Community Update 212

Owned by Rao Bhamidipati
Feb 23, 2022

General

  • Status of the networks and Releases
    • All Main net nodes are running RNode version 0.12.4 (primarily containing the PRs to update the Open API JSON and the 'find by blockhash' function). This version includes the block merge code that does not require a hard fork, but block merge is currently disabled until we have the block merge version coming up in hard fork 2, aka block merge hard fork.
    • There were two planned hard forks: one for block merge (release versioning will be 0.13.x) and one for PoS changes (release versioning will be either 0.14.x or 1.x.x) to eventually enable a fully decentralized node with external validators.  Most of the Hard fork 3 changes are now likely to be included in Hard Fork 2.  We will do a Hard Fork 3 only if needed.
    • A block merge test net (currently running the 0.12.5 version  https://github.com/rchain/rchain/releases ) is available for the community at node{0-4}.bm.testnet.rchain.coop, observer.bm.testnet.rchain.coop, faucet is available at https://status.bm.testnet.rchain.coop/testnet/faucet/ and Tomislav's (TypeScript) test page with block merge network support is available at https://tgrospic.github.io/rnode-client-js-dev-test/
    • Both *.bm.testnet.rchain.coop and *.llbm.testnet.rchain.coop are part of hard fork 2. the llbm version has the latest code. Having the two test nets will allow the community testers to trace any unexpected behavior in their tests to the latest code changes vs. the code that has been running on bm.testnet for a while. The *.llbm.testnet.rchain (Leaderless block merge test net) stability is much improved, but the team will be making further changes to it. Nutzipper has updated the llbm testnet  with the latest version of the that integrates Denis' improved history work in its current stage. Community members interested in testing can request test REV for llbm in the #testnet channel. Once we determine llbm.testnet to be fully stable, it will become the sole test net for hard fork 2.

Sprint 106 in progress

Main Focus is to prepare the leaderless block merge Hard fork (hf2), specifically (a) merging REV balances directly  (b) Leaderless block merge (LLBM) (c) a lot of testing + bug fixing and (d) performance improvements. Other work includes resolving any identified bugs, hardening the network.  Current PR list is at https://github.com/rchain/rchain/pulls .  

Block merge Hard Fork (hf2)

  1. LLBM: The design for finalization frontier/barrier/fringe calculation and merging is refined and described at https://docs.google.com/document/d/1pZDO6Jh5nfgr4tZDGdMJhWKm1rFSGcDghDNo4XVDrBc/ Nutzipper and the team are working on the following LLBM functionality: 1. Correct the bug in logic that flattens out order of justifications - Merge the whole conflict set into prestate as it was before 2. Look into optimal way of handling attestations to improve performance, 3. Supporting provisional finalization on merge, 4.  Enhancements to the simulator to include more test scenarios 5. Testing, bug fixing and refactoring as needed.  Tomislav and Will are fully engaged in the LLBM tasks.  Stas and Tomislav will be adding functionality to the simulator to create more test cases as needed, for e.g. https://github.com/rchain/rchain/pull/3608 and https://github.com/rchain/rchain/pull/3601.  Nutzipper has vacation coming up and handing over to the rest of the team the parts that need to be completed.
  2. Stas is getting ready to update APIs to match HF2 in an incremental but automated fashion. This PR by Tomislav https://github.com/rchain/rchain/pull/3609 closes issues identified in https://github.com/rchain/rchain/issues/3542 and https://github.com/rchain/rchain/issues/3536 . What's referred to as version 2 (v2) in these issues will likely be called v1 (which means current API is v0). 
  3. Denis is investigating the causes of poor performance in Rholang primitive operations as outlined by Tomislav here https://github.com/rchain/rchain/issues/3607.  List, Set and Map are targets for improvement.
  4. The team is focused on cleaning up the HF2 branch and getting it merged with Dev branch, so that LLBM+HF2 will be the main development branch.
  5. Support for external customers is ongoing. A lot of the roadmap focus for 2022 will be to discover and enable the features needed for market acceptance and adoption of RChain. As we work with actual projects wanting to deploy on Rchain, we will prioritize the features and performance improvements etc. that they need. The roadmap will be updated to reflect this approach.
  6. Reminder: It's important for all Wallet makers to update their code to match the new implementation where minimum phlo price is a parameter. Please communicate this to any wallets you are using.  Wallets will have to call /api/status to get min phlo price accepted by the validator and put that value in deploy data instead of the currently used constant 1.Tomislav has updated the wiki at https://github.com/rchain/rchain/wiki/Cost-accounting-in-RChain#phloprice We will start communications with exchanges also for HF2.
  7. Status of various Block merge tasks is at
    1. https://github.com/rchain/rchain/projects/4
    2. Current status of updated HF2 task list is at https://github.com/rchain/rchain/issues/3315

Release Plan for the rest of the year and beyond - for reference

Currently planned near term releases are

  1. Block merge release hard fork 2 plus any configuration changes that do not need extensive work - Leaderful and Leaderless block merge
  2. Configuration changes release,
  3. Performance improvements releases (one or more),
  4. Hard Fork 3 with PoS changes and other items,
  5. External validators process validation with trusted community validators (aka Friends & Family) on the test net
  6. Friends & Family validation on the main net
  7. External validators among extended ecosystem (e.g. exchanges, if they're willing)
  8. External validators in the wild.


Explanation of the different Hard Forks (for reference)

Proceeding further with block merge requires changes to the per validator vault to make it a per deploy vault/purse etc. We are currently finalizing the design for this. Actual code and test will take some time. We are potentially looking at this scenario:
1. First hard fork for balances and removing the slashed validator
2. Second hard fork for block merge - This is the fastest way to get block merge on the main net without holding it until the third hard fork. This includes REV balance merging (aka per deploy vault), attestation messages and the Tree depth being increased to 4.
3. Third hard fork with all other changes.  Third hard fork includes implementation of a lot of changes including the PoS contract changes, Soft fork process etc.  Design for soft fork process is complete and is being reviewed by the team.

(Hard Fork) TEST NET 2 ADVISORY: (for reference)

To test the version of block merge with data changes that need a hard fork, we are creating a separate feature branch and a TEST NET 2 as the testbed for this feature branch. This content will be left here until we are close to Hard Fork 2 implementation on the main net. TestNet 2 is now available for the community to test their contracts on.

  1. There will be no guarantees of data storage format compatibility on Test Net 2, as the data storage format changes are incrementally implemented. The anticipated changes are mostly storage level format changes visible only to node operators. We encourage the community to start using Test Net 2 in addition to the current test net, so that we can quickly identify and resolve any issues with the upcoming hard forks. All new development should be targeted to TEST NET 2 and all current code MUST BE tested against TEST NET 2 to ensure future compatibility. 

On all the hard forks on the main net, we will be starting from an empty state, with REV balances only. On Test Net 2, this 'loosing the state' will be repeated multiple times.

Tech-Governance meetings on Fridays 9:30 AM Eastern, 6:30 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. 

Developer website

https://developer.rchain.coop 

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