Mobile App Update

Our development team has made great strides in the continued development of our mobile application. Below highlights the current state of affairs and upcoming objectives for the Stegos mobile application.

Before we dive in, we would like to take a moment to share our appreciation and gratitude for the Stegos community. It’s been a long journey, and we recognize the continued support of those that have stuck around this far. Greatness is right around the corner!

Recent Developments

Throughout the first quarter of this year, we have affirmed that the Stegos mobile application represents our primary focus of development. At the end of January, we shared a “first-look” demo of the application. You can find that video here.

By the third week of February (roughly one month later), an internal beta of the application was tested on mainnet by our team. Through internal testing, it was made apparent that the application, in its current state was too resource-intensive for certain users.

The mobile app is lightweight in terms of application size- it only requires roughly 100mb of device storage. However, synchronization of the app required devices to parse through the entire blockchain. This process burns through several gigabytes of data. For individuals with limited or intermittent data, the convenience of the app would be completely overwhelmed by the costs associated with using it.

Instead of turning the application over to public beta testing- where the same conclusion would be devised, we immediately began working on improvements to the application and network layer to make mobile adoption faster and more lightweight.

This progression led to the inception of Gossip Protocol, which is referenced in our most recent roadmap. Gossip Protocol enables nodes to communicate among themselves, thus eliminating the necessity of bootstrap nodes that all network activity must route through. This improvement massively improves the speed and resource burden of synchronization.

Down the road, this communicability between nodes will also enable streamlined interaction through community developed network applications!

Current State of Affairs

Speedy progress has been made since internal testing prompted the team to further improve synchronization and resource usage. As of now, Gossip Protocol has been built, tested, and implemented.

There are two more scalability improvements in development before the mobile app is public-ready:

• auto relaying
• Remote Procedural Calls (RPC)

Currently, Stegos nodes must manually enable themselves to act as block relayers and seeders. Auto relaying eliminates this burden entirely, as every node automatically takes on these responsibilities. New nodes can then download missing blocks from any validator.

Additionally, mobile nodes currently must download all blockchain information to synchronize and propagate. This is not necessary. RPC will allow these mobile “light nodes” to only download needed information.

After these improvements are implemented, we can then turn the application over to the public. Unfortunately, this does indicate that the app will not be published in the coming days. We now anticipate a mobile app release by the end of April.

Beyond Release

The very top of the agenda after initial release is Mobile Chat. The chat has been very close to completion for some time. The back-end chat API is built, fully functional, and tested. The front-end user interface displayed within the mobile app must still be created.

After that, we envision to shift further development towards use-cases. We are strategizing to create in-demand, worthwhile applications that are made possible by Stegos and otherwise unavailable.

The first big development is envisioned as Stegos microblogging. In essence, the mobile app will also incorporate an interface for a private, anonymous, on-chain alternative to the massively popular Weibo platform. Be on the lookout for a second article that dives into the inspiration and implementation of the app.

Beyond this, there are also several planned updates that will allow users to further interact with the Stegos network through the app. A staking pools interface is at the top of this list.

We once again thank you for your continued patience and support of Stegos. Big things are in store, stay tuned!