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SRE Team Update

· 2 min read
John Lotoski
John Lotoski
Service Reliability Engineer

High level summary​

The SRE team continues work on Cardano environment improvements and general maintenance.

Some notable recent changes, updates or improvements include:

  • Preparation for 10.7.0 pre-release is underway and SRE is working on integrations for kes-agent and dmq-node for the release binaries, node nixos service and OCI containers as appropriate. CI tests for Consensus db-tooling (ie: db-analyser, db-truncater, db-synthesizer) are being added to a nixos test run on Hydra to ensure bundled node version and db-tools version maintain compatibility.

  • Iterative deployments of 10.7.0 pre-release candidates to select pre-release environments are on-going with issues being reported back to developers.

  • Darwin CI build machine updates are underway along with some optimizations and fixes to reduce flaky Darwin platform bugs and noisy alerts as well as a refactor to reduce code complexity. A number of these improvements will appear in the next SRE biweekly update.

  • Loki logging has been added to more of our cardano-parts environments (ie: cardano-playground and cardano-mainnet). Custom Loki dashboards are also being prepared to improve the Loki experience and will appear in the next cardano-parts PR.

Repository Work -- Merged​

Cardano-monitoring​

cardano-monitoring PR#4:

  • Adds Loki to playground, mainnet and networkteam monitoring servers
  • Raises max_outstanding_per_tenant to accommodate large dashboards w/o errors

cardano-monitoring PR#5:

  • Adjusts Loki log retention to a per-environment setting

Devx-ci​

devx-ci PR#144:

  • Increases nofile soft/hard limit to avoid failures on higher nofile requirement builds like virtiofs virtualized images

Repository Work In Progress -- PRs and Branches​

Consensus Team Update

· 3 min read
Damian Nadales
Damian Nadales
Consensus Team Lead

High level summary​

  • Continued Leios prototype development (Treasury Funding Initiative 4: Ouroboros Leios Implementation):
    • Implemented a run-threadnet CLI that allows configuring, running, and observing simulated Cardano networks (#1883). This tool enables the team to quickly test multi-node setups locally, significantly speeding up the investigation of implementation issues.
    • Drafted a baseline design for the Leios fetch logic with bounded memory usage (ouroboros-leios#797, ouroboros-leios#811). The design addresses the challenge of efficiently fetching and managing large volumes of data in Leios while keeping resource usage within practical limits. Work continues in March with an exploration of alternative storage strategies to further improve performance.
  • Peras development:
    • Added state-machine tests for the Peras vote database, strengthening the guarantees around the correctness of the voting mechanism (#1809).
  • Node improvements (Treasury Funding Initiative 17: Maintenance and Support):
    • Updated the Node-to-Client protocol to version 23, unlocking new queries for wallets and other tools that interact with the node (#1860).
    • Made it easier for developers to target the current era when querying the node (#1919).
    • Improved observability of chain selection by exposing the reasons behind chain switches (#1898).
    • Integrated a ledger fix for a bug in the Plutus script context (#1914).
  • Repository and tooling (Treasury Funding Initiative 17: Maintenance and Support):
    • Unified all consensus packages into a single package, simplifying the dependency landscape for downstream projects (#1895, #1912).
    • Enhanced the snapshot converter tool with a daemon mode that watches for new ledger snapshots and automatically converts them, useful for node operators managing different storage backends (#1887).
    • Added developer documentation for inspecting a node's chain (#1913).
  • Testing and quality (Treasury Funding Initiative 17: Maintenance and Support):
    • Generalized Genesis tests to support any block type, paving the way for conformance testing with real Cardano blocks (#1879).
    • Added support for GHC 9.14 (#1902).
    • Internal cleanup of chain selection and ledger database code (#1880).

Mithril Team Update

· 4 min read
Jean-Philippe Raynaud
Jean-Philippe Raynaud
Mithril Tech Lead

High level overview​

This week, the Mithril team continued implementing new succinct proofs. The team completed the SNARK pre-aggregation primitives in the STM library, began preparing the SNARK prover witness, and continued adapting the certificate chain for SNARK aggregate verification key. They also made significant progress on the SNARK circuit refactoring, completing the error handling and type consistency tasks while continuing work on decoupling the Midnight library and aligning naming. In addition, they refactored the prototype recursive circuit's state transition functions and continued the full review of the recursive circuit prototype, the technical report for the recursive Halo2 circuit, and the impact assessment of SNARK on Mithril protocol security.

The team also continued work on the new certification for Cardano blocks and transactions, including the prover and the client library implementation. They completed the integration of Mithril explainers into the Cardano Developer Portal website and continued work on static builds for Mithril nodes.

Finally, they fixed a slowness issue affecting the import of Cardano blocks and transactions on dev aggregators, improved the DMQ node setup documentation, and tested the DMQ node 0.3.0 pre-release.

