Telos Blockchain Network — Weekly Report — November 29th, 2018
How do you know when you are ready?
We are making amazing progress on final preparations for the Telos launch. Every TLG working group is working to either wrap up their operations (the bounty system), prepare them to be taken over by the Telos Foundation (Dapp and exchange outreach), or finish the last impediments to launch (development). We are having long daily meetings about both minutiae — because we will never have a chance to revisit these issues so we better get them right now — or massively important topics like, what are the nuts and bolts of enforcing our block producer rules and minimum requirements in ways that can’t be easily gamed, like we see on EOS right now, but also are not centralizing BP power into a cabal.
Honestly, we could talk about these issues for month, and we probably will. Some problems never find a true solution, only new approaches that hopefully offer ongoing improvements as new problems arise. Some technical solutions like IPFS may be less than perfect but arguably sufficient to launch the network and improve along the way. We promised not to launch Telos until it is “ready” and now we are reaching a point where we must decide what “ready” really means. IPFS, for example, wasn’t even on our roadmap a few weeks ago. We added it as the most efficient way to empower the governance functions we promised. And adding it will give a lot of power to Telos. But how long should we wait for perfection on a feature we hadn’t even envisioned until earlier this month? Similarly, how long should we hold off for the development of features that may not even be possible to use until a month into launch (such as arbitration features that can’t be used until arbitrators are elected a month after activation)? These are the kinds of question the TLG is going to have to grapple with in our next launch vote on December 4th. Internally, we have stopped calling it the “Go/No-go vote” and are calling it the “Go vote” but don’t take that as gospel. We are as susceptible to wishful thinking as anyone.
I hope we vote to launch on December 4th, but I am also very glad that we have not done so yet. We are still trying to solve some problems and they are much easier to deal with on a testnet that we could re-start than on a live mainnet where real value is at stake. We certainly hear the voices of the growing and very enthusiastic Telos community cheering for a launch. We want that too. There is no one answer to when something is “Ready.” I am very grateful that we are guided in this decision by a checklist and not a date. If we went by the date, we might have tried launching in August and it would have been a disaster.
My sincere hope is that when the vote rolls around on Tuesday, that I won’t have any doubts about whether Telos is ready for launch (even if there is still progress to be made in some areas), and that the other TLG members feel the same.
Go Telos!
– Douglas Horn
Here’s what we accomplished this week:
- Unbiased Partnership
- Telos Network Launch ‘Go/No-Go’ Vote
- Development Updates
- IPFS
- Network Maintenance
- “Launching Telos — The Last Mile” Published
1. Unbiased Partnership
Unbiased, a privacy-focused social platform and AI-powered search engine that incentivizes user data monetization, will deploy on the Telos Blockchain Network. The app was founded by Sukesh Kumar Tedla of TelosGreen, an active member of the Swedish blockchain community. The app will provide a much-needed alternative to navigating misleading online news and give people power over their own personal data, a revolutionary possibility in a time when user data is frequently exploited or compromised by social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. Sukesh discussed Unbiased with Douglas Horn and Roger Davies on the most recent version of the Telos Talks livestream.
Read the full press release here: https://medium.com/@teloslogical/press-release-unbiased-commits-to-deploy-on-telos-blockchain-network-811deaac4dc1
Watch the Telos Talks episode about Unbiased here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8U2QVM1i1g
2. Telos Network Launch ‘Go/No-Go’ Vote
The network inches closer to its anticipated “go” vote with every Telos Launch Group (TLG) meeting. On November 27th, 2018, the TLG once again decided to not call for a vote based on the completion status of the Launch Checklist. Specifically, the Telos IPFS file storage solution and the governance contracts that rely on it (Arbitration, Worker Proposal System, Ratify/Amend) have made very significant progress but require testing. Testing conducted after the meeting have revealed minor errors that have since been corrected but that validate the decision not to launch on the 27th. The group will meet this coming Tuesday, December 4th for a new voting opportunity. The TLG is making every preparation to be able to launch if adequate testing and problem-solving has been conducted by that time.
Watch the most recent Go/No-Go meeting here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXz1lD0464k
Anyone can stream the call live from EOS Detroit’s Youtube channel on Tuesday, November 27th at 17:00 UTC: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnbdh6f2U54_18YEe89xpnA
Review the Launch Checklist here: https://telosfoundation.io/launch
3. Development
Over 1,000 lines of new Telos code have been written since the last Weekly Report. Craig Branscom (GoodBlock) completed an update to the eosio.trail contract adding a custom system that will allow Telos users to create their own tokens and then manage those tokens and set features. Users can choose to be sole owner and set features so that tokens can burned, transferred, or used in other ways such as voting on custom proposals. This new token functionality extends the already advanced features of TIP-5 standard tokens and powers additional functions that can be used by Telos apps.
The development team also conducted days of rigorous unit testing earlier this week, including on the workerproposal contract that directly integrates into the Trail service. Once finished, the team will create Trail, TFVT and workerproposal contracts for use on the stagenet. This is happening concurrent with the writing of this Weekly Report.
Both the ratify.amend and arbitration contract are finalized. However, the arbitration contract has been prepared only for the point for launch and will be finished after launch due to first completing the election procedure (at least 1 month). No cases will be filed until positions are filled.
4. IPFS
This week the IPFS swarm surpassed the 100th node milestone. Stephanie Sunshine (GoodBlock) conducted preliminary replication and distribution tests by scattering 1000 sample files across the swarm, which yielded satisfactory results that confirmed replication is working to a testable degree. IPFS is now ready to be handled by the development team. The next phase is making end points and smart contract and making sure that transactional types are working. John Hauge (Telos Voyager) is developing new API code as an interface and Marlon Williams (Telos Miami) is working to implement these new API interface actions with Sqrl wallet to allow in-wallet voting and WPS proposals, for example. Amplified Telos is working on adding these actions to the Telos Monitor and Block Explorer so that users can propose and vote on such actions from the TelosFoundation.io portal.
5. Network Maintenance
The network maintenance team is currently rehearsing launch procedures and updating them to reflect changes made by the development team. JT Buice (KainosBP) and Jesse Schulman (CalEOS.io) completed a new contract repository and CDT contracts this week. They refined and released the complex multisigs and individual action permissions need to satisfy the RAM requirements of TIP-27. They will then launch and run a new stagenet with new code for a day and then move to the testnet so that any of the 56 block producers currently registered on the testnet can join.
Review the new multi-sig on GitHub: https://github.com/KainosBP/Telos-RAM-Deploy
6. “Launching Telos — The Last Mile” Published
Make sure that you’re up-to-date on all of the milestones that need to be reached for successful launch of the Telos Blockchain Network. Mark Cohen (Telos Vancouver) and Jesse Schulman demystify this process in “Launching Telos — The Last Mile,” which covers critical network features such as the launch script, IPFS, RAM buying, and elections.
Read the full article on Medium: https://medium.com/@teloslogical/launching-telos-running-the-last-mile-e3ed791930f8
Join the Telos conversation and get more info!
Telegram: https://t.me/HelloTelos
Twitter: https://twitter.com/HelloTelos
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TelosFoundation.io
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/TheTelosNetwork
Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/TelosNetwork/
Discord: https://discordapp.com/channels/466757729508261889/468500684858327040
