computer.

About this Project

This is the core implementation of SiZ. It is open source and completely free to use without restrictions, except for those specified in the license agreement below. There are no restrictions on anyone creating an alternative implementation of SiZ that uses the protocol and network in a compatible manner.

As with many development projects, the repository on Github is considered to be the "staging" area for the latest changes. Before changes are merged into that master repo, they are tested by individual developers, as well as contributors who focus on thorough testing and code reviews. That having been said, the repository should be carefully considered before using it in a production environment, unless there is a patch in the repository for a particular show-stopping issue you are experiencing. It is generally a better idea to use a tagged release for stability.

Anyone is able to contribute to SiZ. If you have a fix or code change, feel free to submit is as a pull request. In cases where the change is relatively small or does not affect other parts of the codebase it may be merged in immediately by any one of the collaborators. On the other hand, if the change is particularly large or complex, it is expected that it will be discussed at length either well in advance of the pull request being submitted, or even directly on the pull request.

Deployment Notes

When running the daemon, take care to ensure that the console output is not blocked, as this may in turn cause processing threads to be blocked, potentially resulting in unreliable operation of the daemon. This can occur because the implementation contains many logging statements which send output to the console within the context of the processing thread, and if the output buffer fills up this will block the thread. The best practice is to start the daemon within the context of a background process manager such as screen or tmux, or within a terminal window on a physical or virtual console. In doing so be sure that the session is not left in 'scrollback' or 'edit' mode as this may eventualy cause the output to block.
The daemon currently has high resource usage especially memory. To ensure reliable performance (especially on mining/pool nodes where poor performance can result in increase 'orphan blocks'), ensure that the daemon is being run on hardware with sufficient memory to avoid excessive swapping and long pauses. While it is possible to operate with limited memory and swap in some cases (though not recommended for mining), this requires care and a platform with sufficient I/O performance (e.g. unthrottled SSD). In the latter case also see the next item.
One cause of high resource usage and long processing delays is the periodic saving of the blockchain every 12 hours. Doing so requires access to the entire memory space and potentially large amounts of swapping. It can be disabled using the --disable-save option. The blockchain will still be saved on exit or upon request using the save command.
If using the rpc wallet (simplewallet --rpc-bind-port), access to the wallet RPC port will allow sending funds from the wallet. By default the rpc port is bound to the loopback interface so access is only possible from the same system. You are responsible for appropriately controlling/limiting access to the port (eg. using virtualization, firewall settings, etc.) to prevent loss of funds. If not using the --rpc-bind-port the wallet does not accept remote commands and this issue does not apply.

Compiling SiZ

On Unix and Linux:

Dependencies: GCC 4.7.3 or later, CMake 2.8.6 or later, and Boost 1.53 or later (except 1.54, more details here: http://goo.gl/RrCFmA).

To build, change to the root of the source code directory, and run 'make'.
The resulting executables can be found in build/release/src.

Advanced options:

Parallel build: run 'make -j' instead of 'make'.
Debug build: run 'make build-debug'.
Test suite: run 'make test-release' to run tests in addition to building. Running 'make test-debug' will do the same to the debug version.
Building with Clang: it may be possible to use Clang instead of GCC, but this may not work everywhere. To build, run 'export CC=clang CXX=clang++' before running 'make'.
Manual Cmake: If you wish to manually invoke cmake separately instead of the above make, you will need to use the following: mkdir -p build/release && cd build/release && cmake -D CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release ../.. && make. Other options can be used for debug or test builds. See root Makefile in the repo.

On OS X:

The project can be built from scratch by following instructions for Unix and Linux above.

Alternatively, it can be built in an easier and more automated fashion using Homebrew:

Ensure Homebrew is installed, it can be found at http://brew.sh
Add the repository: brew tap sammy007/cryptonight
Build wallet: brew install --HEAD SiZ

On Windows:

Dependencies: MSVC 2013 or later, CMake 2.8.6 or later, and Boost 1.53 or later.

To build, change to the root of the source code directory, and run these commands:

mkdir build cd build cmake -G "Visual Studio 12 Win64" -DBOOST_ROOT="c:\folder\to\boost_1_55_0" -DBOOST_LIBRARYDIR="c:\folder\to\boost_1_55_0\lib64-msvc-12.0" msbuild Project.sln /p:Configuration=Release
If you don't have your path environment variable configured with the VS paths, you may may want to run 'C:\program files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 12.0\VC\vcvarsall.bat' (or equivalent) to temporarily set the environment variables.

Building Documentation

SiZ developer documentation uses Doxygen, and is currently a work-in-progress.

Dependencies: Doxygen 1.8.0 or later, Graphviz 2.28 or later (optional)

To build, change to the root of the source code directory, and run 'doxygen Doxyfile'
If you have installed Graphviz, you can also generate in-doc diagrams by instead running 'HAVE_DOT=YES doxygen Doxyfile'
The output will be built in doc/html/

License

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:

Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
Neither the name of the copyright holder nor the names of its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission.

THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS "AS IS" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT HOLDER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.

Other License Information: