IRISnet 2nd Mainnet Upgrade Completed with NÜWA Stage LIVE & DeFi Support improved
Nov 29 UTC, IRISnet mainnet IRIS Hub has completed its second smooth upgrade. IRIS Hub has been updated to v0.16. New exciting modules, namely Atomic Swap (HTLC) and Coinswap, have been added to IRIS Hub. DeFi application development support has been improved. Also, snapshot, a new function that is very popular among our technical community, has also been added.
According to IRISnet whitepaper, in stage NÜWA, which is the second stage —
We are adding more foundational modules to support application development especially DeFi applications. The new modules planned to release in this stage including multi-asset management, Coinswap, multi-sig account etc. We plan to collabrate with 1–2 ecosystem partners to develop applications using those modules. We also plan to accomplish the test connection with Cosmos Hub through IBC at this stage.
Now we are excited to announce that the development of NÜWA has been completed. IRIS Hub NÜWA stage is LIVE!
New Functions Introduction
After the first mainnet upgrade of IRISnet on August 29, 2019, modules have been introduced such as multi-asset management, random number generator, Multi-Sig Accounts, and Multi-Sig Transactions, etc. After the upgrade, this time, AtomicSwap (HTLC), Coinswap and snapshot functions have been newly added.
Atomic Swap (HTLC)
Hash Time Locked Contract (HTLC) is a protocol intended for cross-chain atomic swaps. It performs a P2P swap in a decentralized form. HTLC can guarantee that all swap processes among participating parties take place or nothing is done. Leveraging the HTLC on IRIS Hub, users can implement cross-chain asset swaps with Bitcoin, Ethereum, LTC and all other chains which support HTLC.
Supposed that Alice swaps BTC for IRIS with Bob. The atomic swap process between Alice and Bob can be divided into the following steps.
step 0: Alice and Bob reach an agreement on the swap by an off-chain procedure, which is completed commonly on an exchange platform. Let Alice be a maker and Bob be a taker. The agreement includes the exchange rate between BTC and IRIS, each other’s address on the counterparty chain and a unique hash lock generated from a secret, and an appropriate time span.
step 1: Afterwards, the secret holder, Bob sends an HTLC transaction that commits to transfer IRIS of the specified amount to Alice (the maker) with the negotiated hash lock on IRIS Hub.
step 2: An event is emitted on IRIS Hub which indicates that Bob has created an HTLC. Alice is informed of this event by monitor tools (usually wallets) or the platform. The HTLC initiating transaction with the same hash lock will be sent to Bitcoin by Alice once the event is validated against the agreement. Particularly the HTLC will be locked by a quite smaller time span than the one provided by Bob.
step 3：Bob is informed of and confirms the event on Bitcoin. Then Bob claims the HTLC-locked BTC with the owned secret before the time span set by Alice on Bitcoin.
step 4：The secret will be disclosed while the HTLC is claimed successfully by Bob on Bitcoin. Alice will perform the same claim to the locked IRIS with the secret before the expiration time on IRIS Hub.
Coinswap
Coinswap is a decentralized token exchange that implements the Constant Product Market Maker Model introduced by Uniswap. Uniswap is now the top DEX on Ethereum according to Etherscan’s DEX tracker.
Coinswap supports Token to IRIS and Token to Token exchange. The whole exchange process is implemented on-chain. To generate on-chain assets, you can use the multi-asset management function on IRIS Hub.
Before exchange with Coinswap, the market maker needs to deposit the token to the liquidity pool at the current market price (based on the IRIS token), then the exchange rate between the two tokens on IRIS Hub will vary in real-time according to the on-chain trading situation. When the exchange rate in the liquidity pool is inconsistent with that of other platforms, the arbitrageurs can make a profit. They arbitrage price differences between different platforms and make the exchange rate in the liquidity pool closer to the current market exchange rate.
During the exchange process, the 3/1000 handling fee will be deducted and re-added to the liquidity pool as rewards to the market maker. Market makers can retrieve their tokens at any time without a lock-up period. When the run-off situation occurs, it is useful for the market maker to withdraw the deposit token in time to avoid losses. Therefore, the more tokens deposited in the liquidity pool, the stabler the exchange rate change caused by the exchange process, and the more profit the market maker will make.
snapshot
The IRIS Hub blobkheight now is more than 3 million, but the ledger data continues to increase. It is also a common issue in other blockchain projects.
Therefore, we provide a snapshot function. Snapshot is a command for all nodes. Nodes do not need to save all historical data, thus saving local storage resources. In addition, you can quickly start a node without synchronizing all historical data.
Process Review：Smooth Upgrade without Hard Fork
The IRIS Hub mainnet has been running stably for nearly 9 months since it was launched. It has undergone a mainnet upgrade before, this is the second time for mainnet upgrade.
UTC 13:00, Nov 22, 2019, the proposal for IRIS Hub upgrade to v0.16 was initiated. This time, IRISnet users can vote on their own opinion through Rainbow wallet. The deadline for voting is five days.
UTC 21:12, Nov 27, 2019, the proposal was passed with 65.80%participation, exceeding 50% quorum. And all the votes were YES.
In the next two days, the mainnet IRIS Hub began to upgrade and completed the smooth upgrade at 3447000 blockheight on Nov 29.
IRISnet is a BPoS blockchain that is self-evolutionary. In this upgrade, we have introduced new functions, so it is incompatible with the previous one. However, without a hard fork or historical data purge, IRISnet has smoothly completed the whole process from submitting a proposal through on-chain governance, voting to online upgrading.
Summary
IRIS Hub is built with Cosmos SDK. As we can see, Cosmos SDK can be added and modified in a highly modular way. It has good composability. The IRISnet smooth upgrade not only demonstrates the advanced governance module of IRISnet, but also provides better support for DeFi applications including DEX and Staking. IRIS Hub NÜWA stage is LIVE!
For more info: On-chain Governance of IRIS Hub: The Start of Self-evolution
Join our Telegram channel: https://t.me/irisnetwork
