Community Debriefs

RChain Update 114: Artèriel solicits for backend MVP support

Blog admin

Update Summary


Last week included a discussion about rebranding the RSong backend name to reflect its generic use case. Members were encouraged to suggest names in the RSong Discord channel. Considerations were made by the European co-op for an Android frontend for Dan Connolly’s voting system. Greg mentioned his conversation with PeerTracks, a blockchain streaming service, in which they discussed the value proposition of music on-chain. Jonathan announced the commencement of node testing sessions in China. Interactions continued on economic incentive mechanism to engage validators.

This week,  Greg talks about block merge and making payments to the Casper wallet following the technical update from Kelly Foster. Kirsten Söderlind and Gary Johnson speak about the Artèriel project and what the fine arts organization hopes to achieve with RChain’s infrastructure. They petitioned for support to build a backend MVP. Greg discusses his article, “Blockchain as a tool for political transformation.” He then discusses the latest RCast on computational calculi comparing the Casper consensus protocol and Rho framework. The hangout closes with a redress to allegations from the Telegram channel against the Board for malfeasance.


Timeline


Announcements



Contents in Brief


Technical update: consensus stability, blockstore completion, cost accounting, wallets design

Sprint and Release

  • Two-week sprint ends Feb. 18 Priorities: consensus stability, block store completion, work toward cost accounting, work toward wallets
  • RNode v0.8.4 release delayed until resolution of RCHAIN-2909 – Fix InvalidParents error IN PROGRESS

Mercury requirements and acceptance criteria

  • Please see documentation here

Work with Whiteblock

  • Work continues to deliver an implementation of the test plan, as well as discuss a viable hardening solution

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

Block storage

  • We have the blockstore running in a dev testnet. Expecting a PR today. Understanding completion of the blockstore is key to resolving out of memory errors in RNode

Consensus

  • Resolution to RCHAIN-2805 – ERROR c.r.shared.UncaughtExceptionLogger$ – Uncaught Exception : assertion failed DONE  introduced a non-deterministic bug ( RCHAIN-2909 – Fix InvalidParents error IN PROGRESS ). Work in progress to resolve
  • The estimate is for the end of this week
  • Work in progress to expand unit test coverage for clique oracle

Cost accounting

  • Cost accounting requires a tiered approach related to each stage of the Rholang interpreter. Work started this sprint on this tiered implementation. RCHAIN-2881 – Tiered cost accounting for interpreter stages TO DO

Node

  • Investigation of out of memory error completed and plan for resolution in place. Most of the solution lies in completion of the blockstore implementation. The rest of the solution will be in smaller improvements

Test infrastructure and performance testing

  • Improving the performance test harness with Ansible playbooks. Work in progress on last component for this. RCHAIN-817 – perf tests: Automate deployment of the perf harness IN PROGRESS
  • Improvements complete for testnet monitoring. Work complete for binary repo and Docker hub cleanup

Wallet

  • Expecting PR today for resolution to the integer overflow vulnerability in MakeMint. RCHAIN-1117 – Integer overflow vulnerability in MakeMint IN REVIEW
  • Resolving questions related to contract signing

Comment /QA

  • Greg talks about block merge; making payments to the Casper wallet. This implies all transactions will have to be through the Casper wallet, making it nearly impossible to handle the block merge unless a different approach is used. Greg elaborates why the use of Name and Channel methodology seems a great approach to block merging

The Artériel project and RSong backend architecture

Artériel is a digital art licensing platform that helps museums and art collectors monetize their collections via reproduction, securely sharing more art in more ways with more people. By reproduction and registration of fine art images, it equitably compensates artists, museums, collectors, and rights holders. Kirsten Söderlind and Gary Johnson discuss the Artèriel platform. The 1000Museum was their former company. They believe RChain provides a trusted blockchain infrastructure for artist and museums. They have an asset management system called resource base and are seeking support from the community to build the backend MVP. Members of the community willing to engage to this end are welcomed.

  • Greg follows up on a blog post on computational calculi. He compares the Rho framework with the Casper protocol. While Casper is a protocol designed for proof of stake consensus, the Rho framework is designed for execution models.
  • Greg also wrote the post, “Blockchain as a tool for political transformation.” Nora Germain thinks the article will allow for a broader perspective on blockchain application for a different audience

Operational progress

  • The board had an informational meeting on Tuesday this week. No vote was taken
  • Board minutes for January was approved
  • Financial report due within a week-plus time frame

Other information

Lately, the Telegram channel has been included many allegations against the Board for malfeasance and lack of transparency on financials. Greg addresses this by stating that Barry Cynamon has been responding to the allegations and ensures the community that these claims are unsubstantiated. Jonathan suggested having FAQ channel where individuals can be referred to for clarity. This will make pertinent information available to everyone. Greg believes communication channels should be handled like a precious resource and dialogues should be more measured.