Aeternity: Development Roadmap Update, Fire Editor Release, Waellet v0.1.1 is out, New State Channels update, AE’s New Browser Extension is under public tests

Published in

Paradigm

11 min readSep 10, 2019

Biweekly update 27th August — 10th September

Hello, AEternists! The past two weeks for aeternity were super fruitful as usual. Lots of development and social processes are happening simultaneously, and it is just amazing how AeTeam copes with all of this. Nikita Fuchs created Fire Editor — a straight forward, cool-featured contract editor for Sophia that’s supposed to get you going fast. Waellet v0.1.1 is out with bug fixes, FT improvements, allowances updates, security improvements and a lot more. Besides, Æternity Payment Application Update #3 is out! It includes UI enhancements, transaction history, handling of Customer trying to purchase with insufficient channel funds, two decimal digits shown in the user interface for AE amounts — learn more in the update! Aeternity Governance Aepp Public Testing started, as AeTeam wants to implement a polling system via smart contract. An important one: State Channels bi-weekly development update, that featured refactoring and adding state channel tests, improving client protocol error handling in SC FSMs and UAT Test Suite. That’s a substantial amount of development, isn’t it? Let’s see what is on the social side. Aeternity posted an article about aembassador progress, tracking æternity’s footsteps in the quest to conquer the whole world. Moreover, Emin Mahrt gave the recipe on how to become a Blockchain Developer in the recent article. The community is growing!
By the way, AeUni is coming! The event is dedicated to developers, smart contract experts, entrepreneurs, and enthusiasts. The team is going to give you a fantastic dev experience and a lot of fun! Add AeUni to your bucket list and stay with Paradigm!

“Aeternity is bound by neither time, nor space”

Development

Developer activity (from Aeternity Coinlib.io)

[Alpha] Fire Editor Release: The easy to use Web-IDE for sophia. Fire Editor is a straight forward, no-bs contract editor for sophia that’s supposed to get you going fast.

Basic Features:

currently testnet only

Writing contract
Compiling Contract
Deploying Contract
Call functions (Both local and stateful !)
Change Accounts and see their balance
Deploy and interact with as many contracts at the same time as your computer memory can handle
Work in Progress: Error reporting — please open your console for now, from the lima release on we will have cool error reporting in the compiler !

Cool Features

Automatically Generated Graphical User Interface
Separate Input fields for every argument of your function (Input data validation coming soon)
Funky syntax highlighting
Chose from 4 randomly selected pre-filled accounts (should one have no balance yet, chose another one or reload the site)

Very Nice Features

Easy Code sharing.
Point out issues in code.

aeternity Developers Update Week #34 | August 23, 2019. Watch it and catch up with all the recent news. They’re getting ready for the upcoming Lima hardfork and for introducing the FATE virtual machine.
aeternity Developers Update Week #35 | August 30, 2019. aeternity’s core team have already started preparing for the upcoming third hardfork and Lima release.
Waellet v0.1.1 is out.

Changelog:

Bugfixes
FT improvements
Allowances updates
Menu reorg
Separated build procedures
Security improvements
Permissions set updates
Sign/Verify message
Multi-language support improvements

Æternity Payment Application Update #3 (0.8.5)

The current release has the following Change-log from 0.8.0 of last week:

0.8.5

Revamped internal handling of channel events
Cleaned up Payment process: logic factored-out from view and moved to PaymentProcessor class
Friendlier text messages in many screens
Removed unnecessary Onboarding “allow this wallet” dialog
UI enhancements
Transaction history
Handling of CANCELED payment notification
Handling of Customer trying to purchase with insufficient channel funds
Two decimal digits shown in user interface for AE amounts
Fixed: Sometimes “Waiting transaction” screens at Deposit or Withdraw stuck at 100%
Fixed: Hide QR if build flag VUE_APP_DISABLEQRSCANCODES=1
Fixed: QR stops functioning if an invalid QRcode is scanned
Fixed: Onboarding QR format validation
Hub now communicates channel options at onboarding stage, preventing misconfiguration.
Heartbeat protocol with Hub to mantain permanent connection
Merchant receives a payment message for every successful purchase.

KNOWN ISSUES

Camera does not work in iOS devices
Payment process can time-out due to a bug we are analyzing.
Cancelling transactions through Base-Aepp dialog may enter inconsistent state.
UI Scaling does not work well in low vertical res screens, this is a WIP

Aeternity Governance Aepp Public Testing. AeTeam started work on the governance aepp to implement a polling system via smart contract as described here: Governance Polling System Aepp Introduction. Now they are ready to have a public testing session for aepp prototype. It’s all open source and you can inspect it at here.
State Channels bi-weekly development update — early September 2019

Fix field name in protocol documentation

The documentation had slightly diverged from the implementation which was fixed.
Change configuration option name ws_handlers to sc_ws_handlers
Implementation: PR #2739
Design: PR #407
The new name already existed, but wasn’t used. Instead the previous name was used, which is misleading to the user as itimplied a general limit.

