Telos Network — Weekly Report — August 16th, 2018
Getting Real
(Update: the Community Rewards Pool and Bounty System mentioned in this report are now closed.)
This was the week when Telos crosses a sort of line in many people’s minds: from being a project that might happen, to something that is happening. Across a number of domains, Telos has progressed towards a major blockchain project that may soon be essentially equal to EOS itself. These advances are built on the progress we’ve recorded in the past few weeks as it percolates up through the EOSIO and crypto communities.
In about a month since first announcing Telos to the world, we have released complex new EOSIO code to create the changes we promise, swiftly and effectively revised the issues about rewards and Telos Foundation voting to address the few community concerns about the project, received a highly favorable write-up on CoinDesk and other crypto news outlets. Released the first of our governance documents for community discussion, offered important new code to all EOSIO chains including TIP-5 standard tokens and inverse-weighted voting. We have organized as a group, put up public videos of our very well managed meetings (Thanks Jim Hewett, TelosUK!), attracted community support with Twitter, Discord, Medium and Telegram communities in several languages, and won the strong interest of a number of DApps considering deploying or building on Telos. And all of this is just the start.
Of course, there’s a lot of work ahead as we work towards our first announced go/no-go vote on launching the network, September 28th. But any question about whether Telos will launch or be a success are now in the past. This is happening. Telos is going to change and improve EOSIO and blockchain forever. - Douglas Horn
Here’s what we’ve accomplished this week:
1. Inverse weighted voting graduates to advanced tests
2. Automated BP rotation
3. Published Telos Network Operating Agreement
4. Advanced Founders Rewards Pool Bounty System
5. Completed Initial proposal for Community Rewards Pool
6. Limited BP candidates to 1 per organization
7. Testnet passes 3 million blocks and advances to Stage 2
8. Master Gantt chart of launch steps
9. Onboarding form for new Telos contributors
10. Updated Telos white paper
11. Updated TIP-5 standard contract
12. Progress on Replay Protection
13. More clarity on keypair prefixes
14. Coindesk article exposes Telos to broad crypto audience
1. Inverse weighted voting graduates to advanced tests
The ‘votingweights’ action that was completed last week has been tested this week, updated, and is about to be used to determine the order of all BP candidates on a live testnet. (The ‘Staging’ testnet mentioned below in #7)
2. Automated BP rotation
The ‘rotatebps’ action is now complete and working. We have been testing it at different rotation times and lengths and varying scenarios. It seems to be going great and is now in charge of rotating the BP schedule on the ‘Staging Testnet’. This delivers a major technology promise. Testing continues.
3. Published Telos Network Operating Agreement
The Telos Network Operating Agreement (our less grandiose, more down-to-business) version of the EOS Constitution has moved out from the Governance working group to the group as a whole and finally to our Github repo and Medium page. Of course, this document will create a lot of discussion and changes before launch. The goal is to maximize this time for all members of the community. So far, the feedback has been very positive.
4. Advanced Founders Rewards Pool Bounty System
The Telos Founders Rewards Pool (TFRP) bounty system is nearly ready for implementation. Rob Konsdorf from EOS Detroit is building a Slicing Pie Manager web app (https://github.com/eosdetroit/slicing_pie_manager/commits/master) to simplify tracking and recording of each contributor’s time and tasks. Rob and James Davis of GoodBlock are finalizing the system of assigning ‘slices’ values to hours of work at certain tasks and levels, bounties for specific accomplishments such as completing a major code contribution or onboarding an exchange, and approved cash contributions. These values are being assigned in coordination with two compensation specialists, Matt Johnson and Rob James.
5. Completed Initial proposal for Community Rewards Pool
James Davis has created an initial process for awarding Telos Community Rewards Pool (TCRP) funds to community contributors. This process is being discussed in the Community Rewards working group with the intent to rapidly advance it to the general group in the hopes of an official acceptance vote on the August 21st call. We recognize that the community is waiting for this. In the meantime, community members should move forward in creating Telos community media with the knowledge that it will be rewarded as long as they eventually register, and currently include a link to an official Telos media outlet (main website, @HelloTelos on Twitter, etc) and/or us the Twitter hashtag #IWantMyTLOS in messages to exchanges.
6. Testnet passes 3 million blocks and advances to Stage 2
The Telos Testnet has now passed 3 million blocks. At the time this report is released, the testnet will be in the process of advancing to Stage 2, having completed all the tasks required of Stage 1.1. Due to issues with EOSIO versions 1.1.0–1.1.4, it was determined to wait to update to the latest EOSIO code until Stage 2 was begun. In the process of advancing to Stage 2, these issues arose and the network is currently in the process of being updated to the EOSIO version 1.2.0. Additionally, a new “staging” testnet is being created to test updated software before production, as described in the Telos white paper. Initially, it will be used to further test inverse-weighted voting functions.
