The Evolution of the HOPR Tech Stack
The HOPR Protocol started as a small chat application but has evolved into a full-blown tech stack. Today we’ll explain the paths we took to get there.
HOPR was introduced as a simple command-line interface that could send messages across multiple screens. After many months of work and effort, HOPR has evolved into an ecosystem of applications able to run the HOPR protocol while providing multiple interfaces to users to interact with.
Today, I’d like to share the evolution of our project and the products we have been building to showcase the usefulness of the HOPR protocol. I’ll be explaining a bit of HOPR’s history, what’s coming next, and our general vision for mainnet release.
Our First Release, HOPR Chat
The first usable release of HOPR was HOPR Chat, a command-line interface able to spin up a HOPR Node and provide users with an interactive input/output application. Under the covers, HOPR Chat would start a libp2p node, a powerful peer-to-peer network utility, while communicating with the Ethereum network. Even at this early stage, HOPR Chat could already open payment channels, transmit messages using the SPHINX packet header, and reward successful transmissions with digital tokens.
Although simple, the first version of HOPR Chat still showcased the HOPR vision: creating a communication channel which protects every facet of user privacy. Many versions later, the team and community are still using and developing HOPR Chat as a way to introduce newcomers to the HOPR protocol. Hundreds of messages are exchanged on a weekly basis as our community helps test the protocol by engaging in bounties and games sponsored by the HOPR Association.
Testnet Launch, HOPR Games Galore
Following July’s announcement by Binance Labs leading the $1 million funding round in HOPR, the HOPR Association launched its first testnet, which could bootstrap HOPR nodes for participants using HOPR Chat to send private messages to each other.
As part of the testnet launch, we hosted our first HOPR Games session. The HOPR Games sessions and bounties are a way to involve the community in testing and teach people about the HOPR protocol by playing games based around various features of our technology.
In our first session, participants around the world could send anonymous messages to a HOPR Node and earn rewards in DAI for successfully answering questions shown in the livestream. Privacy is always at the forefront: participants didn’t need to provide any information to enter the quiz, and rewards were given anonymously via HOPR Chat.
Even in this first version of the testnet, HOPR has showcased its anonymity credentials, its ability to create a distributed network while ensuring the privacy of its participants. Thanks to the nature of the protocol, minimal information can be obtained about participants, but we know there were 25–30 nodes running within the first hour of its launch. The testnet is still up and running, with a new monitoring dashboard where anyone can see the daily network uptime.
HOPR Server and API, Building Blocks for Automation
With the first testnet a success, we began to build out our tech stack to improve usability and harness the full potential of the protocol. In parallel with work on the HOPR protocol, the HOPR Association launched the HOPR Server and its API, creating a layer for anyone to interact with a HOPR node programmatically. The HOPR Server employs the gRPC protocol to allow quick interaction with HOPR Nodes via energy-efficient interfaces, ideal for enterprise uses within the internet-of-things (IoT) ecosystem and med-tech industry.
To test the HOPR Server interface, we put together the HOPR Chatbot, an interactive bot able to answer back to HOPR Nodes. By connecting the HOPR Chatbot to a HOPR Server instance, it could listen to messages and reply accordingly.
The HOPR Association is continuously developing HOPR Server, providing use cases for multiple applications for HOPR. In addition to our online games for testing purposes, including one where users can solve mazes online, we have created endpoints for architectural designs around mixnets and cover-traffic to enhance the privacy of the protocol.
Introducing HOPR Node Jungfrau and the Roadmap to Mainnet
While developing these projects, we’ve gained important insights into how to best ship products to the community:
- By releasing HOPR Chat, we learned the hurdles and challenges of providing binaries to multiple operating systems.
- By developing HOPR Server, we created ways for HOPR Node to interact with multiple interfaces such as browsers and bots.
All this knowledge has helped us to define the architecture for our mainnet release, HOPR Node Jungfrau. HOPR Node Jungfrau is our target for mainnet, and the culmination of the work the HOPR Association has been pushing since its conception. In short, HOPR Node Jungfrau bundles all the projects into a multi-use application that can be tweaked and used as needed, similar to how popular blockchain applications bundle interfaces into a single command line software.
To best serve the multiple audiences and use cases HOPR can benefit, HOPR Node Jungfrau can be instantiated and used in flexible ways:
- For developers, HOPR Node Jungfrau gives them an API Layer, which they can build their applications on top of.
- For miners & stakers, HOPR Node Jungfrau gives them a Core Layer, a stripped-down interface optimized for the minimal interaction involved in relaying data within the HOPR Network and earning $HOPR tokens.
- For everyone else, HOPR Node Jungfrau provides a UI layer which can display information about the node and interact with other users in the network.
Next Stop: Mixnet!
Now that our testnet has been launched, we’re pulling out all the stops to make HOPR an efficient, useful, and above all private way to transmit data. This begins by restoring the multi-hop feature, which will allow users to send datas via intermediate hops, facilitated by relay nodes.
This will kickstart work towards our mixnet. This includes restoring the token and payments, alongside our first implementation of the routing algorithm for randomly resolving the packet delivery as to avoid attacks on the metadata layer.
Conclusion
In the upcoming weeks, we’ll have more news about further developments in our roadmap. To name just a few: we’re building a way to quickly ship HOPR Node Jungfrau in hardware devices — with the first HOPR Node PC released last week — and putting together web applications that can connect to this hardware node to provide better user experience to our users and community. Stay up to date with our development and progress by checking our GitHub repository.
HOPR’s short history has already shown us the possibilities a privacy-protocol can have. The road ahead is not simple, but it’s clear. We are committed to forging ahead, completing our roadmap, and building software anyone can rely on to make the world a more private place. If you have ideas on what you’d like to build on top of HOPR — go ahead. HOPR is a permissionless public network which means that we couldn’t even stop you if we wanted to. However, if you want to talk to us or need our support, please reach out. Together, we can change data privacy for good.
