This week we are implementing a code freeze, meaning we finalise the release candidate for internal testing before the next stage - the 17th of December - when the next version of the network will be up for testing. We’ve finished with the current testnet, so all nodes can be safely stood down now. Thanks as always for those who have helped us test. The Beta testing phase is now over, so don’t forget to check your final position on the cumulative leader board.
The next phase of testing will start on 17th and will be about testing the quoting system and transactions, the fine details of how this will be incentivised are still to be decided, but the basic structure is shown in the Leaderboard post. After the release on the 17th there will be just one more new network before the token generation event (TGE), at which point we will be live. The network will not be taken down after that, including for the introduction of the native token when that is ready, all updates will be made in flight, and data will be permanent.
Good news is that in the next network Dave (the GUI) will finally be here, so folks will be able to use the testnet without needing to use the command line.
Thanks to everyone who joined us for the Q&A on Discord on Tuesday. For those that missed it we covered questions about the native token, about attack vectors, the choice of Arbitrum for EVM, and about the distribution of chunks and therefore quoting (which has been the subject of lots of work this week).
We’d like to introduce Danny Beck who is an external developer who’s helping us with the SDK so we can start bringing in devs bit by bit, including with our planned pre-builders programme where we’ll be working closely with five to six developers to make it as simple as possible for others to get involved. And also Lajos, a Rust wiz who has joined the team.
Thanks to everyone who gave feedback on the white paper we are in the process of updating that now. And @davidmc0 thank you for your continued thoughtful discussions about the tokenomics and plans for emissions. Thanks too to @happybeing for the PR about registers. Documenting data types and their capabilities is a priority for the team in the next few days.
General progress
This week is all about testing the release candidate, in particular the quoting process and transactions, plus refining the APIs and documentation.
@chriso has been getting everything ready for the release candidate which is now tantalisingly close to being ready.
@bzee implemented the bootstrap cache/peer address retrieval in the client with an updated method, made adjustments to get PUT/GET for transactions to work properly, reviewing self_encryption changes with @dirvine, tracking memory usage and also working on the client API.
@anselme has been working on getting the Quoting API integrated, as well as mopping up a few bugs with the CLI. We’ve now got a fully compiling node/autonomi/CLI suite upgraded with the new quoting system in place. The new quoting system is designed to smooth out the range of quotes on offer to a client, among other improvements.
Working closely with Anselme, @mick.vandijke has been honing the quoting flow improvements (how we manage the quotes nodes provide for storing data) and associated smart contract. He fixed an RPC rate limit issue we were getting when fetching quotes from nodes and then trying to get the current market price through the smart contract. This is all working now, node-side at least.
@rusty.spork is working on the documentation as well as doing his usual thing on Discord.
Meanwhile, Ermine worked on automation of ant-cli, working now on Linux and Mac but a little more needed for Windows. He also raised a PR to create a wallet from stored secret_key. If no wallets are present, instead of throwing an error the wallet is created directly using the secret key.
@roland introduced a PR to hard-code the production bootstrap cache endpoints into the binary. We now serve the bootstrap cache via a web server, and this is also read by our own nodes.
And @qi_ma raised a PR to do with a node checking its neighbourhood in line with the new quoting scheme, as well as getting involved with the API documentation and bootstrap work.
@jimcollinson is back from holiday and itching to get back into the thick of things.
Finally, @shu has been working on the monitoring of data uploaders and peer-cache nodes as we test the release candidate.
