Community Update 89

General

• Release

  • Node version 0.9.13 is the current release in testnet  RNode-0.9.13 release plan

  • Note that RNode-0.9.13 is NOT BACKWARD COMPATIBLE with previous releases of RNode due to refactoring of the dagstore as described in https://github.com/rchain/rchain/pull/2696  and  

    
    RCHAIN-3800 - Revamp DAG storage to minimize duplicate code and use scodec for data structure serialization DONE

    The release includes many bug fixes, optimizations, refactoring changes in addition to a lot of metrics and instrumentation implemented to enable faster analysis and resolution of problems like the Long Proposal Times issue we encountered.

• Sprint

  • Sprint 37 in progress 

    • Main focus on (a) long proposal times - implementation of synchrony constraints solution (b) cost accounting specification and implementation (d) Specifying Casper tests independent of network layer (e) Increased testing including validator slashing (f) completing peek merge functionality (g) API to replace ListenForData@name (off-chain observability of deploy results) (h) Mechanisms for Network safety, reliability and hardening

    • Ongoing implementation of hardening.

    • Launch readiness: 

      • Each team is tasked with identifying hardening opportunities in the modules they're working on and id any launch readiness tasks and/or concerns.

      • First iteration of Launch planning and analysis in progress. 

      • Mainnet Infrastructure planning is ongoing

    • Genesis vault creation ceremony 'required signatures issue' resolved and tested - released in RNode 0.9.13.  

    • Cost accounting - all items are ticketed and assigned. 

    • Progress in investigating long propose times: Synchrony constraints using number of parents based on stake weight is being implemented. Once we see how that performs, we may look into any additional constraints required.  Details in https://github.com/rchain/rchain/pull/2722  and https://rchain.atlassian.net/browse/RCHAIN-3826

    • Progress in replacing the old registry with Rholang based registry. Near-term solution for Implementing replayability support in Peek is being added now, should be available in the next relase. Long-term solution to be discussed and designed later.  Details at Replay issues and some relevant tickets/PRs  https://github.com/rchain/rchain/pull/2692 and https://rchain.atlassian.net/browse/RCHAIN-3639

    • In RSpace, an API is being implemented for DAG discovery and block discovery, to enable an alternative to ListenForData@Name (Off-chain observability of deploy results). Relevant tickets are https://rchain.atlassian.net/browse/RCHAIN-3760 https://rchain.atlassian.net/browse/RCHAIN-3661 and  https://rchain.atlassian.net/browse/RCHAIN-3762 and https://rchain.atlassian.net/browse/RCHAIN-3812

    • In Casper, working on pre-requisites for non-game-able source of randomness for the validator to use, to pick a new validator from the 'bonding draw set' https://rchain.atlassian.net/browse/RCHAIN-3195

    • Design and Implementation of mult-sig vault features has started as detailed in https://rchain.atlassian.net/browse/RCHAIN-3392 https://rchain.atlassian.net/browse/RCHAIN-3196 https://rchain.atlassian.net/browse/RCHAIN-3223 and https://rchain.atlassian.net/browse/RCHAIN-3773

    • Increased testing by Dev team

      • Network hardening tests - ongoing.  Details at Network Hardening

      • Specifying Casper tests independent of network layer - ongoing

    • Increased testing by community

      • There're requests from the community for type safety in the grpc API and also for a websocket interface for light clients.  We're evaluating the best options for this without causing additional re-work ahead of mainnet. We want to get to feature completeness first. 

    • Refactoring, Optimizations and bug fixes - ongoing 

    • Exploring technical options and planning for Rhoc to Rev conversion, wallets and third party readiness - ongoing

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.

• Community testing

  • Aug 22 at 14:00 UTC. Please see RChain community RNode testing for more information.

Blockers to testnet-2

• See complete view in https://rchain.atlassian.net/browse/RCHAIN-3168

Risks to code completion for Mercury

• Evaluating backlog vs current velocity 

Developer website

• https://developer.rchain.coop