Community Update 221

Owned by Rao Bhamidipati
Apr 27, 2022
5 min read

General

  • Status of the networks and Releases
    • Main net is running RNode version 0.12.5 ( https://github.com/rchain/rchain/releases/tag/v0.12.5) (bug fix in HotStore for rare cases of state hash mismatch, preparatory changes to the grpc and HTTP API).
    • Testnet 0.13.0 had been running Since about March the 10th. This is the Single parent block merge version. All block merge code is now on the testnet, but finalization needs to be worked on and that is the current focus of the team. Current version on this LLBM test net is 0.13.0-alpha2, which fixes a memory issue in the 0.13.0-alpha version.
    • There were two planned hard forks: Hard Fork 2 for block merge (release versioning will be 0.13.x) and Hard Fork 3 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.
    • There is a separate test net running the 0.12.5 version, to support those using the current main net. To access, point to  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/  There is a new 0.12.6 release that fixes a bug in the snapshot process. Gurinder is internally testing this currently before updating the test net and the main net.
    • Both *.bm.testnet.rchain.coop and *.llbm.testnet.rchain.coop are part of hard fork 2. the llbm version has the latest code.

Sprint 112 in progress

Main Focus is to prepare the leaderless block merge Hard fork (hf2), specifically (a) complete the finalization feature for multi-parent block merge for release to Test net (b) a lot of testing + bug fixing and (c) performance improvements (d) Completed - Adding shardId inside the signatures, to enable multi-shard operation and prevent reusing of deploys from one shard in another shard (e) sdk project to make the code more modular and serve as a base for RNode domain logic with corresponding data types. Other work includes resolving any identified bugs, hardening the network. 

The team has made a lot of cleanup and refactoring of the existing code towards implementing finalization using the simple protocol (i.e. ignoring any potential network partition where a part of the network is too slow to respond). Related PRs are https://github.com/rchain/rchain/pull/3672,   https://github.com/rchain/rchain/pull/3667,   https://github.com/rchain/rchain/pull/3666,  https://github.com/rchain/rchain/pull/3664, https://github.com/rchain/rchain/pull/3662

Current full PR list is at https://github.com/rchain/rchain/pulls?q=is%3Apr+sort%3Aupdated-desc+is%3Aopen .  Project progress is at https://github.com/rchain/rchain/projects/4

Note on versioning: We will label the next version 0.13.0 instead of 0.13.1 because the current test net version is called 0.13.0.alpha2 . I was mistakenly referring to the next version as 0.13.1 in the previous reports.

Gurinder is ready to move the testnets, dev net and monitoring servers and the main net observer nodes to the new cloud.

Will has completed the main part of his work on registry improvements to allow most updates as a soft fork. He has two more issues to resolve to complete this feature 1. Remove unnecessary signature in inserSigned https://github.com/rchain/rchain/issues/3669 and 2. Limit authKey to be not reusable https://github.com/rchain/rchain/issues/3668

Nutzipper and Stas have published PRs for the improvements and refactorings needed for finalization.  This is a significant part of the finalization work.  https://github.com/rchain/rchain/pulls?q=is%3Apr+is%3Aclosed+sort%3Aupdated-desc  and https://github.com/rchain/rchain/pulls?q=is%3Apr+sort%3Aupdated-desc+is%3Aopen

Based on the insights generated from his performance measurements, Denis has published a draft PR for a new Rholang map implementation.  https://github.com/rchain/rchain/pull/3671  He has more work to do on this.

Scodec based serialization doesn't seem to offer much performance improvement. Max is documenting his results and moving on to helping Denis in optimizing the Rholang map implementation.

We had a good review meeting with an external validator group yesterday. They have good experience with the test net so far and will be ready to validate when the new version is ready.

Substantial market engagement is underway with enterprise customers, systems integrators and others that want to develop and deploy solutions on the RChain platform.  The team will be spending some effort on these initiatives, so that they have a good understanding of market use cases and customer requirements. Long term, we will have to create other teams responsible for enterprise customer engagement so that demands on core dev team are minimized.

Note:

  1. 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.
  2. 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

Development Plans for the rest of the year and beyond - for reference

Near term plans and releases are as below:

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


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 four.
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 

Date