Low level overview​

Features​

  • Completed the issue SNARK pre-aggregation primitives in STM library - Phase 2 #2943
  • Completed the issue Refactor SNARK circuit - Error handling #3035
  • Completed the issue Refactor SNARK circuit - Type consistency #3036
  • Completed the issue Refactor SNARK circuit - Midnight library decoupling #3037
  • Completed the issue Refactor the prototype recursive circuit state transition functions #3069
  • Completed the issue Integrate Mithril into the Cardano developer documentation website #3012
  • Worked on the issue Full review of recursive SNARK circuit prototype #2982
  • Worked on the issue Prepare technical report for recursive Halo2 circuit #2981
  • Worked on the issue Impact of SNARK on Mithril protocol security #2803
  • Worked on the issue SNARK aggregation primitives: Prepare prover witness #2887
  • Worked on the issue Refactor SNARK circuit - Naming alignment #3038
  • Worked on the issue Adapt certificate chain to support SNARK AVK #2811
  • Worked on the issue Compute the Lottery Target Value in MerkleTreeSnarkLeaf #3068
  • Worked on the issue Implement new prover for Cardano Blocks and Transactions #2987
  • Worked on the issue Implement Cardano Blocks and Transactions in client library #3031
  • Worked on the issue Implement static build of Mithril nodes in CI #2989

Protocol maintenance​

  • Completed the issue Improve DMQ node setup documentation #3062
  • Completed the issue Prepare upgrade to Rust 1.94.0 #3061
  • Worked on the issue Cardano blocks and transaction import very slow in dev aggregators #3050
  • Worked on the issue Enhance protocol security page on website #2703
  • Worked on the issue Test DMQ node 0.3.0 pre-release in Mithril nodes #3053
  • Worked on the issue Remove v1 backend for Cardano database in client library and CLI #3080

Ledger Team Update

· 2 min read
Alexey Kuleshevich
Alexey Kuleshevich
Ledger Team Software Engineer

High level summary​

Through some extra testing we've identified and fixed a few benign bugs. We've also identified and implemented another restructure in the ledger state that improves performance and will further simplify LedegrHD implementation. Besides that we've also made further progress on these initiatives:

Low level summary​

Features​

  • PR-5575 - Introduce gov/committee/v0 canonical namespace
  • PR-5584 - Use AccountId for stake pools
  • PR-5566 - Tighten PParam lenses
  • PR-5591 - Extras for working with maps
  • PR-5595 - Version restriction
  • PR-5596 - Remove SUBUTXOS rule
  • PR-5579 - Support gov/canonical/pparams/v0 namespace
  • PR-5589 - add notes on Praos slot leader election for historic reasons
  • PR-5585 - Subsume delegations into active-stake
  • PR-5544 - SUBLEDGER implementation

Testing​

  • PR-5587 - Set scriptIntegrityHash to 0 to match the behavior of Agda in conformance tests
  • PR-5590 - Fix nightly nothunks tests for snapshot

Infrastructure and releasing​

Mithril Team Update

· 3 min read
Jean-Philippe Raynaud
Jean-Philippe Raynaud
Mithril Tech Lead

High level overview​

This week, the Mithril team continued implementing new succinct proofs. They completed signer authentication for SNARK verification keys, calibrated precision for lottery target value computation, and aligned domain separation tags as part of the SNARK circuit refactoring. Progress also continued on SNARK pre-aggregation primitives, improved error handling within the refactored circuit, the full review of the recursive circuit prototype, and the technical report for the recursive Halo2 circuit.

Additionally, the team finalized proof routes for Cardano blocks and transactions in the aggregator REST API and continued preparations for the next distribution release. They advanced the integration of Mithril into the Cardano Developer documentation site, added support for upgrading the Cardano node without requiring a new Mithril distribution, and completed the upgrade to Cardano node v.10.6.

Finally, they fixed a performance regression in the transaction proof route and worked on a slow import issue on dev aggregators.

Low level overview​

Features​

  • Completed the issue Support for authenticated signer registration for SNARK #2915
  • Completed the issue Implement proof route for Cardano Blocks and Transactions in aggregator REST API #2988
  • Completed the issue Refactor SNARK circuit - Domain Separation Tag alignment #3022
  • Completed the issue Calibrate precision and Taylor expansion iterations for Lottery Target value computation #3034
  • Worked on the issue Implement SNARK pre-aggregation primitives in STM library - Phase 2 #2943
  • Worked on the issue Full review of recursive SNARK circuit prototype #2982
  • Worked on the issue Prepare technical report for recursive Halo2 circuit #2981
  • Worked on the issue Refactor SNARK circuit - Error handling #3035
  • Worked on the issue Experimental blst-Jubjub #2772
  • Worked on the issue Release 2608 distribution #2967
  • Worked on the issue Integrate Mithril into the Cardano developer documentation website #3012
  • Completed the issue Support upgrade of Cardano node without new Mithril distribution #3058

Protocol maintenance​

  • Completed the issue Upgrade to Cardano 10.6 #2790
  • Completed the issue Some unit tests are flaky with future_snark feature #3017
  • Completed the issue Update throttling parameters of Cardano blocks and transactions import #3047
  • Completed the issue Transaction proof route performance regression #3056
  • Worked on the issue Cardano blocks and transaction import very slow in dev aggregators #3050
  • Worked on the issue Enhance protocol security page on website #2703
  • Worked on the issue Improve DMQ node setup documentation #3062