Weekly Development Report: July 14th, 2023

Author: Olga Hryniuk

Core Technology

This week, the consensus team working on UTXO-HD discovered a space leak in the peer metrics code which was communicated to the networking team who proposed a fix for it. The team also conducted UTXO-HD benchmarks using a local immutable DB server, which demonstrated promising memory and time performance. However, they still plan to assess the performance of a memory-constrained machine.

Work is ongoing on the Genesis design, the team started onboarding the team of engineers to implement the new Genesis protocol. They are also finalizing the statistical model for historical Genesis feasibility.

On the support front, the team drafted an information exchange requirement (IER) for the networking team to safely and efficiently control peer load.

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

WALLETS AND SERVICES 

The Lace team released v.1.3, which introduces ‘ADA Handle’ support for the regular and personalized handle, which users can test in the preview testing environment. Additionally, the update includes improvements in browser viewing responsiveness and the option to recover multi-address HD wallets. 

The team continued working on Trezor support and on the creation of new UI components for the multi-delegation flow. They also worked on the Metadex UI, which is now deployed to the pre-production testing environment.

Finally, work is ongoing on cardano-js-sdk – the team released the import HD wallet feature and worked on input selection algorithm improvements for the multi-delegation feature.

SMART CONTRACTS

This week, the Plutus tools team continued working on setting up the runtime monitoring for the Marconi sidechain, adding value and epochNo response fields to the getUtxosForAddress indexer and the afterTx query field for the getBurnTokenEvents indexer. Finally, they investigated how to make the standalone emulator usable with a real Cardano node socket client.

Over the past two weeks, the Marlowe team added stake credential support to Marlowe Runtime CLI and REST API, expanded the testing of Plutus failures for safety analyses, added more data feeds to the Marlowe oracle, and fixed some bugs in the Marlowe starter kit. The team also updated the contract details page, improved styling and descriptions of the apply input steps, and provided a timestamp in Marlowe Run Lite UI instead of blockNo.

Finally, the team implemented a user interface for the generative-art Marlowe contract (see commits 1, 2, 3, 4). 

BASHO (SCALING)

This week, the Hydra team continued securing the layer 2 network by implementing authentication of messages sent between peers in the Hydra Head protocol. In the process, they also managed to separate HeartBeat messages from the protocol ones which improved code quality. The team also finished work related to sending only transaction IDs in ReqSn messages, fixed an issue in the smoke tests, and improved benchmark publishing on the website.

This week, the Mithril team focused on preparing the beta launch on mainnet: they prepared an SPO on-boarding guide, kept working on the deployment of the mainnet infrastructure, and worked on enhancing the monitoring of the Mithril networks infrastructure. They also kept working on the implementation of a simple stress test tool for benchmarking the aggregator. Additionally, the team completed the refactoring of the interface to the cryptographic library.

Finally, they fixed a bug in the epoch gap detection of the certificate chain in the aggregator, fixed some flakiness in the CI, and worked on multiple other optimizations.

VOLTAIRE

This week in Voltaire, representatives from around the globe gathered together to advance CIP-1694 as a proposal for Minimum Viable Governance (MVG) framework. Over the last six months, over 50 workshops took place that involved nearly 1,000 passionate community members globally discussing the details of the proposal. That collection of feedback was discussed this week to ensure the governance system aligns with the community’s needs and desires. A consensus is forming around the frame proposed in CIP-1694 and with it, a community-led proposal for MVG will be available to all ada holders.

Wallet providers gathered together in a hybrid hackathon to review CIP-95 this week. CIP-95 proposes mechanisms that empower ada holders with voting capabilities. This proposal fundamentally elevates wallet providers to an integral infrastructure provider for the Cardano ecosystem. They are a key enabler for community members to express their democratic consent for governance actions.

As CIP-1694 moves to its final form, the community will have the opportunity to vote on whether this MVG is an acceptable way to move forward together. Several voting opportunities will be presented ensuring the community continues to guide the governance mechanism that best represents the community's needs. This represents a powerful option for the crucial advancement of participatory governance within the Cardano ecosystem.

Lastly, Intersect was announced this week, as a key institution for the ecosystem, bringing together companies, developers, individuals, and other ecosystem participants to shape and drive the future development of Cardano. It will be a steward of the underlying blueprints and technology for the community beginning with the Cardano node, core Cardano libraries and components required to operate the protocol, and all of its accompanying documentation, knowledge, and contributors.

As such Intersect will be an administrator of processes that govern the continued roadmap and development of the Cardano platform and protocol.

All participants in the Cardano ecosystem are welcome to become Intersect members. Made up of a distributed group of participants, including the foremost experts on Cardano and current ecosystem contributors, Intersect will facilitate healthy discussions and sound decision-making amongst its members, and the community at large, to uncover pain points, while championing successes. To join as a founding member, click here.  

CATALYST

This week in Project Catalyst, the proposal submission phase ended. Everyone who submitted a proposal is now working hard to make final edits before the proposal finalization period ends on July 17 at 11am UTC. During this week's town hall, more projects presented the great work they have been doing, and the Catalyst team gave a talk on how to improve proposals during the finalization period. Make sure to register your attendance for the upcoming town hall.

On the Catalyst technical side, the team:

• prepared the Snapshot Module UI for test deployment, pending backend enablers

• completed the initial development of the merged snapshot tool, which integrates with the development environment

• tested the changes to Daedalus rewards address and are currently waiting for the wallet team to merge them

• continued making improvements and conducting tests on Catalyst Data Services, auditability tools, and snapshot tools

• finished designing the app changes to align with process changes and have commenced development.

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

EDUCATION

This week, the Education team delivered a successful webinar for the Milken Institute to a group of their alumni on Blockchain Fundamentals. The team is also planning the curriculum for the Haskell Course taking place next month.

For more information please visit essential Cardano!