Cypherium Q1 and Q2 Update
Cypherium Development Update
Demo of current version of Cypherium
At Cypherium, we are working hard to deliver results. We are excited to have reached a number of developmental milestones:
- The blockchain data structures, including transaction blocks (tx block) and key blocks, have been implemented.
- During the consensus and validation process, the nodes can securely communicate with each other using a tree-based structure with the help of the open source project onet.
- Message and block propagation are now working as expected on top of onet and Proto-buffer.
- The PBFT-Cosi consensus mechanism for tx block have been implemented.
- In our test net, we consistently reach a TPS of 2000 to 3000 using PBFT-Cosi.
- New blocks can be generated, proposed and broadcasted by the leader of PBFT, to the entire network of PBFT committee members, who then validate and commit the new blocks.
- After a new block has been added into the tx blockchain, all the nodes including non-committee members can synchronize the new block into their own local blockchain.
- The Cypherium Virtual Machine (CVM) is nearly complete. Ours is a Java-based Turing complete virtual machine, developed to bring the execution of smart contracts to scale. ETA of the first complete version of CVM is expected to be the end of the second week of September 2018.
- Our CVM is also fully compatible with the Ethereum virtual machine (EVM), which means DAPPs written by Solidity can also be executed in CVM.
- Accounts, payments, and token basics are working, with Cypherium command-line interface (CCLI).
- We have completed blueprints for one of Cypherium’s core features, Committee election and transition, and we are now in the stage of its implementation. This has been the most challenging part of bringing our technology to enterprises, and much of the cause of our delay. We extend our sincerest apologies to the community, and thank everyone for their patience and belief in our project.
- Towards the implementation of Committee election and transition, we have finished the mining mechanism, which qualifies new participants in the network as committee members.
- We have deployed and tested the Cypherium network in several AWS EC2 nodes across the world, and the results so far are very promising.
- Cypherium explorer (web version) has been implemented (the current version is demo only), see here: http://cypherscan.surge.sh/. We have finished the design phase, and the product version of the explorer is now in progress.
- The digital signature algorithm currently being used is ED25519, instead of the traditional ECDSA. ED25519 is significantly faster than ECDSA, for the same security level.
- We are also now equipping our network with added security measures that will prevent attacks such as DDoS and buffer overflow. Security audit is performed in parallel by third party services.
We have prepared a demo to show the current version of Cypherium. This demo introduces the end-to-end operations of Cypherium, which include the creation, modification and deletion of accounts, token transactions, log diving for TPS, PBFT processes and so on. All these operations are shown inside the CCLI, a user-friendly command-line tool that is deployed together with the Cypherium main net. All the operations in the demo can be done either in a localhost mode or on servers. The CCLI is currently derived from web3js. We plan to continue overhauling the code in the future.
For details of the demo, check out our YouTube channel:
Cypherium codebase walkthrough
Private and public repository so far: We use a private GitHub repo for our daily development. We chose to use a private repo primarily to avoid distraction and plow forward as quickly as possible. After every few commits, we would make public our private repo’s progress. For quality assurance reasons, we have not yet merged our most updated code base into our public repo for quite a while. However, we have already finished the core PBFT-Cosi and the demo version of Cypherium, which is basically a functional product only without committee elections and transactions, the public codebase does not reflect it.
Cypherium Research Update
We at Cypherium also have a research team who has been focused on various research topics such as the design of committee elections and transactions, sharding of the blockchain network, future extension of our CVM which also supports multi-staged computation, etc…
Committee elections and transition: Our current version of Cypherium does not support committee elections and transition, which means all the nodes in the network are PBFT validators 100% of the time. One of the rudimentary design features of Cypherium has always been the ability to elect new committee members so that more nodes joining the network will bring more randomness and higher security. Our research team has finished the architecture of this feature, and the implementation and POC should be ready by the end of Q3.
Sharding of the blockchain network: We have implemented state sharding for CVM. All states that need to be persisted in the CVM will save it in a KV database that implements storage, updates, and rollbacks of state. Any operation of the database will be marked as dirty, and updated to store the true, until finally it is combined with the downloader to mutually synchronize the state. State sharding for other parts of the blockchain are still under review, we will implement it step-by-step until we achieve full-scale global state sharding.
