Æternity: Æ-ETH Swaps Are Now Available, January Tech and Ecosystem News, Æternity is in Top-50 Crypto Valley Companies, Python SDK 7.0.0 1 is out, Grant Reports, Starfleet India Deadline

Published in

Paradigm

13 min readFeb 11, 2020

Biweekly update 28th January — 11th February

Hello, and welcome! Today in our crypto spotlight — æternity! The team, grantees, operational entities, as well as community members and other ædherents, continue to support the steady performance of the project. The team members’ stable work is transparently seen in their regular development updates. Karol Skocik reported that the second half of January was focused on finishing of Rust middleware takeover and figuring out how to translate it to Elixir, sitting on a future plugin-based architecture. Another deal in this period was intensive stability testing of garbage collector of account states, ensuring it can cope with the issue over several days, running non-stop.
Furthermore, Juraj Hlista shared improvements on gossip and peer pool, featuring periodic check of unverified or old peers, ping message check, and peer propagation. Python SDK 7.0.0 1 was launched with added support for source code validation and delegate signatures for contracts, and improved accessibility of transaction properties in TxObject. Check the development section not to miss January’s news!
Aeternity team puts a lot of effort into community and developer education. Thus, numerous meetups and workshops are regularly arranged. Manel Ruiz, Aeternity’s lead ambassador in Spain, embarked on a journey around Europe, spreading the ideas about the advances of the smart contract platform, explaining the features of Aeternity that make it a unique Blockchain where scalable smart contracts interact with real-world information via decentralized oracles. More events to come! Dacade.org is operating in order to provide users with a simple platform and incentive to increase the level of blockchain and dev literacy! In other words, Dacade.org is an educational platform that allows you to learn to code and be rewarded in tokens. A group of motivated individuals in Ekiti State, Nigeria tackled development 101 course on Dacade as a part of their durable workshop. Also, the first aeternity developer hangout in Jos for 2020 was a success. Attendants got to learn about Sophia language and how to grow their blockchain startups. æternity is ready to welcome community members from all over the world, support ideas, and provide precious knowledge about blockchain! No wonder that the number of subscribers in social networks remains growing; people are also active in Telegram Chat and on Aeternity Forum. Follow æternity progress and stay tuned!

Development

Developer activity (from Aeternity Coinlib.io)

Python SDK 7.0.0 1 is out, the first release of 2020!

The feature highlights for this release are:

add support for source code validation for contracts
improved accessibility of transaction properties in TxObject (and in general for the node client)
add support for delegate signatures for contracts (this was instrumental to identify a bug in the fate vm #3141)

[Update] Week #5 — gossip, peer pool

{Ping message check} — Related PR: PR #3090

The PR was merged finally. It enforces the max number of peers in ping message to be 32.

{Peer propagation} — Related PR: PR #3123 1, PR #453 (protocol)

The node used to gossip random peers from both verified and unverified pool. The PR changes the behavior of the peer pool so the random peers are now selected only from the verified pool. This means that only peers that the node is able to connect to are propagated (so no more dead peers in ping message).

{Periodic check of unverified peers} — Related PR: PR #3135

When the node tries to establish a connection it selects an available peer from the verified pool first, if there is no available peer, it selects a random peer from the unverified pool (most likely dead one). In order to increase the likelihood that the node is able to establish a connection, there is now a mechanism that periodically selects a random peer from the unverified pool and tries to connect to it (just TCP) to find out if it’s alive. If the peer is alive, it’s moved to the verified pool, so the node will have some available peer in the verified pool.

{Default max_update_lapse} — Related PRs: PR #3138, PR #3117 1

max_update_lapse is used for checking if peers are considered old and should be removed (this check is performed when a peer pool is reasonably full and there are new peers added to it, PR #3117 1 makes these checks more frequent). Its default value is 30 days which is too long and should be decreased to just couple of hours.

A first, rough, prototype for bootstrapping the aeternity Erlang node into a separate ‘plugin’ system, using a few ‘setup’ tricks. Example in the README.
[Update] Week #5 — middleware takeover and translation, GC stability testing:

Middleware takeover and translation — Second half of January was focused on finishing of Rust middleware takeover and figuring out how to translate it to Elixir, sitting on future plugin-based architecture. The high-level summary with discussions regarding scope and issues on the way can be found here.
GC final stabilization testing — Another work in this period was intensive stability testing of garbage collector of account states, ensuring it can cope with an issue over several days, running non-stop.

