Theta protocol version 3.1.0 to be released July 25 — Release notes
The latest Theta protocol release version 3.1.0 has been released as a significant milestone for performance and usability improvement for the Theta blockchain. The new code will be available on Theta GitHub on July 25, 2021, with the hard fork to 3.1.0 occurring at block height 11354820 (approximately 12pm July 30, 2021 PT). There will be no token swap or wallet changes associated with this hard fork, so no need to move your Theta or TFuel tokens or take any action on your end.
Major changes in Theta 3.1.0 update include:
- More efficient block proposal protocol
Currently a validator block proposer waits 6 seconds before broadcasting the proposed block to guarantee liveness (i.e. chain progression). During the 6 seconds all the validators mostly sit idle. We designed a new block proposal protocol which eliminates the wait time without affecting liveness guarantees. Potentially the majority of the block time can be allocated for transaction execution, which greatly increases the efficiency and transactional throughput of the blockchain. This is a key enabling factor in high concurrent user video relaying or decentralized exchange, just to name a few use cases. Combined with off-chain micropayment aggregation, this transaction throughput can support 1,000,000+ concurrent users relaying video on Theta Network.
2. Highly optimized blockchain database
With the current implementation, transaction processing can get slower as the database size grows, which will reduce the transaction throughput. We implemented the concept of “rolling database”, which is specifically designed for blockchain state storage. Rolling enables much faster data read/write even when the database size grows very big. The update also introduces more efficient pruning, so disk size consumption will grow slower compared to now given the same amount of transactions per day.
3. Faster snapshot import
With the 3.1.0 update, upon the first launch of a node, the snapshot validation and import time is reduced from roughly 45 mins to 15 mins. For end-users this will reduce the time to start up a new Guardian Node, and if your node falls out of sync it can sync back up to the blockchain much quicker.
4. Support for Ethereum RPC API
Over the past few months, BSC (Binance Smart Chain) and Polygon both saw massive user activity growth. This is largely due to their Ethereum compatible RPC APIs which tremendously reduces the effort for developers to port Ethereum DApps over. It also lowers the learning curves for users migrating from Ethereum, since the user experiences are virtually identical on different chains.
Release v3.1.0 along with the RPC adaptor project will provide support for the Ethereum RPC API, similar to BSC and Polygon, Ethereum dapps that are ported over to Theta can also use the same API calls to interact with Theta blockchain. This upgrade also paves the way for cross-chain bridge development since the Theta and Ethereum blockchains can share the same set of APIs.
We are excited to see Theta community use their development skills to build Theta-compatible versions of dapps, either independently or as part of the next iteration of Theta Hackathon coming soon. Additionally, the Theta team will continue to work on several demo projects to port popular Ethereum DApps (ex. Uniswap V2, including both the underlying smart contracts and the user-facing frontend) to Theta blockchain.
