LUKSO Mainnet Progress Update #1
Since our first post about the new mainnet architecture we have been busy finalising the first iteration of the LUKSO mainnet design and started implementing it.
The goal is to start a functional testnet soon to test the performance and stability of this design. I want to remind everyone out there that is following our progress, that developing something that hasn’t been done before in such a setup is not entirely predictable, as hurdles or issues could arise that are unforeseen during the architecture planning. Therefore we can not give a clear timeline of when we will start the testnet or launch the mainnet, yet. Once we have the first proper iteration running, we will be able to give a more precise outlook. So far, things are progressing well and speedy.
The progress
After careful consideration we have decided to create the first iteration as a modular system to add new clients, written in different languages, easily in the future. Once this architecture runs stable we consider making a mono-client that contains all pieces in one client.
The current setup consists of The Vanguard Consensus Engine, a fork of the popular prysm client, which provides us with a stable Casper Consensus engine written in Go. The Vanguard is the beat of the network, determining high-level consensus around current validators sets and head blocks.
The second important piece is the Pandora Execution Engine, which is a fork of the most stable Ethereum client: geth also written in Go. Pandora is responsible for the execution of smart contracts, and provide developers with an RPC API to connect dApps.
The heartbeat of the LUKSO mainnet is the LUKSO Orchestrator. A software that will coordinate Vanguard and Pandora by matching Pandora Blocks with the shard info provided in the Vanguard blocks and verifying their respective slot proposers.
The Validator client is only run if you participate as a validator and are responsible for signing blocks, for both, the Vanguard and Pandora side.
In the graphic, you can see the current state of development. Please note that this is graphic is very high level and does not include most of the smaller tasks that go into making these clients work in concert.
Next steps
After the above major milestones are completed, we will be able to run internal test networks, to test stability and throughput. We will post the test results once we get there.
After the initial run, we will very likely need to work on stabilization issues and bug fixes, before we will be able to launch the public mainnet, which anyone will be able to run. Once we have the public testnet, we will be able to test and specify staking parameters, block reward and block times etc.
As much as everyone wants us to have a 🔮, we can not predict the exact time at which we will we be able to launch the LUKSO mainnet, but we feel positive that it could happen around summer (don’t quote us on that).
We also ask everyone to understand that the LUKSO ecosystem is not “just” the network, but a series of standards that we are developing smart contract implementations, tools, and interfaces. These standards are the essence that will make developing dApps on LUKSO different and more user-friendly, than what the current blockchain ecosystems offer. Feel free to discuss and contribute via our LSPs.
