Community Update 51

General

• RNode v0.8.1 released
  • See RNode-0.8.1 release plan for information about this release and links to artifacts and a docker image. We will update https://developer.rchain.coop as soon as web development support is available to assist.
• Test net status
  • A public test net is not yet available. We do have a development test net running to support debugging work.
  • A view of the issues blocking launch of a public test net is available here. 
  • New debugging tool created this week to help visualize the blockchain. This tool produces a text file that can be pasted to Graphviz to create an image like the one shown below. Planned additions include information in the blocks for the name of the validator.

• • Platform stability is priority #1 for most people on the team.
• Mercury requirements and acceptance criteria
  • The work continues to collect and define user stories defining the requirements for Mercury.
  • The development team has work this sprint to support the creation of test cases and acceptance criteria for stories that are ready. A view of this work is available here.
  • User story requirements, testing scenarios, and status will be reported in features.md. This is a work in progress. When complete stakeholders will have a web-based dashboard showing the requirements and the status of the acceptance criteria.
• Work with Whiteblock
  • In progress. Waiting for handoff from Whiteblock to the development team so they can begin using this testing resource.

Rholang team:

• In addition to supporting stability work, working on other bugs and continuing work on the block store.

Casper team 

• Fully focused on stability work.
• Working to build depth in Casper knowledge on the team. Kent lead a learning session with members of the team late last week. This increased the ability for others on the team to support Casper-related work.

Node team 

• Priority is work related to platform stability. This includes work with the SRE team to improve metrics and monitoring to assist with platform debugging.
• Bug found in Kademlia (CORE-1546). Introduced by a change a few weeks ago that did not create failures in CI. Work in progress to both resolve the bug and expand the test coverage for Kademlia and the P2P protocols.

Storage team

• Priority is stability work.
• Review of the peek prototype is in progress.

SRE team 

• Made significant improvements to the CI process last week by implementing Bors support for the timing of CI relative to the opening, review, approval, and request to merge PRs. This already reduced testing time, caught some issues early, and better assures PRs don't break dev. 
• Support work for the release of RNode v0.8.1 this week
• Other work supports the stability effort.

Developer website

• https://developer.rchain.coop 
• Awaiting web development support to make updates related to the release of RNode v0.8.1 and to the REV issuance page which no longer reflects the current timeline for the Mercury release.