Æternity Tech and Echosystem News — January 2020

{Protocol}

Latest Maintenance Lima Release Notes: 5.4.1 & 5.4.0
Latest (Week #2) Peer Pool, P2P Update
Release of Sophia compiler v4.2.0

{Developer Tools}

Software Development Kits (SDKs):
Latest (Week #2) Elixir SDK Update
Latest JavaScript SDK Release v7.0.0-next.3 Note
Latest Python SDK Release v7.0.0 Note
Latest Golang SDK Release v8.0.0 Note
Latest Java Release v2.1.0 Note
Latest (Week #2) Dev-Suite Update

{Application Layer (æpps)}

Latest Waellet Update
Latest Base æpp Update
Latest AirGap Update
Latest Governance æpp Update
Introducing community built Univote æpp for elections

{Education}

Latest version of FireEditor — an easy-to-use Web-IDE for Sophia (Forum discussion over here)
Latest version of dacade — a peer-to-peer blockchain learning platform
Latest version of the Documentation Hub

{Other Stuff for Developers}

{Standards and Governance Topics}

AEX2 — JS SDK Interfaces for Wallets (Forum discussion over here)
AEX3 — Secure Storage Format (Forum discussion over here)
AEX4 — æternity Wallet Deep Linking Specification (Forum discussion over here)
AEX5 — Inter-wallet Communication (Forum discussion over here)
AEX8 — Message Signing (Forum discussion over here)
AEX9 — Fungible Token (Forum discussion over here)
AEX11 — Compliant Fungible Token Standard (Forum discussion over here)
AEX12 — Off Chain State (Draft) (Forum discussion over here)

Social encounters

The Garage, the Blockchain place in Paris, hosted Manel Ruiz’s presentation; he introduced Sophia, a functional Smart Contract language in the ML family. See post.

Aeternity is once again among Top 50 Blockchain and Crypto Companies in Switzerland and Liechtenstein in 2020.

On Building a Decentralised Future — Yanislav Malahov, CEO & Founder of the Æternity — Genesis DevCon. Æternity predicts a future where the tokenization of all shared assets and resources is commonplace. Every co-owned object and shared resource will be tokenized and it’s ownership and access tracked by the blockchain. This would ideally make all shared assets more liquid and traceable on global markets.
Æternity Blockchain for Beginners hosted by Aeternity Americas.

Blox Launches Æternity Node Partnership — watch a comment by Alon Muroch, CEO ar Blox. Previously, it was announced that this leading platform for crypto asset management and the aeternity scalable smart contract platform will work together to better the latter users’ dealings with digital assets.

“I think the best thing is we find all part of the industry” — watch Pablo Coirolo speaking about their project associated with medical cannabis.

aeternity’s Lead Spanish aembassador Manel Ruiz embarks on a journey around Europe.

As a part of his aembassador trip, Manel Ruiz gave an overview of the aeternity ecosystem at Parallele Polis in Vienna:

Robert presenting the blockchain oracles on aeternity at Geneva DevChain:

Starfleet Malta — The Aftermovie — Wanna know what it is like inside Starfleet, the Global Accelerator For Blockchain Startups? Watch the aftermovie of the 3rd edition, which they organized in Malta — the blockchain island in cooperation with Microsoft Innovation Center.
æternity Ekiti shared their progress on the chain of workshops, where participants learned about aeternity blockchain, smart contracts and how to use dacade.org in order to make their contribution to the world of blockchain! Learn more on their website https://aekiti.com.

The first aeternity developer hangout in Jos for 2020 was a success. Attendants got to learn about Sophia language and how to grow their blockchain startups.

How to GPU Mine Aeternity Blockchain (AE) and Review. Aeternity Blockchain is a cryptocurrency using the ASIC resistant, Cuckaroo29 algorithm and the consensus protocol Bitcoin-NG. In the video Crypto Vin gives a brief overview of the project and discusses how to mine it using gminer (Nividia GPU) on Simplemining OS (SMOS).
AMA Session Starfleet India — although the deadline for Starfleet application has already passed, here you can find a recording from the conference call between the Blockchain expert Valentin Alexiev and the dev and commination specialist from IBC Media Vasudhendra Badami.

Here are some of the questions from the session:

What is the goal of Starfleet?
What is the application and selection process?
What are the benefits of the startups in the program?

Check it and participate the next time!

Upcoming events:

All the amazing aeternity events are scheduled in this calendar. Check it out not to miss anything!