Refactor and add state channel tests

Implementation: PR #2671, PR #2694
In preparation for PR #2630 the system tests have been refactored and extended to support the modified DB migration logic.
Additional tests were added to make sure a malicious Force Progress transaction containing the new AEVM or contract serialization will not be accepted on-chain pre-Lima.

Add meta update object to SC off-chain updates

Design: work in progress, see PT-168336006
Implementation: PR #2636
A client may add a metadata field meta to off-chain update operations (for now transfer only) which can be used to attach any information unrelated to the protocol to such an update.

Improve client protocol error handling in SC FSMs

Design: PR #412
Implementation: PR #2737
This has been a massive improvement on how protocol errors are handled in the FSMs. As a result more errors are handled gracefully with the FSMs staying alive and clients will receive better error responses.
A couple of issues reported by David Weil and Hernán Di Pietro were fixed in the process.

State Channel UAT Test Suite

Implementation: PR #6, PR #7, PR #8, PR #9, PR #10, PR #11
The test suite is progressing fast as it has to catch up continuously with the changes in the SC features.
It is already being used to verify that certain bug-fixes work for clients.

Social encounters

“Around the world with our æmbassadors: see where we’ve been!” — check the long-read about Aeternity world expansion!

Get rewards for testing! AE’s New Browser Extension: Try it out and leave your feedback. Rewards of AE will show up virtual in your account. CH is working to integrate AE blockchain and in the near future you will be able to withdraw your AE rewards, so stay tuned!
Hackbg shared their highlights from the Berlin Blockchain Week. Among them was aeternity’s meetup where Philipp and Milen presented Sophia — photos included below:

Open Call for Digital Artworks: Join the Graffiti Showcase at Ars Electronica. Check the guidelines!
How to Become a Blockchain Developer — Read and learn how to get started. aeternity’s Emin Mahrt gives you the recipe and invites all emerging and aspiring devs to attend Universe One Hæckathon in Prague.
The rain didn’t stop a successful Bitcoin Suisse AG Liechtenstein BBQ in Vaduz!

More about upcoming — æternity Universe One: A Fast-track Introduction to Cutting Edge Blockchain Technology. After months of development since the launch of the æternity mainnet in November of 2018, the project is ready to showcase its technological and business accomplishments at the æternity Universe One Conference, the first major æcosystem event dedicated to cutting-edge blockchain technology, research excellence, and real-world applications. They will discuss everything including the most efficient State Channels in the industry, oracles, and a user-friendly Naming System.

Upcoming events:

September 20 — Code BEAM Lite Budapest 2019 is sponsored by Aeternity.
September 20–21 — The Æternity Universe conference will take place in the period in Prague, Czech Republic. Meet Pablo Coirolo, CEO & Co-Founder Light47 & CEO Americas aeternity, Nikola Stojanow, CBDO aeternity Blockchain, CEO aeternity Ventures and many others!

Roadmap

æternity Development Roadmap Update.

The next scheduled hardfork of the æternity protocol will happen in September with the Lima Release.
Lima will introduce the Fast æternity Transaction Engine (FATE), æternity’s customized virtual machine.
A governance mechanism based on a Sophia smart contract will be introduced and will make it easier for the community to launch governance votes. Delegated voting and a signaling mechanism for hardfork activation will become available. A governance æpp will be launched.
Auctions for renting names in the æternity Naming System (AENS) will be launched with Lima.
A mobile æpp that enables state channel payments will be available during the æternity Universe One conference that will take place in Prague, Bohemia on September 20–21, 2019.

Here is the draft timeline for the Lima Release, token migration and the September hardfork.

Partnerships and team members

aeternity’s Starfleeters Cryptotask have amazing news — they’ve acquired an existing Croatian freelance platform, with over 15,000 active users. Here you can see their new design — minimal and functional. Backend Aeternity blockchain integration is progressing as well, thry are using Node.js and Browser SDK bundles.

Finance

Rumors

Meme from Telegram chat:

Picture from Telegram Chat:

Social media metrics

The graph above shows the dynamics of changes in the number of Aeternity Facebook likes, Reddit subscribers and Twitter followers. The information is taken from coingecko.com.

Here you can find all kinds of resources to get acquainted with aeternity!

Mainnet Launch

Protocol Upgrades

AE Token Migration