The team works on applied research and consulting in formal methods that is directly applicable to evidence based engineering in Core Tech and beyond.

High level summary​

The team is currently formalising mini protocols and working on a performance modelling paper

Details​

• completing work on chain sync mini-protocol

• proof sketch of conformance property of chain sync mini-protocol

• onboarding new performance modelling intern

• new content for JLAMP paper

High-level summary​

This week, the Hydra team spent significant time opening a head among themselves on mainnet using the release candidate, revealing and addressing lurking bugs such as #1174. Also required was this change to dynamically calculate the min utxo value #1176, a necessary adjustment following the switch to inline datums. The team engaged with cardano-cli / cardano-api maintainers to discuss recent changes and collaborated on drafting feature ideas, including providing Conway support for the Hydra roadmap. As part of ongoing improvements, they experimented with writing the specification in markdown instead of LaTex.

What did the team achieve this week​

• Opened head among us on mainnet and uncovered a few lurking bugs like #1174 in the release candidate
• Calculate the min utxo value instead of hard-coding it #1176, which is needed since we switched to inline datums.
• Met with the cardano-cli / cardano-api maintainers to discuss recent changes and way forward
• Drafted features ideas to provide Conway support on the Hydra roadmap
• Experimented in writing the specification in markdown instead of LaTex

What are the goals of next week​

• Have the Monthly review meeting with several demos
• Release version 0.14.0 with this scope
• Complete tidying up chain layer via stateless observation changes in hydra-node #1096
• Update dependencies to prepare for Conway #1114

High level summary​

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

Some notable recent changes, updates or improvements include:

• The cardano-node nixos service now supports SIGHUP p2p topology reloading when the useSystemdReload option is enabled

Lower level summary​

Capkgs​

• Update cardano-db-sync and offchain-metadata-tools package paths and/or references: capkgs-compare

Cardano-node​

• Optionally have cardano-node nixos service utilize SIGHUP p2p topology reload: cardano-node-pull-5537
  • Creates a useSystemdReload bool option for the cardano-node nixos service
  • This will move the topology file(s) to /etc/cardano-node/topology-$i.yaml and inject systemd reload hooks for p2p configured cardano-node instances
  • Moving topology files to /etc also allows for manual topology updates when a quick test is needed and full service re-deployment isn't desired

Cardano-parts​

• Adds a metadata server profile and a number of other features and improvements: cardano-parts-pull-20
  • Adds a new metadata-service profile
  • Adds metadata service and pkg configuration options for cardano-groups to utilize the metadata-server profile
  • Adds a cardano-webserver profile for multiple virtualHosts and TLS ACME server aliases for a cluster's static needs, with each cached behind varnish
  • Adds extra node list producers and public producers for cardano-node-topology profile
  • Adds delegation amounts to cardano-postgres psql prepared query show_pools_block_history_in_epoch
  • Adds select systemd metrics reporting to grafana-agent profile
  • Adds a bookRelay multivalue DNS option to disambiguate with groupRelay multivalue DNS
  • Adds an opsLib library to the cardano-parts lib flakeModule and refactors some common code into it
  • Adds support for sops secret traversing from target path up instead of cwd up, thereby supporting secrets use-cases outside of the repo
  • Adds job-gen-env-config for both release and pre-release configuration files to support configuration book generation
  • Adds support for grafana recording rules in the template files
  • Improves cardano-group profile handling of producers with respect to multiple instance nodes
  • Improves grafana-agent profile metrics handling for multi-instance cardano-node servers
  • Improves smash service preStart handling while waiting for a node socket
  • Updates Justfile for ERA_CMD demo support
  • Migrates default grafana cloud node exporter, varnish alert and recording rules to grafana alert and recording rule templates
  • Defaults to using an updated systemd reload nixos service feature for p2p networks in cardano-group profile
  • Defaults cardano-postgres profile psqlrc use to false

