Anoma R&D Updates: August 2022
August was a time of preparation, formation, and shipping for the Anoma R&D teams.
From refining designs on batching transfers from Namada to Ethereum, to officially forming the Vamp-IR team, the team also had the chance to connect IRL at the Heliax Summer Retreat in Italy.
Here’s what we’ve been working on:
Bridge development, Ethereum upgrade flows, and merkle trees for ICS23
In August, our Engineering team continued designing, implementing, and testing Ethereum bridge, including determining an alternate design for the Eth bridge in absence of vote extensions.
They also refined the designs on batching transfers from Namada to Ethereum, as well as refining the Smart contract model on Ethereum, and the upgrade flows. Finally, the team implemented a new merkle tree that works with ICS23 for the Inter Blockchain Communication (IBC) protocol.
Introducing: The Vamp-IR team!
In August, we officially formed the Vamp-IR team, which held its first meetings. An overview of Vamp-IR and its interfaces as well as an example of Vamp-IR compilation based on Datalog were presented by Vamp-IR team members at the Heliax Summer Retreat in the Italian countryside.
Juvix: New versions, team workshops, and roadmap development
The Juvix team shipped a special version (v0.2.4) for the first Juvix workshop, which took place during the Heliax Summer Retreat. Especially for the workshop, this version included a review of the whole Juvix Book, with new examples added.
The v0.2.4 version of Juvix introduces a new target called “native”, which allows running programs without installing WASI. Mac users can now easily install Juvix using Homebrew. For the VScode users, we have provided a new plugin for writing/type checking/compiling the Juvix program; check out the plugin “juvix-mode.” Above all, the user can now get some help by running the new command “juvix doctor” to check their configuration for any issues. In addition, feedback was gathered from many people on user experience and other technical issues during the workshop, which will be addressed in the coming versions.
The Juvix team has now a new roadmap for the coming months with exciting features for the language, including a new core language for efficient compilation, more static analyses, and backend support like Geb for arithmetic circuits compilation.
Join the Juvix channel on Discord:
GitHub CI restructuring and improvements to devnet automation
Our Infrastructure/Dev-X team was busy restructuring the entire Namada GitHub CI in August. They also worked on improving the current devnet creation automation, and developed fixes and improvements for our monitoring infrastructure stack.
Looking ahead
In September, we will be in Berlin for Dappconn and ZKSummit8, as well as hosting our own huddle! Then members of the team will be off to Medellin for Cosmoverse, among other events. As always, please look out for us and be sure to say hello!
Our R&D teams will continue with preparations for the launch of the Namada trusted setup. You can register to join the trusted setup here.
And as always, stay tuned for everything Anoma on Twitter and through our newsletter.
