The Safe Network Primer has been updated.
So, what’s changed?
CRDTs were just a twinkle in @dirvine’s eye at the time of the last update, but now they are a fundamental part of the Network and crucial in achieving consistency without requiring a heavy-duty, network wide algorithm. Using CRDTs has enabled a shift to Register and Multimap data types, which are a lot simpler and more flexible than their predecessors.
Another part of the process of maintaining consistency and stability is Anti-Entropy, which ensures that a section is stable before changes are made within it. This is fundamental to every operation, and fortunately it lends itself to pretty pictures too, so AE has a chapter of its own.
Then we have DBCs. These have been covered in great depth in previous updates, and are still a work in progress, so the Primer gives an overview of what they are and what they can do. I suspect they will merit a chapter of their own in a future update.
The Node Age chapter has also been updated. This is something the team has been working on recently and a few processes have been altered as a result of experiments.
And then there’s Safe credentials. While not part of the core network, a good UX will be an absolutely crucial ingredient if the Network is to take off. @JimCollinson covered current plans in some depth last week, so the Primer just covers the core concept of n-of-k credentials. Once again, this will need its own chapter once the plans are implemented.
A couple of things have been removed too. First, the authentication process is being rejigged and is likely to look rather different from the old authenticator, but it’s early days and rather than add to confusion, I shelved that part for now. Second, the chapter on the API was hopelessly out of date, but the new one is beyond my ken for now, but I’ll revisit when I learn more.
