Weekly Dev Update #50

THORChain Weekly Dev Update for Week 01–06 July 2020; Churning, Validator Onboarding, TSS bug-fixes, preparation for Testnet 4

Summary

Churning

The team continue to test THORNode’s behaviour during various churning environments. The goal is to churn up to 30 nodes, then back down to a complete Ragnarok, all whilst handling various node reliability issues and live funds.

THORChain is unique because it aggressively and continually churns its validator set, adding 2 and removing 1 every 3 days. This is part of THORChain’s design principle of treating nodes as second-class citizens and preventing any and all forms of stagnation and capture. Bitcoin has high validator churn as a function of the stochastic PoW process and is resistant to capture. Poorly-designed PoS systems that don’t churn validators end up becoming vulnerable to centralisation and capture.

View of a THORNode dashboard showing 29 connected nodes

Progress

The team are in the final stages of verification of Churn. Once they are happy with its stability, Testnet 4 will be launched for Node Operators to join and practice on.

Node Operators can use the following to prepare:

• @thornode_bot on telegram
• Kubernetes Docs: https://gitlab.com/thorchain/devops/helm-charts
• THORNode Docs: https://gitlab.com/thorchain/thornode/-/blob/master/docs/validator.md

More information will compiled once the procedure is finalised. There are two schools of thought for Validator Onboarding:

1. Make the onboarding deliberately obtuse so only highly technically-literate operators can get a node set up. They will be better equipped to handle issues with their node, but bonding rates may be low.
2. Make the onboarding “1-touch deploy”, so many nodes can get set up and drive up competition (and bonding rates). They may not be well-equipped to handle issues down the line.

The team are still discussing both, and will likely offer a range of options for Node Operators.

THORNode

Bugfixes from testnets, as well as some quality and feature inclusions from testing.

• Resolve “script hard fork”
• Resolve “[CLEANUP] Internal code audit , manager_vault_v1”
• Resolve “[CLEANUP] internal code audit , managers”
• [bugfix] track inbound rune in unbond handler
• [bugfix] handle infinite unstakes during ragnarok
• [bugfix] use common.SafeSub more carefully
• [bugfix] add all rangarok txs to be tracked internally
• [bugfix] keygen msg id includes blame
• fix the blockheight in bifrost
• Enable internal traffic for both genesis and validator
• upgrade cosmos sdk
• Revert “Merge branch ‘548-issue’ into ‘master’”
• Resolve “[CLEANUP] back fill some unit tests”
• Update logic to choose yggdrasil send out fund

Midgard

Bugfixes and features. A chain proxy is being added to allow clients to send through transactions direct to connected chains, rather than relying on other services.

• WIP: Resolve “Clean time-based ROI”
• Resolve “Implement pools_history table”
• WIP: Resolve “chain proxies”

TSS

Bugfixes as found in testing.

• Upgrade
• add ping pong check before join party
• Fix p2p memory leakage
• encrypt the keygen output share
• resolve the freeze in join party

Clients

BEPSwap Client

Numerous UI/UX tweaks based on community feedback

ASGARDEX Client

Work continues to prepare the client for Chaosnet.

• README: Add `keystore.json` location
• Store binance address into state
• Feature/asset view
• Refactor wallet structure (part 1)
• Refactor wallet structure (part 2)
• Refactor wallet structure (part 3)
• Fix/asset view intl
• Fix flickering text
• Feature/asset details
• Update i18n for AssetDetails
• Update Binance dependencies

THORNode Infra

The team continue to mature out the k8s infrastructure:

• Gateway
• Fix set ip address from param
• Add resource limits requests
• Use latest postgres timescaledb to fix memory leak
• Use haproxy instead of istio
• Add helmfile for testing envs
• Update dashboard

Community Work

A block explorer from an external team has been commissioned and will be ready within the month.

Audits

A final infrastructure audit is planned post-Chaosnet.

Next Milestones

The testnet 4 is being prepared and will be made public soon. Chaosnet is expected once testnet has been fully-validated in several environments.

Community

To keep up to date, please monitor community channels, particularly Telegram and Twitter:

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/thorchain_org
• Telegram Community: https://t.me/thorchain_org
• Telegram Announcements: https://t.me/thorchain
• Reddit: https://reddit.com/r/thorchain
• Github: https://github.com/thorchain
• Medium: https://medium.com/thorchain