Weekly Development Report: July 28th, 2023

Author: Fernando Sanchez

Core Technology:

This week, the core technology teams released node v.8.1.2, which brings updates to the Plutus interpreter. 

The ledger team focused on the implementation of Conway features into the ledger. Team members took part in the CIP-1694 workshop and had an in-person meeting discussing further steps for Conway era implementation. They also investigated some transaction validation issues on the preview testing environment relevant to the new node release, did some work to define the needed types for Plutus v3, and progressed on constraint-based generators, which now generate valid transactions and ledger state. 

This week, the DB Sync team confirmed that the adaptor module provided by the consensus team for UTXO-HD integration shows no performance degradation. Other clients interested in integrating with UTXO-HD, without using on-disk storage, can currently use the mentioned adaptor module.

The team also focused on completing tracing support for UTXO-HD in cardano-node. They are working on UTXO-HD documentation, catering to both downstream consumers and the general public, and on further implementation generalization. 

Work is ongoing on Genesis design; the team decided to make a Genesis-motivated change to the epoch structure. They collaborated with researchers to produce a self-contained description of the statistical model for historical Genesis windows and eclipse durations. A couple of small improvements have already been merged into the ChainSync client.

Finally, the consensus team investigated an issue on the Sanchonet (the Conway ledger testnet), which resulted in long syncing pauses. They identified a ledger bug and promptly collaborated with the ledger team to fix it.

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

WALLETS AND SERVICES:

This week, the Lace team worked on some fixes to support hardware wallet use within the DApp connector, refactored complex parts of the codebase, and ran a semi-automatic collateral setup to simplify DApp interactions. They also improved test automation, made some local development improvements, and continued working on Trezor support.

SMART CONTRACTS:

This week, the Plutus tools team worked on improving error reports for Marconi, bug fixes when storing LedgerStates on disk for the marconi-sidechain, and on completing the cardano-node-emulator demo.

The Plutus core team added new built-ins for Keccak-256, which will enhance compatibility with Ethereum. Additionally, they included Black2b-224 as a new built-in, enabling on-chain computation of PubKeyHash within Plutus. These additions will be available in Plutus v3.

The Marlowe team created a developer Docker image with Runtime and Jupyter notebooks, worked on Marlowe Runtime testing pre-launch for mainnet, filtered contracts by role token in Marlowe Run Lite, and added role payout support to the runtime client.

BASHO (SCALING):

This week, the Hydra team updated the specification to align with recent off-chain protocol changes and completed the refactoring of the snapshot emission in preparation for event-sourced protocol logic. They also updated to GHC 9.2.7, which resulted in improved compiling times and slightly smaller Plutus scripts.

This week, the Mithril team released a new distribution 2329.0. The team launched Mithril protocol’s mainnet beta: the release-mainnet network is now open for signer registrations, and its genesis certificate has been created. The team is monitoring the network, and expects it to start producing certificates during the next Cardano epoch. They also kept working on the implementation of the stress test tool for benchmarking the aggregator. Additionally, the team kept working on the refactoring of the serialization/deserialization of the entities of the cryptographic library.

Finally, they have worked on fixing installation bugs of the binary artifacts produced in the CI, and on enhancing the documentation for onboarding SPOs and setting up a Mithril signer.

VOLTAIRE:

This week in Voltaire, the feedback collected from the CIP-1694 workshop is being reviewed and considered. An update will be published shortly. 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. This represents a powerful option for the crucial advancement of participatory governance within the Cardano ecosystem.

Intersect was announced earlier this month, 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. As such it 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 level 0 and level 1 community review stage is ongoing until next Thursday, August 3. Following that, the level 2 community review process will begin. The recent town hall featured a fireside chat led by Kriss Baird, the Catalyst group product lead, and Nigel Hemsley, the VP of governance. The chat aimed to address community questions about the Catalyst Fund operations proposal submitted by the Catalyst team. Make sure to register your attendance for the upcoming town hall.

On the Catalyst technical side, the team:

• Created a script for weekly registration reporting from the snapshot service

• Worked on bug fixes for the new snapshot importer

• Updated supported wallets page with the latest information from Yoroi, Daedalus, and Typhon

• Investigated the Flint wallet registration issue 

• Implemented a workaround solution to add new data fields to the vit-servicing-station without modifying the db schema (relevant links and open source flag provided)

• Refactored the community reviews calculator and considered its integration with the Ideascale importer

• Continued working on test automation for cat-data-service APIs

• Started testing the moderation module

• Completed analysis of existing load testing tools and aligned on an approach for testing in Fund10, scheduled to begin in the next dry run

• Continued working on community documentation for new auditing tools

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

EDUCATION:

This week, the Education team prepared the content for the in-person Haskell training course happening in early August in Nairobi, Kenya in conjunction with the Africa Blockchain Center. They also published lesson 15 of the Haskell Bootcamp which focuses on error handling.