Update Summary
We’re excited to announce the release of the Zug500 Delta testnet — our final incentivized testnet before Casper’s mainnet launch in 2021. With an eye towards the public mainnet, we are launching Delta as the most complete way for validators and developers to test out the capabilities and benefits of the Casper network to prepare for Q1 2021. The Delta testnet ships with the following features: Rust based, supports Eras, configurable round exponent and other Highway parameters, support bonding/unbonding, slashing, rewards, genesis process, and all smart contracting features.
We are processing the KYC for the Alpha testnet validators and will communicate the rewards to participants shortly.
We’re continuing our security audit, which was started last week by Trail of Bits. They will look at the consensus protocol and the Highway paper. The goal of the audit is to check the security of the protocol and verify that the implementation matches the paper closely so we can expect that all the properties of the paper regarding security are available on the protocol.
A new member has joined the SRE team. Robert Jennings joins from Australia and will help to ensure reliability and uptime for the network.
We’ve also launched a new version of CLarity and CasperSigner which was demoed by Medha during the call.
Engineering status
- The team has started the third weekly sprint of the 20.12 release cycle (Sprint 8.3). Release 20.12 delivers prioritized bug fixes, networking improvements, and more consensus protocol security features. The network will support up to 100 validator slots in the bonding auction. Validators can bid for open slots by using the bidding API.
- We announced the launch of the Delta testnet along with the launch of CLarity block explorer for the Delta testnet.
- The Delta testnet ships with the following features: Rust based, supports Eras, configurable round exponent and other Highway parameters, support bonding/unbonding, slashing, rewards, genesis process, and all smart contracting features.
- The scala node has been deprecated and is no longer supported. If you need help to move on to the Rust node, please join our Discord server and or follow the Node operator guide.
- There are currently 50 validators on the network. We discovered some validators are having a serious liveness fault (not taking part in consensus) on the testnet hence they will be rotated out of the validator set by the auction contract.
- We are processing the KYC for the Alpha testnet validators and will communicate the rewards to participants shortly.
We’ll also be sending out an email to the Beta-testnet participants to get them started on the KYC process.
Current Focus
- We kicked off our security audit last week with Trail of Bits. They will look at the consensus protocol and the Highway paper.
- The goal of the audit is to check the security of the protocol and verify that the implementation matches the paper closely so we can expect that all the properties of the paper regarding security are available on the protocol.
- Validate endorsements against equivocations; this means that if we see an equivocation on the network, we have to make sure that the endorsements are not coming from equivocators.
- Consensus: Design “Disconnect” from nodes sending invalid messages. This disconnects nodes that are sending invalid messages from the network.
- We’re making the deploy buffer more robust. We believe this is going to increase performance and throughput in terms of the order in which deploys are pushed to the block, how much deploys can go into a block, etc.
- We’re subjecting CLarity to continuous integration/Deployment.
- For S-Test we’re extending workload generators and improving monitoring so we can perform deeper and complex tests against the S-Test framework.
Ecosystem
- We’ve launched a new release for CLarity and CasperSigner.
- Documentation updates; we’ve been updating the developer guide, the ERC-20 tutorial, and launching our new developer portal.
Contract Runtime
- Add memo/destination field to transfer.
- Reduce the total supply on slashing.
Presentation
- Medha Parlikar presents a demo on the new CLarity explorer for the Delta testnet.
Team & Company Update
- Robert Jennings joins the SRE team from Australia.
- We are looking for talented SRE’s, Developer advocates, and Technical writers to join our team.
- Applications can be sent via Workable. Alternatively, via email.
Community
- On Monday 16th, November, we launched the Delta testnet along with our developer portal. This marks the final incentivized testnet before the main net launch in 2021.
- Our weekly Governance/Community call holds every Tuesday
- Time: 9:00 AM PST (16:00 UTC, Sydney +11, Beijing +8, Greece +3, Amsterdam +2, Onitsha +1, New York -4, Seattle -7)
- Location: https://casperlabs.zoom.us/j/488766416
- Our weekly workshops/dApp Session holds twice a week on:
- Thursdays 07:00 am Pacific time and
- Fridays, midnight Pacific (4 pm Japanese Time).
- The zoom meeting id is https://casperlabs.zoom.us/j/924713678.
