aelf Contracts Upgrade, July 2023

aelf is excited to announce the successful completion of a major contract upgrade and parameter change in July 2023. With the network upgrade to aelf v1.5.0, our team proposed contract upgrades and parameter changes to enable new functionalities while optimising existing features. These upgrades, including the Election Contract, the MultiToken Contract, the AEDPoS Contract, and the Treasury Contract, are aimed at improving performance and supporting additional functions, without impacting the consensus mechanism itself.

The parameter change focuses on reducing the size fee, optimising token issuance fees, and improving the transaction fee exemption mechanism.

Additionally, we initiated other proposals to further enhance the aelf network and cater to the needs of ecosystem contributors. This includes deploying a ProxyAccount Contract and upgrading the NFT Contract.

Here are the key advancements achieved through these upgrades:

1. Optimised Random Number Generation Mechanism: The aelf network now uses VRF (Verifiable Random Function) to generate random numbers, enhancing its performance.
2. Enhanced Support for Virtual Address: Voting through virtual addresses is now possible, allowing smart contract accounts to participate in aelf governance.
3. Secondary Delegation Transaction Fees Payment: With the introduction of secondary delegation, users can enjoy improved transaction fee delegation services.
4. Reduced Size Fee: The size fee (transaction fee) has significantly decreased from an average of 0.3 ELF to an estimated 0.003 ELF. This makes the cost of executing transactions on the aelf network nearly negligible.
5. Optimised Token Issuance Fee:

• The 10,000 ELF method fee charged in the “create” transaction of the MultiToken contract has been removed, reducing the cost for developers to issue tokens.
• A SEED credential has been added, enabling aelf to grant developers the right to create their own tokens, including fungible tokens and NFTs.

6. Optimised Transaction Fee Exemption Mechanism: The transaction fee exemption requirements have been reset and optimised to lower the barrier for enjoying this benefit:

• The threshold for enjoying fee exemption is now reduced from holding more than 100 ELF to holding more than 10 ELF, and the amount of fee that can be exempt decreases from 5 ELF to 1 ELF.
• If a user’s balance falls below the threshold, their allowance will not be cleared, and they can enjoy the unused allowance once their balance meets the standard again.

7. Deployment of the ProxyAccount Contract: The ProxyAccount contract enables more flexibility and better security in the registration and transfer of ownership and authorities in the aelf network.

We sincerely appreciate the support and trust from our communities. aelf is committed to continuously upgrading our code and optimizing our system contracts and other support to provide the best blockchain services to all our users, developers, and partners.