High-level summary​

This week, the Hydra team conducted a packed Monthly Review meeting, featuring demonstrations and the preparation of the monthly report. They addressed flakiness in tests and enhanced the logs json schema, improving overall test reliability. Additionally, the team successfully built MacOS ARM64 (aarch64-darwin) binaries in CI, expanding platform support. They further improved the network configuration by detecting incompatible persisted states, contributing to overall system robustness. Finally, the team released version 0.14.0, highlighting their commitment to delivering regular updates and improvements.

What did the team achieve this week​

• Monthly Review meeting packed with demonstrations and prepared monthly report #1189
• Fixed several flaky tests and improved the logs json schema #1188#1190#1192
• Built MacOS ARM64 (aarch64-darwin) binaries in CI #1182
• Improved network configuration by detecting incompatible persisted states #1174
• Released version 0.14.0

What are the goals of next week​

• Start work on incremental decommit
• Continue shepherding contributed PRs to completion
• Finish stateless-observation work
• Open a head on a Conway network

High level summary​

The Consensus team implemented and tested a patch that does not propagate future headers. It is under review, and we expect it can be released in the next Cardano node version. On the UTxO-HD front, we finished prototyping the LedgerDB and BackingStore redesign, which is required for the LSM-tree integration and might help us implement a more resource efficient in-memory backend. With this prototype finished we can start integrating the rest of the code. We investigated the unexpected performance degradation observed when acquiring the block context. We also released Cardano node 8.7.0 and moved tree-diff outside cardano-ledger libraries.

High level overview​

This week, the Mithril team released the initial version of the Mithril client library, enabling developers to integrate core Mithril features into their applications. They also released a new distribution, 2347.0, which includes support for slim certificate production by the aggregator, along with bug fixes and performance improvements.

The team also introduced the initial version of Cardano/Mithril node communication enhancements, implemented by TxPipe as part of the Catalyst project. They made progress in decentralizing Mithril networks, including testing the Mithril peer-to-peer (P2P) relay on a test network and conducting threat modeling and risk analysis for P2P networking. Additionally, they started working on adapting the Mithril client library for WASM compilation and made progress in optimizing aggregator performance.

Finally, they fixed inaccuracies in the verbosity level of logs across most nodes and worked on troubleshooting for some users.

Low level overview​

• Release of the mithril-client library crate
• Publication of a dev blog post about the released Mithril library
• Released the new distribution 2347.0
• Worked on the issue Light Wallet: Release mithril-client WASM library #1336
• Worked on the issue Enhance Mithril/Cardano node communication #1315
• Worked on the issue P2P threat modeling and risk analysis #1350
• 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 Support P2P relay in infrastructure #1361
• Completed the issue Make Cardano node version custom in CI/CD #1355
• Completed the issue Manually deploy a test Mithril network #1356
• Completed the issue mithril-client verbosity not following usage menu #1325
• Completed the issue Error message for mithril-client snapshot download #1375

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