7. Limited BP candidates to 1 per organization
As part of the move to launching Testnet Stage 2 and the Staging Testnet, the testnet is now asking all participants to limit themselves to 1 node per network. Not long ago, we were begging people to add more nodes so we could get the Last Irrevocable Block moving! Even with limiting the network in this way, it will still have 33 BPs and standbys. Almost 50 organizations have registered and run nodes on the testnet so far.
8. Master Gantt chart of launch steps
The TeamGantt project management Gantt chart that was adopted last week has been fully populated with all ongoing projects in the Telos Trello and Github Kanban boards by James Davis. This tool is already improving project management.
9. Onboarding form for new Telos contributors
The Telos Contributors Group is an open membership group. Even so, it is necessary to look at who is joining, and where their contributions can be of the most value, given their skills and the commitments of existing contributors. Mark Cohen of Telos Vancouver has lead efforts to employ reasonable onboarding identity verification while maintaining the goal of keeping the group open to all genuinely interested new contributors. Currently, new members wishing to join who are not already within the “web of trust” of the group (for example personally known to an existing contributor or having worked as a colleague in the EOS launch, etc), can show their interest in many ways such as taking part in discussion groups, the Telos testnet, a brief live video discussion, sharing their real world identity via an existing LinkedIn page of some duration. New members have continued to join the group every day since the Telos announcement.
10. Updated Telos white paper
On August 15th, an updated draft (draft 1.2) of the Telos white paper was uploaded to the Telos web site. (http://resources.telosfoundation.io/telos_white_paper_8_15_18.pdf) This draft reflects changes that have either been voted on by the Telos Contributors Group in their weekly (Tuesday) calls, or proposed in the new governance documents such as the Telos Network Operating Agreement.
11. Updated TIP-5 standard contract
Craig Branscom (GoodBlock), in consultation with the rest of the GoodBlock development team (Peter Bue, Ed Silva, Douglas Horn) has updated the TIP-5 standard “ERC-20-like” fungible token contract and performed numerous tests on the first TIP-5 token ever deployed, the Telos Test Token (TTT). The TTT is currently deployed on the Telos testnet. Key improvements to the revised standard include revising the mode for creating an initial entry for the token in the registry. This requires a small amount of RAM to be used prior to being able to receive tokens. In this way, the TIP-5 token is similar to airgrab tokens in how it approaches the initial RAM cost, but the TIP-5 is standardized, adds additional functionality, and may better manage RAM. Now that the TIP-5 standard is essentially complete, there will be longer explanation articles and tutorials about using the TIP-5 on Telos, EOS, and any other EOSIO networks published soon. Github repo: https://github.com/Telos-Foundation/tips/blob/master/tip-0005.md
12. Progress on Replay Protection
The Telos development working group has continued its research on ensuring replay attacks are not possible across the EOS and Telos networks. Replay attacks are a fairly minor form of exploit where a transaction from one chain can be perfectly recreated (same sender, receiver, and amount) on another network. Because EOSIO includes the chainID in its hashing algorithm and because it uses TAPOS (Transactions as Proof of Stake), EOSIO has a lot of built-in protection against replay attacks. Since Telos will be the first distinct EOSIO blockchain, we are taking time to ensure that no additional replay protection will be required. This is officially on the Stage 2 Testnet roadmap but research and testing began early this week prior to launching Stage 2.
13. More clarity on keypair prefixes
There has been some concern and confusion from various stakeholders outside of the Telos group about the requirements for using new public key prefixes on various EOSIO networks. Due to how EOSIO uses accounts instead of addresses, it may not be implicitly necessary to add different prefixes to keys. However, adding a unique prefix to keys — such as TLOS on Telos keys instead of EOS on EOS keys — makes discerning different keys much easier, especially when we consider a future with dozens of different flavors of general- and special-use EOSIO chains. Block.one is also now exploring new standards for keys that would not only allow the chain name to be stored, but the crypto algorithm as well. As the first real use case, Telos is making important contributions towards these developments. Telos Development working group member Marlon Williams (EOS Miami) submitted pull requests to the EOSIO and Scatter Github repositories regarding these issues and both were included in recent merges (accepted as official code improvements). The comments, “Telos changes” were even incorporated into the official code. Go Marlon!
13. CoinDesk article exposes Telos to broad crypto audience
On August 10th, CoinDesk staff writer David Floyd published an article encapsulating some of the EOS challenges and highlighting Telos as, “The [EOS] fork with the most momentum and support.” (https://www.coindesk.com/fed-up-and-forking-rival-eos-blockchains-are-becoming-a-reality/) The article includes quotes from Douglas Horn (GoodBlock), Jan Smit (Keten.io), investor Ben Sigman, and Daniel Keyes (EOS Nation). This article has been rolled out to many forums and new articles are following up.
For more information the Telos Network, visit the Telos Foundation website at https://telosfoundation.io/
