RChain Update 113: RSong backend architecture, conversation with PeerTracks, and validator economics

Update Summary

Previously, the dev team announced an intense programming session. Dan Connolly demonstrated how RHOC balance in the Ethereum contract will be part of the genesis block at launch. Greg Meredith discussed the major focus points of cost accounting: short circuits flow, denial of service attack, features.md, and code cleaning. He informed the community of the board’s engagement with Arterial, which does digital asset management for fine arts. Progress continued on LADL and behavioral types. Greg mentioned embarking on a six-week seminar on LADL and behavioral types. The hangout closed with a recap from Greg about his trip to the Binance blockchain conference in Singapore and an update from Jonathan Kochmer on RChain Asia.

This week, Kelly gives the development update; afterwards, she shares thoughts with Greg on block store stability. Ian Bloom is working on re-branding RSong backend name to reflect its generic use case, encouraging members to add input in the RSong Discord channel. The European co-op considers adding an Android frontend to Dan Connolly’s voting system. Greg mentions a recent conversation with PeerTracks, a blockchain streaming service, in which they discuss the value proposition of music on the blockchain. The Chinese community commenced node testing sessions last week with the help of Will Qui. Finally, Greg interacts with community members on the proposed economic incentive mechanism to engage validators, sharing his optimism about Reflective Ventures trading RHOC to meet their business obligations.

Announcement

• See RNode v0.8.2
• Developer community update
• Please share your ideas for RSong rebranding. Place your vote on the options available on the RSong discord channel.
• Try our Rholang tutorial
• Bounties are still available for development work related to the implementation of Mercury requirement. Developers are welcome to put up missing tickets for this project
• Visit our developer website for dev tools

Timeline

Technical update: Blockstore stability

Rebranding RSong backend name

Android frontend on Dan’s voting system

Conversation with PeerTracks

Communication redress on Telegram channel

Trading behavior of RHOC holders

Content in brief

Technical update: Blockstore stability

General

• Sprint and Release
  • Two-week sprint ends Feb 4. Priority is platform stability and work from extreme programming session (Jan. 23-25)
  • RNode v0.8.4 releases week of Feb 4
• Mercury requirements and acceptance criteria
  
  • Please see documentation here. PR coming today to update cost accounting based on work completed last week
• Work with Whiteblock
  • Meeting with Whiteblock tomorrow to discuss ways to use the environment for hardening
• Test net status
  • A public test net is not yet available
  • A view of the issues blocking the launch of a public test net is available here

Dev meetup last week

• Most of the team, including Chris and Greg, met in Warsaw last week. Work focused on cost accounting and wallet development, resulting in a wallet design proposal. The team expects to complete refinements this week; delivery of cost accounting will be assigned later this week

Node

• PR merged to change config file format from TOML to HOCON in development branch today. If you are an early adopter and working with the dev branch or participate in a Tuesday testing, please learn more about this change in the README in dev. This change will be included in next week’s release

Consensus

• PR approved to resolve part of the cause of the UNKNOWN bug (RCHAIN-2858 – UNKNOWN after propose with a newly bonded node. IN REVIEW ) observed in Tuesday testing. And continued work on PR to address the assertion error (RCHAIN-2805 – ERROR c.r.shared.UncaughtExceptionLogger$ – Uncaught Exception : assertion failed IN REVIEW)

Block storage

• Work in progress to resolve integration issues with DAG storage improvements and the new block store

Test infrastructure and performance testing

• Work completed to release RDoctor v0.3.3 and resolve shutdown bug. Tested in Tuesday testing this week
• The performance test harness is up and able to run given a specified commit, as well as display metrics via Grafana dashboard. Plan to resolve discussion on the test scenario to use by the end of the week
• PR merging today to improve error messaging in Rholang tests and support work related to wallet feature implementation
• Work in progress to better cover bonding with unit tests

Comments/QA

• Kelly and Greg shares thought on blockstore stabiltiy and testnet stability. Kelly says the key reason for the implementation of the block store is to support node operators or node in a testing environment that are experiencing either a crash or specific kill to return to previous memory without spending much time. Some of the errors found in testnet appear systemic

Rebranding RSong backend name

Greg expects Arterial to join the community call to discuss RChain’s role in helping them reach an MVP. Meanwhile, he expresses increasing interest regarding the RSong backend as digital asset management on other kinds of applications, such as eBooks. Ian Bloom discusses rebranding RSong to better reflect the generic use case for its backend architecture, rather than focusing on it as a music streaming dApp. A few names received upvotes for rebranding so far. Members are encouraged to place their votes on the RSong Discord channel.

Android front-end on Dan’s voting system

RChain Europe held its weekly community call. This week they discussed the creation of an Android frontend on Dan Connolly’s voting system. This would help demonstrate the expression of will and sentiments on the RChain platform with respect to cultivating a relationship with the UK’s Labor Party.

Conversation with PeerTracks

Greg and Fabian had a conversation with PeerTracks, a blockchain music streaming service. They discussed the value propositions of music on blockchain.

RChain Asia:China commenced node testing session

Progress is being made on the educational front. Jonathan, Jocellin, Hong Jong (HJ), and Stella attended a blockchain conference, making solid connections. They are in preliminary discussions with the Director of Education in Seoul to replicate what was done at the national level. Two Korean universities have recently shown interest in having Rholang classes. Peter Finn is in touch with one of the premier technical educational institutions. With respect to partnerships, they are in discussions with a national telecom provider. There is also talk of creating a social network that is more user-friendly than Facebook and Steemit.

The RChain community in China commenced its node testing session last week with the help of Will Qui. Will is having issues with node testing due to hardware limitations, but Joshy is helping him by setting up accounts on Digital Ocean, which is suitable for a class of twenty-five members. They looked forward to having a Korean language node testing.

Comments/QA

• Greg follows up Jonathan’s update on RChain Asia with an overview of the conversations held in Warsaw comparing wallet designs. He also talked about the errors faced in the cost accounting and the kind of approach to dealing with such problems
• Potential community engagement with regards to validators: Greg carefully explains the proposed incentive mechanism and economics to engage validators

Communication redress on Telegram channel

Greg informs the community that physical threats of any kind to any member of the community in our channels is unacceptable and will be followed by swift response to maintain order. This is to follow up of a recent physical threat posed by a member on Telegram.

Trading behavior of RHOC holders

Lately, there have been concerns about the amount of RHOCs being dumped by legitimate parties in the community. Greg is optimistic that if RHOCs are being traded by Reflective Ventures, it is to fulfil business responsibilities to portfolio companies. He sees it as a fiscal opportunity to be harnessed by community members to offer solution that will help keep the value of RHOC relative to other tokens.