Extension of our CVM for multi-staged computations: Today all the existing blockchains wed together deployments, executions, and consensus. However, different people or organizations have different computation resources. They might have various CPU power, memory space, bandwidth, etc., and as a result their execution times may be different. However, achieving final consensus does not require much computation resource, therefore our technology allows for a common sense separation of these stages. Given our infrastructure, powerful machines in big organizations can execute more complicated smart contracts, whereas simple nodes can run contracts with simple business logic that require less computing power.
Cypherium Revised Roadmap
Optimistic roadmap
While we cannot commit to any exact dates on this timeline, we want to give at least an indication of where we are, what’s next, and when our next milestones will be reached. We are as frustrated as anyone in our community when the turbulent climate of the crypto space dramatically changes the outlook or operational opportunities. We don’t want to give dates that may turn out to be too optimistic, but we know the silence and community confusion is even more intolerable. So, against mainstream software & product development wisdom, we are publishing this optimistic roadmap with expected dates of targeted milestones, and we plan to revise it, keeping the community up to day as our tires hit the road. We hope this will constitute a clearer and more transparent planning approach, encouraging the coordination and excitement of our community, as we reach our milestones. However, this approach requires some flexibility not only on the part of our team, but also on the part of our community members, as some things may come sooner or later than initially anticipated.
Where we are now
In rough terms, this is a high-level view of where we are. (These phases are not equally long).
✓Design and Research
✓Proof-of-Concept
✓Implementation of executable client
◆Security and performance improvement
Testnet launch
Mainnet launch
Upcoming milestones
Cypherium Enterprise ready (Q3 2018)
The private version of Cypherium, without mining and open membership, is ready to deploy. This allows real use cases to develop before the mainnet launch.
Public testnet launch (ETA: Q3-Q4 2018)
We have already setup an internal testnet on Amazon Web Services. The public testnet will be accessible to the community before the end of the year.
Performance testing (ETA: Q3-Q4 2018)
After gathering data from our public testnet, we will confront and optimize the performance bottlenecks.
Bug bounty (ETA: Q4 2018)
We will launch a bug bounty to community members who find vulnerabilities in our code and reward proposed fixes.
Mainnet launch (ETA: Q4 2018)
Full blockchain explorer ready (ETA: Q4 2018)
Graphic Wallet ready (ETA: Q4 2018)
The graphic wallet is a user-friendly interface wherein everyday users may easily send and receive transfers with a few clicks, instead of typing commands,.
Establishing Cypherium Foundation (ETA: 2019)
The Cypherium Foundation is a non-profit foundation that facilitates the public education and application of blockchain technology. Our foundation will work with other prominent international organizations, including the UN, to tackle real challenges and solve them using our technology.
Future benchmarks:
Rewrite third party libraries (bftcosi, kyber, onet, web3js)
Performance optimization
Sharding
Sidechain using Teechain
Off-chain data access (Oracle)
Privacy protection with user access control
Standard library for smart contracts
Multi-language smart contract support
Developer tools for smart contract
Web APIs as a service
Community and Partnership
We are building several pilot programs and proof-of-concepts with potential partners. Hopefully we will develop a full portfolio of use cases before launching the mainnet. A bounty campaign for developers, hackathons, and more meetups are on the way for the end of this year and well into 2019. Please follow our social media for updates.
Miscellaneous
Our new official website will be live within three weeks!
We are inviting enterprise users to test out our beta enterprise blockchain. The enterprise blockchain has everything included in the public version except the Proof-of-Work committee election, as it runs in a private environment.
We’re evaluating the compliance issues associated with airdrops. Recently, SEC stated that token airdrops might be subject to US security regulations.
Serokell, an Estonia based company that previously co-developed Cardano, has joined forces with our developer team. Their successful experience in delivering one of the world’s top public blockchains is a valuable and welcome addition to Cypherium.
Disclaimer
This document only provides estimation of the roadmap and does not guarantee the absolute accuracy of projected dates and figures.
Many Thanks!
Thank you for all your support so far, and in the future! And thank you in advance for your referrals, ideas, and suggestions. Your help accelerates our progress.
The Cypherium Team
