Umbra review

Almost all the people who communicate or do transactions via the internet are concerned about their privacy. In fact, it is extremely important to ensure your privacy if you don’t want to run into any trouble in the future. Several methods are available for you to communicate or do transactions via internet while ensuring your privacy. Umbra can be considered as a perfect example for such a method.

What exactly is Umbra? Umbra can simply be defined as a complete solution for privacy. It was developed by Shadow Project after conducting an extensive research about the online privacy requirements of people. A lot of people are concerned about their online privacy, but they don’t have a clear understanding on the necessary measures that they need to take in order to ensure it. That’s the main reason why the developers of Umbra wanted to make it user friendly as much as possible.

Umbra comes along with a wide array of impressive features as well. These features range from communication to commerce. The entire platform is based on Shadow Network. As a result, it uses the private and untraceable currency offered by Shadow, which is known as Shadow Cash. People who use Shadow Cash are provided with the freedom and privacy to transfer cash according to the way they want. In other words, people who use Shadow Cash don’t need to worry about anything when doing transactions.

Another impressive feature about Umbra is its anonymous chat system. This messaging system is based on Shadow Chat. Shadow Chat is an encrypted and decentralized instant messaging system, which has the ability to keep all conversations private. In fact, all the messages that are sent through this system are encrypted by AES-256-CBC algorithm.

Moreover, all the messages are transferred in between nodes in such a way to keep away all the recipients from being inferred by assailants. This chat system can be used to send direct messages to anyone completely secure and private. Or else, the users are provided with the freedom to organize team conversations through channels. In fact, the users can create a channel for a specific team or a topic. If you are planning to communicate sensitive information within a group, you can create a private channel while inviting the trusted team members

Umbra is compatible with Windows, Linux and Mac OS operating systems. Moreover, it is backed up by an excellent community forum, which can be used to clarify all the doubts in your mind. Therefore, Umbra can be considered as the best system designed for people who are looking to do transactions and communications in a secure manner.


SHADOWCASH SPECIFICATIONS
Block time: 60's
Difficulty re-target: every block
Nominal stake interest: 2% (PoSv3 – static inflation annually)
Min. stake age: 8 hours (no max age)
P2P port: 51737
RPC port: 51736

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Is this the start of a New Paradigm ?

The launch of Umbra 1.0 last week has gained a lot of attention from investors and speculators alike and some people are starting to take notice the ground breaking work that the developers have done with this release.

Now for the first time you can communicate, form groups and make payments, all done anonymously and all in the one app. This I believe is a world first as we have never before been able to form anonymous trade groups on a decentralized platform with anonymous payments.

As you can see, the basis for the market is already there with the ability to post pictures and chat in groups. These are screenshots on my first test of the group chat feature last night. And I have to say it was impressive, and I am not just saying that because I am a fan of the Project.

It was fast and responsive and worked flawlessly but there were a couple of issues. The first is it wasn’t really user friendly to set up or join groups and the second problem I found was that when very large pictures are posted it seems to mess with the scrolling a bit. But these are minor issues that I am sure will be resolved shortly.

The value of SDC which is the currency that Umbra uses for payments has also risen sharply in response to release and went from around 30 cents to $2.50 and is now trading at around $1.50 and and looks like it has every chance of surpassing or at least matching (price wise) the leading anon coin Monero ($15).

The developers have promised a marketplace soon and by judging from my test run last night I believe them.

Never before has the world had a truly anonymous decentralized marketplace and it certainly could create some big waves in private commerce. It’s open to anyone to use and it cant be shut down by LE.

A new paradigm? Yes I believe so.

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         Umbra  — next release will be on Tuesday

Umbra was released on Tuesday and it looks nothing short of stunning. We had a chat with the team behind it and as reported previously it will be a rolling release. This means many new features will be introduced each week or as soon as they are available. The team is also outsourcing small tasks so some new developers are now working on additions to make Umbra something really extraordinary. The next release will be on Tuesday.

Another feature under development is username integration and avatars will be assigned to make the group chat experience easier. At the moment members can give their chat partners names within the address book but once you can register your own username it will make it a much better fit. This will be especially true with large group chats.

Other small adjustments are being made to the chat system and it will soon be used as the official Slack replacement for the group. We believe other groups will soon follow and adopt Umbra for their communications. The focus is on making it a very smooth experience with future mobile use in mind.

A Chinese version of the website is now being prepared together with a big promotional push into that country. Acceptance of Umbra in China will go hand in hand with SDC going onto exchanges there.

A mobile chat app is also in the works and together with many small rollouts coming up, Umbra will become an even greater experience.

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Following Shadowcash and other alt-coins on Coinmarketcap.

There are many ways to follow the fluctuations of altcoin prices.One of the best sites to visit is coinmarketcap.com
More specifically to check how Shadowcash is doing take a look here.

Coinmarketcap is very handy when it comes to getting information or learning about alt-coins quickly.

 There are eight index columns on the main coinmarketcap page.
Rank,name of currency,market cap (market capitalization which is calculated by multiplying the number of available ''coins'' by the current market price of one coin of this currency), current price, the total number of coins called available supply, the total volume of transactions in the last twenty four hours measured in Fiat currency (dollars,euros and eight other options),the percentage of change in the price of the alt-coin in the last twenty four hours and lastly a price graph Of the currency fluctuation the last seven days.

Over the main index columns there are lot of interesting filtering and customization options.Here's a few useful ones.

 Gainers-Losers

A quick glance at the ten most profitable and unprofitable  alt-coins in the last twenty four hours.

Recently added

New coins appear here.One of the most interesting pages.Almost every day a new currency is added.It is always interesting to take a look creators site for more information.


Gainer&Losers and Recently added are found under the trending tab.

Monthly volume rankings

Under the tab trade volume is the option monthly volume rankings.Check the volume of transactions on a daily,weekly and monthly base.

Wallets for Shadowcash

There is the option of various android apps that act as multi-coin wallet such as Coinomi.Although Coinomi is very nicely made and has integrated  the ''shapeshift'' exchange service, it is not without flaws.The balance of shadowcash (SDC) take forever (or never sometimes!) to sync.Maybe this has to do with the server SDC uses but still is very annoying.A trading app first of all should be snappy and bug-free.

You can download the ''official'' client for shadowcash from the the shadowcast site here.The desktop client syncs transactions  instantly.Keep in mind though that the the blockchain must be synced before that.The initial syncing of the SDC blockchain takes looong time on an average internet  connection.Be patient , it could easily take over 24 hours.

This SDC wallet comes with a variety of options.What i can say so far is that the basics are there and they work.Shapeshift, is not integrated as of version 1.4.0.3. Hopefully it will come in a later version.