Plutus Core Team Update

High level summary

The Plutus team has recently opened two CIPs and one CPS for review. We encourage everyone to read them and leave comments - we would like as much feedback as possible.

• CIP-0194 adds a Match node to UPLC for matching on builtin constants (primarily Data). This will make consuming script contexts in validators much cheaper than the status quo.
• CIP-0195 specifies the Data encoding of the Plutus V4 ledger types.
• A new CPS aims to build community consensus on how to expose our property tests, and tests for older protocol and language versions, to alternative node and UPLC evaluator implementers with minimal integration effort.

Other than these, we've merged the CollapseCase pass, which rewrites list casing into dropList whenever applicable; the uplc tool now deduces input and output formats from file extensions; and the Plutus V4 ledger API types have been released in 1.67.0.0.

Key Pull Requests Merged

• Add CollapseCase pass, rewriting list casing into dropList
• Deduce uplc input type from file extension
• Add Plutus V4 Address type
• Remove the deriving-aeson dependency
• Fix Constr cost using wrong accessor in Agda metatheory
• Improve NEAT coverage
• Add missing off-diagonal data for EqualsString and EqualsByteString
• Add valueOf golden coverage in Spec.Data.Budget

Pull Requests In Progress

• Builtin Pattern Matching (CIP-0194)
• Cost model for multiIndexArray (CIP-0156)
• Formalize integer division and CIntegers in the metatheory
• Compile BuiltinData transparently in the plugin
• Certifier: Add decision procedure for hoist-builtins pass