Community Update 94

General

Release
- Node version 0.9.15 is the current release RNode-0.9.15 release plan
- Testnet is currenty running rnode version 0.9.15
- The 0.9.15 includes the new type safe API (instead of Either), some fixes for Long Proposal Times Issue, Offchain-data API (events API) improvements and other incremental progress in features discussed below.
Sprint 39 in progress
- Main focus is on reaching Testnet 3 (a) Cost accounting (b) Long proposal times - Fairness Constraint and other imrpovements (c) RSpace improvements in off-chain data API (d) multisig features (e) ongoing work in Casper tests independent of network layer (f) Ongoing work in Planning and implementation for Network safety, reliability and hardening
- Cost accounting
  - Design and Scope of work documented at https://gist.github.com/ArturGajowy/73e481767548b084a8e5d7c19bb1f70c
  - Implementation in progress for these preliminary tasks needed for implementing the main portions of cost accounting:
    - Some refactorings needed for Cost Accounting are completed and currently being reviewed e.g. https://github.com/rchain/rchain/pull/2770
    - Generalize NormalizerEnv -PR getting ready for review
    - Validate user deploy cost in replay is in review https://github.com/rchain/rchain/pull/2767/commits
    - Bulletproof unforgeable-name namespace uniqueness by prohibiting terms wider than Short.MAX_VALUE splits/terms
    - Remove DeployData.payment log
    - Signed[A: Serialize] with a signing smart-constructor
    - Merged - Casper refactorings needed for Cost Accounting mainly to improve type inference - https://github.com/rchain/rchain/pull/2761
  - All the above tasks are ticketed and assigned - These tickets are more detail level arrived at based on analysis of prior tickets in cost accounting
  - The 'System Deploy' construct, https://rchain.atlassian.net/browse/RCHAIN-3281 necessary for cost accounting, is implemented and getting ready for review. Once reviewed, corrected and merged, this should unblock epic https://rchain.atlassian.net/browse/RCHAIN-3631
  - Remaining chunks of work in cost accounting are (a) writing the charging logic (b) correcting existing tests to match the new code (c) writing additional tests (d) writing/changes to integration tests
- Reduce long proposal times:
  - Initial implementation of a (simple round robin) fairness constraint as an additional mechanism to address long proposal times. Code is completed, unit tests being written. PR getting ready for review. Once it is reviewed, corrected and merged, we will observe impact and possibly design additional variations later. A generic solution is available.
  - Exploring additional improvements to existing synchrony constraints.
  - Investigating improvements to other bottlenecks e.g. in slow finalization https://rchain.atlassian.net/browse/RCHAIN-3872 , ignore invalid blocks in toposort https://github.com/rchain/rchain/pull/2757 etc.
  - We continue to explore various test parameters and more complex contracts, to both test the stability of this issue and make it manifest sooner if it exists.
- Rspace
  - In Progress - In RSpace, an API is 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
  - Merged - Investigating failing integration tests in off-chain-data https://github.com/rchain/rchain/pull/2476 . This pertains to Slashing blocks that arrived with deploys whose signatures can not be verified https://rchain.atlassian.net/browse/RCHAIN-3214
  - Lot of knowledge transfer sessions and hand-offs to new developers in RSpace. Potential Future improvements identified RNode feature gaps
  - A simplistic Block Explorer is implemented https://github.com/rchain/rchain/pull/2725 Documentation on how to use it at Data reporting
- In Review - Implementation of mult-sig vault features is ongoing 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. Additional changes being made to the code based on design discussion. Next step is to write tests for this.
- Refactoring, Optimizations and bug fixes - 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
- Sept 19 at 14:00 UTC. Please see RChain community RNode testing for more information.

Blockers to testnet-3

TBD

Risks to code completion for Mercury

Evaluating backlog vs current velocity

Developer website

https://developer.rchain.coop

Date

Date
Oct 16, 2019