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Hydra Team Update

· 2 min read
Sebastian Nagel

High-level summary​

This week, the Hydra team kicked off a new project together with Catalyst, the Cardano Foundation and researchers from IO: a proof of concept for voting on Hydra. The concluded work on validating the Head protocol using model-based testing and formulated next steps, fixed the transaction cost benchmark reporting on the website and reduced the cost for commit transactions by ~30% with the help of reference scripts.

The year is coming to an end and velocity will slow down a bit while the team focuses on wrapping up loose ends. The updates here will pause until January 2023.

What did the team achieve this week​

  • Kicked-off Hydra Voting project with Catalyst, CF, and IO Research.
  • Reduce commit transaction costs by ~30% with reference scripts.
  • Prepared an RFP for external audit of the Hydra Head solution.
  • Fixed transaction cost benchmarks for abort tx #631.
  • Recorded decision to use model-based testing (ADR22) and improved Model documentation.
    • Concluding the first increment on “Validate coordinated Head protocol” #194.
    • Formulated next step / follow-up on testing the Soundness property of our protocol #656.
  • Switched to using nix flakes for development setup and CI build #646.

What are the goals of next week​

  • Push ADR21 & tx validity gap over the finish line (smoke tests missing).
  • Integrate the hydra-tutorial.
  • Have a LaTeX write-up of the HeadV1 (Coordinated Hydra Head) spec.
  • Close & recap on the year with another monthly report (+ blog post).