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21 April 2020

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Ashok Ranadive edited this page Apr 27, 2020 · 1 revision

Engineering Status

Status reports are delivered weekly at 9:00 AM PT (16:00 UTC, Sydney +11, Beijing +8, Greece +3, Amsterdam +2, Onitsha +1, New York -4, Seattle -7)
https://casperlabs.zoom.us/j/488766416 and live streamed on YouTube.

Execution

  • We released a new patch Node 0.18.1 on April 16, 2020 with additional optimizations to thread pool management and fixing of a bug that caused stack overflow errors for a syncing node.
  • We have unified all developers into a single team that is led by Ed Hastings.
  • We have also decided to implement the Node and new Highway++ consensus algorithms in Rust thereby eliminating the need for the validators to run 2 processes and overcoming important technical limitations that we could have faced at a later date.

Release

  • Node 0.18.1 patch was released on 16th April, 2020.
  • Validators on the Testnet will be gradually updated with the new release.
  • DevNet has been de-commissioned. Clarity now points to testnet.

Testnet

Testnet was launched on 31 March 2020 with following features:

  • Alpha Highway consensus
  • Assumes honest validators
  • Supports Eras, configurable round exponent and other Highway parameters
  • Does not support bonding/unbonding, slashing, rewards
  • Genesis process
  • All smart contracting features
  • Testnet Explorer

Testnet Performance

  • The network is stable and all nodes are in perfect sync (except one that is rejoining the network and is currently syncing). Testnet has reached M-Rank of 8559. (M-Rank is the block height)
  • Nodes will be gradually updated to patch release 0.18.1.
  • Clarity has been re-directed to Testnet.

Testnet additions

  • Deploy gossiping and bug fixes.

DevNet

Devnet has been de-commissioned.

Current Focus

  • Deploy Gossiping and bug fixes on Testnet.
  • Augmenting STests Environment and running LRTs with various combinations.
  • Discussing and finalizing approach to Highway++ consensus protocol implementation and design docs.
  • Design of storage in Rust.
  • Design of integration with Chainlink for token market data.
  • Research of host function Cost model.
  • Implementation of Contract Headers

Consensus

  • We have decided to implement Highway++ protocol in Rust. We are aiming to design that the consensus is modular and plug-able to the rest of the process.
  • Designing the implementation planning for Highway++.
  • Design consensus protocol API.

Node

  • We have decided to embark upon moving towards a single runtime process built in Rust. Doing so will enable us to have a better story around runtime data access and storage. The first part of this will be to design the storage data model.

Contract Runtime

  • Implementation of Contract Headers.
  • Design host function cost model.

Test and SRE

  • Testnet - monitoring and working with validators.
  • Scaling STests and adding new features for monitoring and new scenarios.
  • Running LRTs for stress testing to establish various parameters like time required to fill 1TB disk, TPS.
  • Automating uploading of new versions of Python client to PyPi.
  • Removing integration tests since we now have STests to catch regressions and bugs. This will help development velocity.

Ecosystem

  • Enhancements to CLarity (changing of colors, logo and fonts etc).
  • Deploy signing and sending from within the browser.
  • Requirements document for integrating CLX with exchanges.

Economics Research

  • Fitting models to host function benchmark data.
  • Design of integration with Chainlink for toekn pricing data.

Team & Company Update

  • Marc Brinkmann joins the team.
  • Joe Davies joins the project as Community manager.
  • We streamlined & restructured the team
  • We have new timings for our weekly workshops- Friday 07:00 am Pacific and Friday 12:00 am Pacific (4pm Japan Time). The zoom meeting id is https://casperlabs.zoom.us/j/924713678.

Governance Status

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