12th February 2020, 15:00–17:00 — Meetup in UCLA, Barquisimeto, Venezuela
12th February 2020 — Meetup in UNETI, Caracas, Venezuela
13th February 2020 — Meetup in Gausau Institue, 1 Dendo Road, Off Nigeria, Ahmadu Bello Way, Kaduna, Nigeria
15th February 2020 — Meetup in UNEXCA, Caracas, Venezuela
17th February 2020 — Meetup in Valencia, Carabobo, Venezuela
20th February 2020 — Meetup at We Work Barcelona, Carrer de la Ciutat de Granada 121, Barcelona. Manel Ruiz, the lead ambassador of Aeternity in Spain will present the advances made by Aeternity since the launch of its mainnet a year ago and the three hard forks performed during 2019. He will explain the characteristics of Aeternity that make it a unique Blockchain where scalable smart contracts via State Channels interact with real-world information via decentralized Oracles.
22th February 2020 — Sophia Bootcamp at ABU university in Zaria, Nigeria.
25th February 2020–28th February 2020 — æternity Developer Bootcamp, Ujay hub, University of Jos, Nigeria
26th February 2020 — Sofia Crypto Meetup, a monthly blockchain event sponsored by æternity.
27th February 2020 — Darwin & Marie Conference, Vienna

Roadmap

æternity Development Roadmap Update. UPDATE: æternity’s Lima hardfork was successfully executed on October 30th, 2019 at block height 161150. The æternity’s Mainnet is now running Lima Release 5.0.1. Significant milestones were reached and we are waiting for new target milestones:)

Partnerships and team members

Thanks to Philipp “Piwo” aeternity has a fully working governance aepp and professional technical support for everyone who builds on aeternity. The foundation is proud to support him and the aeternity ecosystem with a grant. More about his work here.
Grant report 11.2019–1.2020 by Karol Skocik.

On meetup in Prague, a decision was made to implement a garbage collector, which would trim the history of account movements and limit the amount of data each user has to keep on disk. Various approaches how to implement a garbage collector were tried, and a version of 1-phase collector was documented in a GC research paper.
There was also checking of the viability of Lumen to bring Sophia compiler and parts of the node to mobile and browser. Lumen needs to merge compiler branch to the main branch before it can be useful for building deliverables running on other platforms.

Check the link above for more!

Final grant report (November 2019 — January 2020) by Juraj Hlista.

{Peer management}

There are ~10000 dead peers on the testnet with ~50 live nodes, and ~25000 dead peers on mainnet with ~100 live nodes. Most of the dead peers are kept in peer pools of the nodes. P2p network simulations Using the p2p network simulator there have been done simulations using different parameters to see how the p2p behaves and what could be improved. Also, these parameters were made configurable in the node (PR #3074).

{Peer connections}

In order to see the number of currently connected outbound/inbound peers there was added a new periodic log message (PR #3029 1) and the HTTP /status endpoint includes this information as well (PR #3034). When the node disconnects from a peer specified in its config, the node should connect to this peer again immediatelly (PR #3076).

{Ping message}

The ping message has max limit of peers it can contain, however, this hasn’t been enforced by the node (PR #3090).

The peers that were part of the ping were taken from both verified and unverified pool which resulted in propagation of dead peers. This was changed so only peers from the verified pool are propagated (PR #3123).

{Peer pool}

The unverified pool includes too many dead peers. In order to clean them up quicker, the filtering function which checks when a peer was updated (received via ping) the last time and when this time period is longer than max_update_lapse, such peer is removed more frequently (PR #3117, PR #3138).

Check the forum for more precise information about the progress and performance!

Dacade.org is an educational platform that allows you to learn to code and be rewarded in crypto. Check out the aeternity blockchain Development 101 course and win AE tokens upon completion. Reach it via the brand new AE website.

aeternity’s community member snaphuman.chain walked through his experience with Dacade.org. He described the tools he’s used and the challenges he’s met in completing the Aeternity Development 101 course.

In the last week (CW06), 79 new users registered on dacade and 26 submissions were made.

22 submissions in the “Introduction to Blockchain community” and 4 new submissions in the “Aeternity Development 101 Community”.

The 4 new aepps build by the learners:

An Airbnb prototype
Catvoting
Prepaid card generator prototype
Event platform prototype

Check them out here.

Finance

Source: AEKnow | Æternity Blockchain Explorer and More

AE-ETH swaps are now available via JellySwap. Start transacting in a secure and decentralized way! They have already had more than 2000 AE tokens moved to ETH and vice versa

Rumors

Please be aware of a new scam going on: Several users have received emails by a recruiter by the name of Andrew L’Abbate offering remote customer service position at æternity. Bear in mind that the only legitimate source of information concerning job offers at æternity are the AE official communication channels. The official mail address of the HR department is hr@aeternity.com. Real job offers at æternity are usually announced here.
Cryptic Legends Newsletter is here. Cryptic Legends is a starfleeter-made hero manager game set in an ancient fantasy world in which players are trading and collecting heroes, configuring their skills and items, matching them in teams of four and using them in automatic battles against other players. Now they will provide updates on the development and news.

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! The Getting Started page is being constantly updated to help you get quickly acquainted with aeternity: It’s a rich collection of all kinds of articles, video reviews and guides, and interviews that will introduce you to the AE universe.

Mainnet Launch

Protocol Upgrades

Roadmap