Community Debriefs

RChain Update 115: RSong as an equity vehicle for funding

Blog admin

Update Summary



Last week, Greg discussed block merge and Casper wallet payments. Kirsten Söderlind and Gary Johnson spoke about the Artèriel project; specifically how the fine arts organization could integrate with RChain’s infrastructure. They petitioned for support to help build a backend MVP. Greg discussed his article, “Blockchain as a tool for political transformation,” as well as computational calculi, comparing the Casper consensus protocol and Rho framework. He redressed allegations from the Telegram channel against the Board for malfeasance.

This week, Kate Gonsalves (former CFO) discusses the challenges that are delaying the release of Q4 (2018) financial report.  Kenny Rowe announces his resignation in order to pursue other opportunities that align with his ambitions. He expresses his gratitude for the community and reminds everyone he is still a co-op member. On the business side, the need for an equity base to secure funds from prospective clients is discussed. One idea involves using RSong as an equity vehicle to secure funds. Finally,  Greg talks about the RSong tokenomics structure.


Timeline


  • Technical update: consensus stability, blockstore completion, cost accounting and work toward wallets
  • Kate Gonsalves speaks about the financial report
  • Kenny Rowe announces his resignation from the board
  • Business update: RSong as an equity vehicle for funds
  • Greg discusses RSong tokenomics

Announcements



Content in Brief


Technical update: consensus stability, blockstore completion, cost accounting and work toward wallets

Sprint and Release

  • Two-week sprint ends Feb. 18. Priorities: consensus stability, blockstore 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

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

  • All PRs for the blockstore are in and reviewed. Work in progress to make changes based on the reviews

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 ). Concern the implementation of the estimator in multi-parent Casper was the cause. Pulled out multi-parent Casper, including an early version of block merging, last week. This did not resolve the issue. Investigation and development of tests to reproduce underway
  • Simultaneous to the bug investigation, work in progress to redesign the constant time estimator that supports multi-parent Casper. Plan to share this proposal at Casper stand up next Monday

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
  • Planning this week to complete cost accounting work in sprints 25/26

Node

  • Work in progress to address issues believed to contribute to out of memory errors. These are minor fixes compared to the block and DAG storage solution

Test infrastructure and performance testing

  • Work in progress this week to prepare for the launch of a public testnet with machines and monitoring. Previously, Pyrofex provided this backbone support. This work is to bring the infrastructure to the RChain resources

Wallet

  • Planning this week to complete wallet work in sprints 25/26

Kate Gonsalves speaks about the financial report

Former RChain treasurer (CFO), Kate Gonsalves, spoke about the challenges faced regarding the release of the financial report. The co-op is engaged with Hunt Jackson to produce a quarterly financial report. The reconciliation is nearly completed; Hunt Jackson is waiting on Ledgerpro to help adjust entries to the right account. By the end of this week, the quickbook account should be sent to Hunt Jackson; estimated completion is within two weeks. Prior to that, there will be a preliminary financial report once Ledgerpro is done rectifying the account entries.

Kenny Rowe announces his official resignation from the board

Kenny Rowe, COO of RChain and President of the governance committee, announces his resignation from the board and as an employee. According to him, other opportunities are aligned with his career ambitions. He is grateful for his time here and will remain active as a member. See his official resignation letter to RChain. Greg is engaged with Ravi Srivastava to potentially replace Kenny Rowe.

Business update: RSong as an equity vehicle for funds

Potential investors are interested in an equity vehicle on RChain. This has been a stumbling block to securing additional funds. However, in recent conversations, they suggested using RSong as an equity vehicle. Greg feels it’s a fairly significant opportunity for the co-op as it solves the equity problem and provides a way forward. Fabian, Ned, Jim, and Nora showed excitement over this proposition.

Greg discusses RSong tokenomics

According to Greg, the next version of economic architecture of the music industry should be predominantly determined by the artist and the listeners rather than a distribution mechanism. Consequently, it will result in a conversation with the artist and listeners to define their own tokenomics.