Advances in Decentralized Infrastructure V0.1
In the last few months the DAppNode project has made a significant amount of progress towards usability, UI and to the overall performance of the platform, as such we thought it would be a great time to give everyone an update. Working towards our shared vision of a truly decentralized world has brought us close to the Aragon core team, who are also building software to ensure immutable and unstoppable decentralized organizations. As we move forward with the project we’re excited to continue our coordination with the Aragon team.
In July we received our first grant from the Aragon Nest program that kickstarted the development, since then we have received 2 more chunks of funding that we’ll share the granted amounts here for the sake of transparency:
Aragon Nest: $90,000
Ethereum Foundation: $250,000
Ethereum Community Fund: $40,000
In addition to these amounts we have been fortunate to work with GitCoin who have been funding bounties for the continued development on the project, their community of developers have been extremely active and responsive to the bounties we posted, you can find those bounties here.
We are humbled and grateful to the whole Ethereum community for the support they have put behind this project, only together can we achieve this shared vision of a decentralized world. The funding provided by these organizations not only helps us continue the development, it shows the importance that DAppNode plays within the ecosystem of hardware decentralization.
As we move toward making this project a sustainable resource for users of all levels, we are exploring various strategies that will ensure the project becomes self sustainable, but in the meantime we are very grateful for these grants that allow us to continue making progress on the project.
If you still don’t know what DAppnode is, here’s a nifty video we just completed:
For more detailed information take a look here to our genesis post.
Now that you know what it is we’re working on, let’s give you a brief synopsis of what we’ve been up to:
TEAM:
Building a censorship resistant infrastructure layer needs lots of hands and minds, through our community we have gotten in touch with a lot of people who get really excited about what it is we’re building. We have added a few new members to the core team that we are proud to introduce:
- Abel Boldú: DevOps, Maintaining Distribution, ISO, Installation scripts, DAppNode Package development
- Alex Casas: Community Support, Documentation, Testing.
ADVANCES OF Q3:
Without getting too technical these are the major progress points thus far:
- We have deployed the Aragon Package Manager (APM) registry contracts, making them permissionless. Devs can now more easily register their packages in the DAppnode registry based on the APM in “yourpackage.public.dappnode.eth” which helps in fostering the use of Aragon in mainnet.
- The install process has been greatly improved using either an ISO image or script with two simple commands.
- The DAPPMANAGER and DNP Admin packages have improved the general performance and added a more robust operation thanks to code upgrades.
- Our SDK is ready to allows devs to install their packages on DAppnode, either with the IPFS hash of the package or with its ENS domain. This is a great step that gives more functionality and value to the users, at ETH Berlin Gotoma and Livepeer packages were developed using our SDK as a proof of concept.
- Users are now able to see logs of the DAppNode in the AdminUI, we believe it is important to give users access to these logs without being obliged to perform any task on the console, this also helps us to provide support as these logs can be easily downloaded in a JSON file to be analysed by our team.
- One of the vital organs of DAppNode, “Parity package (ETHCHAIN)” has been upgraded to Parity V2.0.6 which has thrown some new challenges in the mix of making decentralized technologies accessible to everyone. The Parity WEB UI has been deprecated with this update, so there is little an average user can do now with Parity without entering the terminal. We prefer that users should never have to enter the terminal for anything.
- We have UPnP protocol compatibility to smooth the installation process and operation without having to deal with ports. This makes it easier for non-tech savvy users to install and use DAppNode.
- A major redesign of the ADMIN UI has been completed, making it more useful and user friendly for Dapp developers.
- We have created some extensive documentation for advanced users that can be found here, we’re also working on a Hardware Decentralization User Guide to offer average users less technical documentation that will assist when installing and using their DAppnode. (if you prefer an IPFS hash, like we do here you have it) http://my.ipfs.dnp.dappnode.eth:8080/ipfs/QmUkecCDDFYd1pUku5mwsgSTcEppbEbMJdWPuWtYgZ6hZk
- As with every alpha, we had a forest of bugs that have been properly exterminated, don’t worry though the bugs were quickly put out of their misery. And now we have a dedicated bug hunter to assist the developers and improve the overall user experience.
NEW RELEASE FEATURES:
In preparation for the upcoming events of we are currently attending, we wanted to do an overhaul of the system making it more friendly and giving greater functionality to the users.
- Users that have a static IP can now set it up in the DAppnode.
- In case you have dynamic IP, we have implemented a dyndns server that allows the IP of your DAppnode to always resolve to a fixed domain XXXXXXXXX.dyndns.dappnode.io so you do not need to pay your internet provider for a static IP, but you can still have your DAppnode visible when your IP is changed by your ISP.
- Users can now select the path in which packages/volumes will be installed
- The admin UI shows CPU, memory and disk usage.
- Ethereum node is running with the latest version of Parity, first makes a warp mode sync and when it finishes, it goes for full sync.
- We have enabled a Guest feature that allows the user to have a single credential to connect multiple people to their DAppnode at the same time, this feature can be enabled or disabled on demand.
EVENTS 🗣
We’ve been fortunate with many opportunities to share the project with the wider blockchain community at meet-ups, conferences and events. At the moment we are leaving the Web3.0 Summit hosted in Berlin, which was a great success. We were able to do not 1 but 3 DAppNode focused interactive workshops at the gathering as well as joining the @giveth sponsored #DecentralizeNOW Node for the bounties for beers program.
Up next we are off to DevCon4 in Prague to continue connecting and collaborating with projects who could be well served by the technology we are developing. Right around the corner from DevCon we will be setting up a live decentralized access point for all the hackers at the Status #CryptoLife hackathon.
In an effort to gain valuable feedback from the community we created a survey that let’s people choose the DApps they would most like to see installed in the decentralized web, we truly want to hear the voice of the community during this phase of the project, if you want to add your voice take 5 minutes to complete the survey here.
Lastly the best thing you can do to be a part of this project is simply to get a DAppNode by going to DAppnode.io and installing your own gateway to the decentralized world.
We are grateful for your support and the interest that you have shown in this project, we look forward to providing more updates as we continue on the path of making decentralized technologies available to everyone!
Find us everywhere the internet is 🌐👇🏼
- Got a question, ask the team on: Riot
- Want a DAppnode on your machine: Download
- Hang with the Dappers in: Telegram
- Gold star on our: GitHub
- Laugh at our excellent taste in memes on: Twitter
- Love DAppNode ? ETH or other ERC-20 tokens are always appreciated 0x00cf36853aa4024fb5bf5cc377dfd85844b411a0
