Status Update

Weekly Development Report

CSL CORE

Here are the major updates from last week:

• Finalized document on Monad stack proposal
• Shared the YT standardization proposal
• Started work to prepare master for release on cluster
• Close to having solutions on checked/unchecked deserialization
• Clean-up work done on reporting server
• Prepared the document on Update system downloader redesign proposal.
• Started work on technical documentation for block processing

DAEDALUS

In the scope of the plugin system workstream, a small but important milestone was achieved. A working proof of concept of a minimal plugin which hooks up to the Daedalus user interface and executes in complete isolation from other code was built using Electron webviews. In the scope of the Mantis integration, a process launcher was implemented to start and stop the Mantis node on Daedalus startup and shutdown. This feature will serve as the basis for a general-purpose process launcher in the future when support for integration with external binaries for Daedalus plugins will be built. Software hygiene improvement work continued this week with updates to all small dependencies in the Daedalus codebase.

MIDDLEWARE

Last week the team engaged in the following tasks:

• Paper wallets - Requirements overhauled to take into account more sophisticated use cases (hot/cold storage flipping, more generality), centered around the idea of "single-address wallets".
• Daedalus installers for Linux in progress; the idea is to release an initial immutable version using Nix and then refine it. The immutable version won't support “in-app” updates. A new installer would need to be downloaded each time.
• Exchange integrations completed -- both are live.
• A key member is working on redesigning the current wallet backend data layer. He will try to come up with a technical specification which will model the Blockchain syncing in a purely-functional way.
• Another member worked on redesigning the way updates are proposed on the blockchain and how Daedalus is updated within the app. The proposal is going through the last stage of reviews and will eventually support voting centre capabilities.

Wallet backend redesign `Phase 1' ongoing - planned for end of December. The team plans to:

• Propose a new versioned API (called `V1');
• Support the old (unversioned) API, slowly deprecating it;
• Have V1 endpoints mostly implemented using old logic.

EXPLORER

Explorer officially paused for now.

NETWORKING

The team separated what they call the "diffusion layer" from the blockchain logic as a first step towards a better architecture for the software. Furthermore they also began working out the details of peer-to-peer communication patterns that are needed for Shelley.

DEVOPS

Last week DevOps operational concerns included assessing an increased load on the mainnet, adding more relay nodes, and supporting exchanges. Significant progress has been made in evaluating a continuous integration system, wallet integration for Mantis, and the Haskell build tooling.

Tech Support

Last week saw an increased influx of tickets compared to the week before. There were a total of 759 tickets logged. The top reported issues were:

• cannot connect
• cannot see transactions
• antivirus
• cannot redeem coins
• issue using wallet
• cannot launch