Community Update 137

Owned by Rao Bhamidipati
Sept 16, 2020
5 min read

General

  • Release
    • All the main net validator nodes are running release 0.9.25.4. https://github.com/rchain/rchain/releases/tag/v0.9.25.4 
    • 0.9.25.4 release resolves one of the long standing bugs  RCHAIN-727 - Getting issue details... STATUS  that was causing jvm errors. In this release, multiple keys support for LMDBStore is added.
    • In parallel, Rnode 0.9.26-lfs-Beta is being prepared for release as we speak. Three alpha versions were tested on the multiple networks. More generative tests are being written.
    • Test net is currently running release 0.9.25.4.  
    • The main content in this release is DAG Store, BlockStore and LMDB improvements, using the Key Value Store implemented in 0.9.25.  Node catch up is now much improved. This release also includes many bug fixes including for the slashing /tuple space mismatch bug reported earlier.  gRPC behaviour is improved with per validator grpc channel   
    • Release 0.9.26 will complete Last Finalized State and is a major milestone.  It's currently being tested. More generative tests need to be written.  Open PRs list at https://github.com/rchain/rchain/pulls the ones attached to 0.9.26 milestone.  
    • Main difference between testing on Observer nodes vs. Validator nodes: When we test on the observer node, a large part of the code base is executed. The Block creation code runs only on the validator nodes. As a part of that, the portion of the Runtime Manager that plays the deploy is run on the validator node but not on the observer node.
    • Main net has 20 nodes running plus observer nodes and exchange node.
  • Sprint 64 in progress
    • Main Focus of release 0.9.26: Completing and testing Last Finalized State, identify and address as many slashing issues/bugs as possible, hardening the main net, improve performance.  Current PR list at https://github.com/rchain/rchain/pulls
    • Current Work In Progress
      • Release 0.9.26
        • Completed - https://github.com/rchain/rchain/pull/3111 Fix requesting of blocks and chunks of state. This PR addresses multiple other issues identified, e.g. Node cannot request Approved block #3118 and Testing of LFS #3098
        • In Process - Complete Last Finalized State https://github.com/rchain/rchain/pull/2913  Working through different kinds of testing and resolving the discovered bugs - both in the newly written code as well as in the previous code. I really appreciate the excellent care and diligence by the team in resolving all these issues.
        • DONE - Team is working on mapping out all state changes and the inter-relationships, to make sure LFS calculation/characterization is correct in all possible conditions. Also trying to resolve issues related to properly handling slashing justifications and the blocks that contain those.  https://gist.github.com/tgrospic/4f92351474e1aea44dfcd9c55c0d697d has the latest version of the Last Finalized State specification
        • Once we have the process for PoS contract changes (hard fork) implemented (0.9.27 or later versions), further simplification of last finalized state may be possible.
        • Done, released as 0.9.25.3 - Addressing the slow down in fork-tip calculations as the number of blocks and DAG size increase  https://github.com/rchain/rchain/pull/3099 and https://github.com/rchain/rchain/pull/3100
        • Ongoing - Fix additional identified bugs
        • In Process - Will has started on OpenAPI/Swagger documentation of the API https://github.com/rchain/rchain/pull/3128  Familiarity with Swagger and the available swagger tools should make it easy for developers to use our API.
        • In Process - Identify and implement further 'quick hit' improvements to developer experience, in preparation for the hackathon. 
        • Also in the thinking stage is a graph representation of payments, with perhaps date+time and amount on the arcs.
      • Release 0.9.27 and beyond
      • Ongoing - Improvements to last finalized state expected to be completed in the 0.9.26 release. Significant progress, some of which have been released in 0.9.25 and 0.9.25.1 through 4. The PR and the branch are structured so that multiple people can collaborate/ work on different parts of the feature at the same time. The scope of this work enables (a) faster catchup by new nodes - you can start from the last finalized state - this is a differentiator for RChain (b) offloading older data, differentiated storage and retrieval strategies for the same (c) allows for a leaner / less bloated node. This change touches most parts of the code base. Having to pick between refactoring and work-arounds in various parts. Tomislav implemented a mostly modular and future-beneficial approach.
      • Hackathon planning and execution is in full swing. Registration page is ready. Hackathon dates are pushed back to Nov 7-8 to accommodate student exam schedules and to give us more time to market and prepare for it.  We need to generate a bank of test questions, Pull Request tasks on Github, and Problem Statements, brief sessions on tips and tricks during the hackathon, and office hours during the hackathon. We need to improve documentation, learning links and examples to help developers brand new to Rholang get up to speed. The community is requested to contribute to any or all of these. First meeting with the developer community was held yesterday. Current plan is to make https://rholang.github.io/ the hub of all learning materials.
      • CI/CD:
        • Slow Going - Dependencies updates are now being handled in 9rb/rchain branch. It's a good exercise in learning Scala environment and dependencies. We may use these as exercises for potential Scala interns to be gained from the Hackathon engagement.
        • Ongoing - We are slowly moving from Jira to Github for the development team, started publishing release notes in Github with release 0.9.25.  New issues are entered only in github. For a while, we will maintain in both Jira and Github. 
      • TechGovernance:
        • Thursday 10 AM Eastern. Meets alternate weeks.  Meeting notes are at https://docs.google.com/document/d/1fvxMC6Bt5XwbVaLzYPy6ZPB8KzJvASO2sKRC6ZCPwpI  Discussions and work on a model of economics to ensure network security is proceeding. Most recent discussion was about ensuring some amount of stake beyond a 4 month window, spreading out stake over a longer time and how to incentivize that, while ensuring that everyone pays for network security.
        • ToDo - There were questions from the community regarding enabling privacy and zero knowledge proofs on the chain - this is in active discussion. Greg will create a position statement on this and likely discuss the current state of the art, use cases and potential approaches in an RCast session.  Same with sharding and cross-chain operation. 
      • In progress - Excel Model for 'economics of sustainable network security and decentralization' to enable community understanding of the inter-relationships and community conversation around these issues.  Will be releasing the initial version soon. May have multiple releases.
      • dApp Development:
        • Dan Connolly continues to make progress on the RChat effort using zulip.  SRT and possibly Will to add 'Rchain to zulip' functionality. Invite any community members with the expertise to help in this.
      • Current Backlog (partial)
        • Improve merging in system deploys
        • Improve Casper by enabling more tests and resolving identified code issues
        • Improve BlockMerge including refactoring RunTimeManager
        • Improve multi-parent Casper enablement
        • Implement sharding capabilities
        • Improve logging to be able to learn what API calls are being used, so they can be related to resource use and performance etc
        • Rholang 1.1 to improve syntax and user experience / learning curve
      • Tuesday TeachOuts by Tomislav (Tuesday 10 AM Eastern, 7 Am pacific) in Jimscarver's zoom room https://zoom.us/j/6853551826 

Tech-Governance meetings on Thursdays 10 AM Eastern, 7 Am Pacific 

Mercury requirements and acceptance criteria

Details on the acceptance criteria: Mercury acceptance criteria

Please see the documentation at https://github.com/rchain/rchain/blob/dev/docs/features.md. 

Testnet status

Please see RChain public testnet information to learn more about public testnet as well as a FAQ.

Tech Governance + Community testing

Thursdays at 14:00 UTC. Please see RChain community RNode testing for more information.

Blockers to Mainnet

NA

Risks to code completion for Mercury


Developer website

https://developer.rchain.coop 

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