High-level summary​

This week, the Hydra team restored test compatibility with all networks, reviewed and merged streaming plugins contributed by SundaeLabs. The team also fixed tutorial instructions for downloading the latest cardano-node, fixed the observed contesters bug, prepared a PRs for downstream clients to use the new API format for transactions (preparing the release with this breaking change). Finally, they also recorded a walkthrough video on how the hydra project is run: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGUeO7A6mMU

What did the team achieve this week​

• Restored compatibility with all networks #1355.
• Reviewed and merged streaming plugins (only missing a how-to) #1325.
• Fixed tutorial instructions for downloading cardano-node 8.9.0 #1367.
• Fixed the observed contesters bug #1266.
• Prepared a PR for Kupo using new Hydra transaction format kupo#166.
• Recorded a walkthrough on how the hydra project is run (uncut) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGUeO7A6mMU.

What are the goals of next week​

• Conduct the monthly review meeting
• Improve the /commit endpoint to unblock users
• Stateful testing of transaction traces to verify corner cases for incremental decommit
• Release 0.16.0

High level summary​

• Merged the alternative fs-api interface for I/O using user-supplied buffers. This feature is important because it defines lower-level primitives for the filesystem API, which opens op avenues for more use cases and more efficient I/O operations (for instance when implementing lsm-tree, which is part of our efforts to move the ledger state to disk). This feature has not been released yet.
• Implemented new diffusion pipelining criterion .
• Released Consensus packages containing backports for Node 8.9.1.
• Focused on fixing the tests for ouroboros-consensus in the UTXO-HD branch. Work is ongoing.

High level overview​

This week, the Mithril team continued implementing the certification of Cardano transactions in Mithril networks. They focused on scaling the signature and proof generation for mainnet, completed UI improvements for the explorer, provided metadata about the point of the chain used during the verification process, and investigated a bug in the block parser that prevents some Conway transactions from being signed. Additionally, they began prototyping the implementation of a more versatile beaconing mechanism to sign transactions with low latency.

Finally, the team started implementing some community-requested features to verify the output folder structure made by the client, and fixed a source of flakiness in the CI end-to-end test.

Low level overview​

• Completed the issue Upgrade Cardano node to 8.9.0 #1570
• Completed the issue Explorer improvements for Cardano transactions #1554
• Completed the issue Refactor the Cardano transactions parser with pallas-hardano #1557
• Completed the issue Provide latest immutable file number with certified transactions in client #1536
• Worked on the issue Implement a Block Range Merkle Tree for Cardano Transactions #1533
• Worked on the issue Support multiple beacon types in signer/aggregator #1562
• Worked on the issue Do not require the mithril client to create the DB directory #1572
• Worked on the issue Some transactions are not signed in testing-sanchonet #1577
• Worked on the issue End to end tests are flaky in CI #1558
• Worked on the issue P2P threat modeling and risk analysis #1350

High-level overview of sprint 57​

We released cardano-node-8.9.0 (which includes ouroboros-newtork-0.12.0.0). This release contains the following network upgrades:

• bootstrap peers (aka Light Genesis): ouroboros-network#4555, ouroboros-network#4799, ouroboros-network#4810;
• churn changes: ouroboros-network#4800;
• peer sharing changes: ouroboros-network#4778, ouroboros-network#4788, ouroboros-network#4793;
• code refactoring & documentation fixes.

Soon we will release [cardano-node-8.9.1] (which includes ouroboros-network-0.12.0.0). This release will contain:

• Peer sharing improvements & fixes. Contributed and tested by Karl Knutsson CF.
• cardano-ping updates to support NodeToNode_V13 & peer sharing.
• Some smaller maintenance changes.

The list of network features included in ouroboros-network-0.12.0.0 and ouroboros-network-0.13.0.0 can be found here.

We also continued working on tx-submission, ouroboros-network#3311. Mostly working on the pure internal API for decision-making and testing it with property-based tests. The next step is to get all the information needed to run the decision logic in an efficient way and later write a mini-protocol client which is using the new API and testing it.

We also started working on thing to finalise the Genesis support from the network. We have a PR under review, ouroboros-network#4832. We also started to investigate how to support big ledger peer snapshots. This requires changes in the topology file as well as cardano-node & ouroboros-network to understand the snapshots; and on the other hand creation of such snapshots by cardano-cli.

Low-level summary​

This time everything was high-level, 😉.

High-level summary​

This week, the Hydra team worked on aligning the specification with the current incremental decommit implementation, added decommit to model-based tests and also discussed the incremental commit protocol extension with researchers. The team also updated to cardano-api 8.40 and tests against cardano-node 8.9.0, which unblocked a possible release and re-enabled smoke tests on public networks. They also groomed a new /commit endpoint interface from a user discussion and discussed restructuring of the Hydra documentation. The team also prepared a Conway-supporting hydra-node on branch lc/conway-support for early adopters (Hi @Juantxu and @ash 👋). Some internal refactoring prepared for upcoming streaming plugins by SundaeLabs and minor fixes to the TUI and hydra-explorer rounded off the week.

What did the team achieve this week​

• Aligned specification with current incremental decommit implementation and added Decommit to model based tests.
• Discussed and explored further on incremental commits with researchers.
• Refactored Event -> Input #1348 to prepare for streaming plugins #1325.
• Minor fixes to the TUI and hydra-explorer clients.
• Updated to cardano-node 8.9.0 and cardano-api 8.40 - this unblocked a possible release and re-enabled smoke tests on public networks.
• Groomed new /commit endpoint interface #1350 from a user discussion #1337.
• Discussed restructuring of the Hydra documentation #1349.
• Prepared a Conway-supporting hydra-node on branch lc/conway-support #1178 (will be merged only after the hard-fork).

What are the goals of next week​

• Prepare a PR for Kupo using new Hydra transaction format (to prepare for 0.16.0 release)
• Review and merge streaming plugins #1325
• Improve the /commit endpoint to unblock users
• Test corner cases of incremental decommit transaction traces