Hi all,
I haven't sent one of these status emails for some time. It's long overdue. A
lot has happened that it's hard to summarize. And more still needs to happen,
that is also hard to summarize. But I'm grateful for the passion, interest,
perseverance and openness of everyone involved. Everyone has been very
welcoming, it's really something to be proud about. And writing this, I'm just
reflecting on how far we've come. Just know that the next year is going to be a
special time.
Now let's get to business! Testnet1 has been bumpy, but extremely useful. We
have a unique chain format, a brand new proof of work, in a new and immature
implementation, and have to figure out all details to make all of this work in
a widely distributed network. The absence of bumps would have been worrisome.
The following have improved materially:
* The storage of UTXO sum tree is complex and has been the source of multiple
consensus issues. I think there's still a lot to come, but the concept
originated by Merope has proven sound and this implementation is a good first
foundational step.
* While the storage of UTXOs was happening, the chain got split in multiple
ways, as did the network. We learnt a lot about patholigical network states and
topologies.
* The blockchain download is considerable better, thanks to a lot of help from
Antioch. The download alogorithm is simpler and more robust, and he got ASCII
and SVG art to boot!
* There have been multiple improvements on the wallet side. We can now restore
the wallet state just from the key and seed.
* Mining has been extremely solid, some of you rocking serious CPUs; the 2
lasts are courtesy of Yeastplume.
Thanks to Antioch and Yeastplume for many late nights and also everyone on
gitter who's asked questions, helped one another, added documentation, testing
and filing detailed bug reports. Please continue sending test grins to each
other and exercise the network as much as possible. Don't forget to git
checkout regularly!
The next step is testnet2. I've spent some time doing some triage and filing
all the larger tasks required for a more full-featured implementation on Github:
https://github.com/mimblewimble/grin/issues?q=is%3Aopen+is%3Aissue+milestone%3ATestnet2
I'm sure I forgot some, but that should give you an idea of the largest
remaining efforts. There's also the complex issues of a formalized governance
and outreach program. I'm hoping to get more time to focus on these between
testnet2 and mainnet.
Finally, the development team has been toying with the idea of opening up
donations to help finance additional time from some of us, and to get
additional resources in the future. Casey and Derek genereously donated to the
logo (more on that soon). More details on how donations will work is coming
soon.
- Igno
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