Added blog posts

_layouts/tag.html

@@ -16,6 +16,7 @@ title: page.tag
               <ul class="row">
                   <li><a href="{{ site.baseurl }}/blog/">all</a></li>
                   <li><a href="{{ site.baseurl }}/tag/guides/">guides</a></li>
+                  <li><a href="{{ site.baseurl }}/tag/dev/">dev</a></li>
               </ul>
           </div>
       </section>

_posts/2023-04-21-end-of-week-update-april-21-2023.md

@@ -0,0 +1,30 @@
+---
+layout: post
+title: "End of week update: April 21st, 2023"
+summary: "We share what the Cypher Stack team has accomplished in Stack Wallet this week."
+tags: [dev]
+author: 
+img: "/blog/assets/eowupdate-april212023.png"
+---
+
+End of week report! We didn't get a major release out this week, though a minor one should be coming out in the next 24 hours with bug fixes and UI updates. That doesn't mean we haven't been hard at work though. Here's what we've been up to.
+
+- Tor integration took several strides this week. We're piggybacking off of the great people over at, who maintain a dart interface for a cross-platform Rust library. But we're not just mooching. We're contributing upstream also. Tor should be in Stack Wallet and Duo very soon, which takes us one big step closer to whirlpool.
+
+- Themes. We love themes, and we know you all do too. We get lots of positive comments about them. But the more themes we add, the more images, the more animations, and more, which bloats the size of the app. We've been working on redoing the way themes are done under the hood to allow for a theme storefront of sorts (don't worry, they'll be free). This means the app will be downloaded with just light and dark, but the user can easily navigate to the storefront in the settings and download only the themes they want. We'll also allow a way to install themes by a file on the device so anyone can download them in a way they think is most secure and import them manually.
+
+- Binary building. Currently, we build everything from source every time we do builds, as is the FOSS way, but some of our submodules take forever to build. 45 min build times aren't conducive to rapid development and the build process can be frustrating for volunteer devs. So we're making the process easier by pushing our self made libraries to a repo and adding additional scripts to pull from those so we don't have to build the submodules all the time. It'll make it super easy for volunteers to contribute also. Don't worry, the normal build-everything-from-source way is still there too, and we'll be doing builds that we're pushing live that way still. Mostly a convenience thing for devs.
+
+- PayNyms. There are a couple small things with paynyms we've found since we've launched. Adding SegWit change addresses rather than just legacy, some sends not showing up without having to do a full rescan, etc. Everything works mostly, but there's a few hiccups. We've made good progress in addressing those, and a fix for those problems should be up by next week.
+
+- Animations. We have stellar designers, illustrators, and animators. But we spend so much time on UX, that we have to jump to the next thing rather quickly to keep up. Our focus on ensuring proper information flow and good UX means we've sacrificed on the things that push the app from just an easy and excellent experience, to a beautiful one. We're taking a bit of time to address this now with adding a few animations and cleaning up a few icons. Not a big thing to notice, but one that we hope will further push us ahead.
+
+- Misc bug fixes. Always.
+
+Prelim research on lightning, whirlpool designs, and watch-only wallets.
+
+You can see all of our work in progress on our github: https://github.com/cypherstack/stack_wallet/commits/staging
+
+Most all of the above is either done or close to being done so next week will probably be a big week for us. Phew! Super long post. Sorry. But we've been busy, so hopefully that news makes up for the long read. 
+
+See you all next time!

_posts/2023-04-28-end-of-week-update-april-28-2023.md

@@ -0,0 +1,32 @@
+---
+layout: post
+title: "End of week update: April 28st, 2023"
+summary: "We share what the Cypher Stack team has accomplished in Stack Wallet this week."
+tags: [dev]
+author: 
+img: "/blog/assets/eowupdate-april282023.png"
+---
+
+Another week! We got another release out this week, but it didn't have everything we were hoping. Such is the coders life. Anyways, let's take a look at where we ended this week.
+
+- Tor. More work done, but this was set aside a bit for other priorities and bug fixes. Primarily PayNyms. Still, we made forward progress in building the lib and understanding it at a deeper level. In addition, we've worked on the UX, icons, animations, and more things should feel buttery smooth since day one. Here, below you'll find a GIF of one of our onion animations when connecting to the Tor network. Subject to change before final implementation, of course.
+
+![Animation of yellow Tor onion pulsing and then turning green](/blog/assets/tor-onion-animation.gif)
+
+- Themes. More work done on this. Nothing exciting. Just preparing the Stack suite to handle the new formats under the hood. Almost done here, I think.
+
+- Binary building. Again, more progress here. We've made some great strides, but ran into some difficulties. Had to be set aside this week to make way for...
+
+- PayNyms. Done. Checked. The fixes we wanted to ship last week have been shipped. Should be working better, SegWit change addresses added, etc. etc. Try them out and let us know if you have to do things like rescan for funds to show up. That should all be fixed now. This is a big one. Woohoo!
+
+- Duo. All of our big changes over the past few weeks have been ported to Duo, which has a [new release](https://github.com/cypherstack/stack_duo/releases/tag/build_008) ready for everyone to download. Includes all the UI/UX, animations, PayNym, and under-the-hood work we've done.
+
+- Misc bug fixes. Always. Never ending.
+
+- Another small thing! You're reading this now on our brand new on-site blog as opposed to on social media! Woohoo! Another little thing that's been on our list forever has now been crossed off. And don't worry, there's no analytics of any kind on this website, and it's completely JavaScript free! That means you can use our onion address: http://stack26ttbdmof5g5zdmpipdjgso7bnxadattammo3k3jdckl3evwwad.onion/ AND our i2p address: stackwallet.i2p.
+
+Still being looked at: lightning, whirlpool designs, and watch-only wallets.
+
+As always, you can see all of our work in progress on our github: https://github.com/cypherstack/stack_wallet/commits/staging
+
+See you all next time!

blog/index.html

@@ -16,6 +16,7 @@ title: Stack Wallet Blog
               <ul class="row">
                   <li><a href="{{ site.baseurl }}/blog/">all</a></li>
                   <li><a href="{{ site.baseurl }}/tag/guides/">guides</a></li>
+                  <li><a href="{{ site.baseurl }}/tag/dev/">dev</a></li>
 
               </ul>
           </div>