Tech Report May, 20th - May, 31st

During the last two weeks our development team has been working hard to finalize major features of the upcoming testnet release.

Here is what we accomplished in the period May, 20th — May, 31st:

Done in Sprint 17

• Speed-up node bootstrap and re-synchronization, Node, fine-tuning bootstrap constants

• Service Awards, Core Blockchain, required to create an incentive for validators to be always online

• Compress Micro Blocks to Macro Blocks, Consensus, remove last epoch’s micro blocks by moving their data to a single macro block

• Optimize bulletproofs, Crypto, a single bulletproof verification is now 10 ms (without AVX optimization)

• HashCash: more bug-fixing, Network, bug fixing of HashCash protocol

• Fork Resolution: more bug-fixing, Consensus, bug fixing of fork resolution mechanism for micro blocks

• UTXO Timestamp Locking, Core Blockchain, implement locking of UTXOs

• PublicPaymentUTXO: additional tx validation rules, Core Blockchain, implement additional transaction verification rules for transactions involving public payment UTXOs

• PublicPaymentUTXO: support in wallet, Wallet, implement support for public payment UTXOs usage in wallet

Plans for Sprint 18

• Base functionality of GUI Wallet desktop application, Wallet, implementing bootstrapping visualisation, accounts and payments

• Improve security of Docker image, Security, strengthen the security of the node’s docker image

• Introduce variable fees in transactions, Core Blockchain, Wallet, introduce the ability to set arbitrary fee amount for transaction in order to increase chances of transaction to be included in the nearest block

• Persist Payment History and Payment Certificates in Wallet, Wallet, required to support showing the payment history in wallet

• Use Base58 for external representation of wallet public keys (addresses), Core Blockchain, provide more user-friendly encoding of addresses

• Implement WebSocket API Authorization, Security, introduce API tokens for authorizing WebSockets API usage, even on localhost

• Support changing the wallet password, Security, provide the ability for the user to change wallet password

• Stress Testing: Packet Delay and Loss, Testing, part of test harness

• Stress Testing: Large Number of Nodes, Testing, part of test harness

• Stress Testing: Blockchain, Consensus, Service Awards, Slashing, ValueShuffle, Testing, stress testing the vital subsystems using transactional loads from transaction generator

• Introduce variable fees in transactions, Core Blockchain, Wallet, introduce the ability to set arbitrary fee amount for transaction in order to increase chances of transaction to be included in the nearest block