Weekly Development Report: June 16th 2023

Author: Olga Hryniuk

Core Technology

Over the past few weeks, the networking team implemented a new light peer sharing feature, which allows the inclusion of inbound peers into the outbound governor's known peers.

This is the primary method for new unregistered nodes to join the network, which can then be shared through peer sharing. Note that peer sharing is an experimental feature that is currently disabled until the implementation of Genesis and Eclipse Evasion is complete.

The team also made progress in reviewing Eclipse Evasion, fixed some bugs in local root peers, and resumed working on dynamically enabling block forging, which will enable the release of P2P for block-producing nodes. 

Finally, the team prepared cardano-ping and cardano-cli ping releases.

The consensus team had a productive meeting with IOG researchers to discuss the transition between Byron and TPraos eras when Genesis is rolled out. They agreed that era checkpointing is not necessary for the MVP and are currently assessing the threat that historical short forks pose for Genesis. Additionally, they are collaborating further with researchers to ensure that when Genesis is implemented, there will be a bound on how long an adversary can delay the overall sync time.

In terms of development, the team has been working on the UTXO HD feature. They rebased the prototype branch onto the latest ouroboros-consensus main branch and integrated it with cardano-node 8.1.1-pre. As a result, the recently released mempool fairness fix is now incorporated into UTXO-HD. They successfully ran a UTXO-HD-enabled node and addressed a race condition in the prototype. Additionally, they started conducting UTXO-HD ad-hoc benchmarks for cardano-node, which revealed a performance regression in the network component when using GHC-9.2/9.4. They are currently working on resolving this issue.

In terms of support activities, the team released fs-sim-0.2.0.0 and is in the process of preparing the node v.8.2 release. 

As always, see this technical development report for more details from different teams.

WALLETS AND SERVICES

This week, the Lace team implemented Brave support in Lace v.1.1.1. Work is ongoing on cardano-js-sdk, the team updated TxBuilder to add support for multi-delegation and a new input selection algorithm for partitioning UTXOs according to users’ staking preferences. They are also finalizing the HD wallet import feature. 

Finally, the team continued working on Lace browser UI components for a new staking page.

The Adrestia team continued working on updating the cardano-wallet to support node v.8.0.x, multi-signature wallet delegation, and DB layer enhancements.

SMART CONTRACTS

This week, the Plutus tools worked on finalizing the Marconi GetUtxoFromAddress and GetTokenBurnEvent indexers, compared those with cardano-db-sync, and updated the marconi-sidechain JSON-RPC request. They also added an AssetId filter to the marconi-sidechain CLI.

The Plutus core team improved the Untyped Plutus Core inliner, making it more efficient at identifying inlining opportunities. They also improved the pretty printer for Plutus Core and Plutus IR, making the printed programs more compact and readable.

The Marlowe team worked on Marlowe Runtime improvements by diagnosing some issues in advancing Marlowe contract and fixing a transaction submission feature in marlowe-apps. They also benchmarked Marlowe Runtime for tagging a release candidate, added edge test cases, and fixed some options in marlowe-runtime-cli.

The team also worked on E2E test scenarios automation for Marlowe Playground, added new designs to Marlowe Explorer, and worked on Marlowe Run Lite token minting support. 

BASHO (SCALING)

This week, the Hydra team completed their investigation into Hydra head issues on mainnet and reactivated their persistent head instance. Additionally, they resolved the issue with the monthly report publication process on the website and began brainstorming ideas for future enhancements. The team is currently in the final stages of delivering a new feature that will enable parties to commit funds from external wallets. 

Finally, they initiated efforts to optimize the performance of their benchmarks.

This week, the Mithril team completed the implementation of the new sub-command for restoring Mithril stake distribution in the client. They also updated the client’s developer documentation and architecture documentation, and did some refactoring on the client. Additionally, they completed and deployed infrastructure enhancements on the test Mithril networks.

Finally, the team worked on fixing a bug on the client multi-platform test and some flakiness on the CI.

VOLTAIRE

This week in Voltaire, conversations continue on CIP-1694 to establish an initial Minimum Viable Governance (MVG) framework. This framework is crucial for the advancement of participatory governance within the Cardano ecosystem. By collecting feedback from community members, diverse viewpoints can be incorporated to ensure the governance system aligns with the community’s needs and desires. 

The following workshops, hosted this week, yielded some valuable feedback:

• Tokyo, Japan by EMURGO

• Philadelphia, PA, U.S. by NOODZ#9108 (Jun 17)

• Toronto, Ontario, Canada by lley154#5195 

• Taipei, Taiwan by willhuang#9734 and EricTsai#8963

• Virtual by Juana#4728 (Jun 17)

• Virtual by Bboaz#5475 (Jun 17)

Check out workshops happening near you and join the conversations.

CIP-30 and CIP-95 are mechanisms proposed in Cardano Improvement Proposals (CIPs) to empower ada holders with voting capabilities. These proposals, once implemented by wallet providers, will enable community members to express their democratic consent for governance actions.

It's essential for community members to actively participate in providing feedback for CIP-1694 and CIP-95. By voicing opinions and suggestions, you can help shape the future of governance within Cardano. This collaborative approach ensures that the governance mechanisms implemented best represent the community's needs.  

CATALYST

During this week’s town hall, the Catalyst team provided an overview of the Fund10 budget parameters. Make sure to stay tuned and register your attendance for the upcoming town hall.

Moving on to the technical side of Catalyst last week:

• The team initiated another dry run of the voting app. Several branching issues from the previous version of the voting app were identified and solved.

• Compatibility testing with external wallets regarding the latest changes required for Fund10 registration is ongoing. 

• Outputs of the Earthly build were cleaned up to prepare work on event orchestration for the continuous testnet.

• Initial development on the first set of APIs for the new Catalyst Data Service was completed and has entered the testing phase.

• The tally recovery tool was refactored to reduce the time required to run from 24 hours down to 10 minutes.

• Last but not least, the team started work to merge snapshots from pre-production to mainnet to enable the ‘Check my voting power’ tool.

Watch out for more information on how you can participate, which we will share in the coming days!

Finally, to stay up to date with everything happening in Project Catalyst, join the Catalyst Telegram announcement channel.

EDUCATION

This week, the Education team delivered a very successful Cardano Days workshop at the University of Celaya, Mexico. This two day in-person event presented Cardano to a mainly non-technical audience. The feedback has been very positive and will help us shape similar events in the future.

The team also published lesson 14 of the Haskell Bootcamp and continued making progress with content for Mastering Cardano.

For more information please visit essential Cardano!