Status Update

Weekly Development Report

DAEDALUS

Wallet

This week the team fixed an NTP service handling issue which caused Daedalus to falsely show an NTP error screen for a few moments every thirty minutes. This is the final fix the team prepared for the upcoming Daedalus 0.13.0 with Cardano 3.0.0 release.

The team is implementing status icons on the connecting/loading screen which will provide more information to users about the status of the connection, improving the overall user experience.

The team also completed some work to reduce application build time, and the application now builds twice as fast as before. Engineers have also improved application test coverage by implementing acceptance tests for the ‘Having trouble connecting/syncing?’ notification display and ‘Network connection lost - reconnecting…’ screen.

App Platform

This week the team completed a smart contract prototype, gathered feedback from the Plutus team regarding the API and script execution, and planned the transition into a production-ready offering. Major pieces completed include the implementation of an HTTP proxy to route GraphQL requests to an internally mapped server for the contract, finishing the JS client-side library to sign transactions based on the script engine, and the initial setup on Plutus support.

BACKEND OPTIMIZATION

This week the team has been focusing on broader reading around the BIP-44 specification to ensure that they can implement the best possible equivalent for the wallet backend. The team has also been working on an initial prototype of a new wallet backend which is free of dependencies on the old code base, supports delegation, and will be able to communicate with both Rust and Haskell nodes. This work is still in the early stages, however.

NETWORKING

This week the team made changes to the cardano-sl repository which allow the use of the iohk-monitoring framework. Engineers also implemented the block-fetch mini protocol: a pull-based mini protocol for downloading bodies of blocks whose headers have already been announced through the chain-following protocol.

The team also wrote a test suite for the multiplexing layer and implemented a channel which will handle data from a mini-protocol to the multiplexing layer.

DEVOPS

Continuous Integration

The team completed work on integrating nix-tools for cardano-chain and iohk-monitoring-framework, and continued work on integrating nix-tools with the new repositories, including cardano-shell and Plutus.

Smart Contracts

The team continued combining IELE and KEVM testnet deployments into iohk-ops to consolidate and simplify deployment strategies. The work was completed this week and is now in the review and documentation phase.

2019 IOHK Summit

The team made some improvements to adaPay based on feedback from end users.

Cardano 1.5 Release

The team started the release process for Cardano 1.5.

CARDANO DECENTRALIZATION

Research and Design

This week the team finished investigating how to implement a block consolidation mechanism for OBFT, as well as exploring how to manage the hard fork mechanism which will be required as part of the transition from Byron to Shelley.

Development

The team completed work on OBFT block generation and validation work this week, and are currently testing OBFT performance when completely independent from the old code base.

GOGUEN

This week the Plutus team worked on some security improvements and updates to the signature implementation code. The Marlowe team were busy with design work for Meadow in the cloud, as well as updates to Marlowe semantics and plans to expand the test suite.

Good progress was made on the outline plans and content for the Plutus and Marlowe educational materials which will be delivered in a phased approach over the next few months.

ANNOUNCEMENTS

IOHK is currently looking for talented people to work with us. Please see the IOHK Careers page for more details.