Cardano-playground​

• Adds a new testnet metadata server, cluster webserver, and other improvements: cardano-playground-pull-6
  • Adds a new metadata server
  • Adds a new webserver for the cluster's static virtualhost needs
  • Adds support for sops secret traversing from target path up instead of cwd up, thereby supporting secrets use-cases outside of the repo
  • Adds systemd metrics monitoring to the cluster
  • Resizes sanchonet machines to support the growing chain
  • Completes migration of preprod from world
  • Updates groups to utilize both bookRelay and groupRelay multivalue DNS attributes
  • Updates Justfile for ERA_CMD demo support
  • Defaults to using an updated systemd reload nixos service feature for p2p networks in cardano-group profile
  • Migrates book static code to playground from world, with refactor, cleanup and updates
  • Migrates default grafana cloud node exporter, varnish alert and recording rules to declarative grafana alert and recording rules

Offchain-metadata-tools​

• Adds db password option with obfuscation plus misc improvements: offchain-metadata-tools-pull-61
  • Adds db password connection option and obfuscates passwords in output for metadata server, sync, webhook services
  • Updates the nixos service for metadata-webhook service to optionally use an environmentFile for secrets: cfg.environmentFile
  • Moves from std use in the nix flake to standard flake schema
  • Fixes hydra CI failures
  • Builds update-docs in hydra to avoid long local build times
  • Removes deprecated tullia
  • Removes deprecated check-hydra from pkgs
  • Removes deprecated bors files and references

High level summary​

Last two weeks progress was mainly on testing, bug fixes and improvements to clarity of CDDL specification. Important bugfixes include:

• Fix deserialization of ValueNotConservedUTxO predicate failure that could not previously report zero ADA.
• Fix deserialization of CostModels in the PParamsUpdate. Invalid CostModels are no longer allowed, only CostModels for unrecognized Plutus versions are allowed starting with Conway
• Fix returning of Deposits for ProposalProcedures

Testing tooling has been improved and new tests have been implemented for Conway era.

Low level summary​

Conway​

• pull-3858 - Restructure computing Refunds and Deposits in a TxBody across all eras
• pull-3860 - Removed mock/crypto.cddl, added optional tag to sets
• pull-3864 - Fix Proposal deposits and add deposit tests to imp tests
• pull-3859 - Rename ProposalsSnapshot to Proposals
• pull-3867 - MaryValue fixes
• pull-3869 - Indicate that tag 258 is optional for OSet. Fix rational CDDL
• pull-3863 - Improve deposits refunds re-usability
• pull-3861 - Fail PParamsUpdate deserialization for invalid costmodels in Conway
• pull-3875 - Fix cddl spec for CostModels in Conway
• pull-3876 - Change 4 PParam fields from EpochNo to EpochInterval
• pull-3884 - Relax requirement on the Set tag 258 to be enforced in the next era

Testing​

• pull-3868 - Improvements to support property tests on Traces with simple Tx with DRep related Certs
• pull-3792 - RATIFY and GOV constraint tests
• pull-3885 - Added a test for genTxAndNewEpoch
• pull-3886 - QuickCheck Imp integration

Improvements and releasing​

• pull-3854 - Integration work for node 8.7.0
• pull-3872 - Fixup ReadTheDocs build
• pull-3871 - Bump plutus dep to 1.16
• pull-3874 - Post release changes
• pull-3880 - Remove generic-monoid dependency
• pull-3887 - Add changelog for features that landed in cardano-node-8.7

High level overview​

This week, the Mithril team made progress in decentralizing the Mithril networks with the peer-to-peer (P2P) networking proof of concept, completing the first prototype implementation of the Mithril relay, which enables P2P signature broadcasting. They also made progress in optimizing the performance of the aggregator. Additionally, the team completed some enhancements on the CI/CD that will help manually deploy experimental Mithril networks for SanchoNet, as well as for the new P2P network layer.

Finally, they investigated occasional runtime issues causing delays for certain SPOs and started preparing for the next distribution release.

Low level overview​

• Completed the issue Prototype a P2P relay with libp2p #1326
• Worked on the issue Enhance aggregator REST API performances #1327
• Worked on the issue Signer runtime is stuck for some SPO #1312
• Completed the issue Manually deploy a test Mithril network #1356
• Completed the issue Make Cardano node version custom in CI/CD #1355
• Worked on the issue Support P2P relay in infrastructure #1361
• Completed the issue mithril-client fails to extract archive #1352