Witnet Monthly Report — November 2019
A HUGE month for Witnet: new Sheikah UI functions, NTP clock synchronization support, new Block Relay Interfaces, announcement on wallet addresses, and lots more! Check out our new community discussion posts, and come meet some of the core #buidlers at ETHDenver!
🏗️ Development Update
Sheikah Interface :
- Template variables have now been added to the interface. A crucial step for the UX, eliminating much of the need to interact directly with the RADON source code.
UndoandRedofunctions are now available on the request editor- Numerous improvements to the test coverage, console design, and overall structure
- Multiple updates to
witnet-radon-jslibrary, which has been ported to TypeScript and adapted to the final mainnet-ready Witnet specification.
Node :
- Improvements to test coverage for
AddTransactionmethod - NTP universal clock synchronization has now been implemented, with a verified universal timestamp during node interaction (handshake) to ensure nodes are on the same epoch
- Initial RADON error functionality; smart contracts using Witnet will be notified when a request cannot be fulfilled, and handle any outlying situations (insufficient consensus, faulty sources, etc.)
- Final mechanism implementation, allowing the protocol to seize reputation points from witnessing nodes that fail to reveal the value of their cryptographic commitments, or that reveal values which do not pass filters in the tally function from the Witnet request (as defined by the requestor).
Ethereum Bridge :
- Improvements made to the Active Bridge Set (ABS) structural and readability design, including the new Block Relay interface, which decides the common methods that all future versions of the Block Relay will expose
- Progress made ensuring verification of Proofs of Eligibility (PoE) for the Active Bridge Set, and resolving compatibility errors with Rust and Solidity on RADON
- An initial internal audit has been carried out on the entire Witnet<>Ethereum bridge project, in anticipation of further external auditing.
Wallet component :
- Bug fix on the
get_transactionsfunction - The Witnet Community has finalized the decision to follow Bitcoin, and utilize Bech32 addresses. You can read more on the decision process, and what it means for Witnet, in the post below.
Crypto libraries :
For elliptic-curve-solidity and vrf-solidity:
- Improvements made to performance, leading to lower gas costs. Great news for Solidity devs!
- Improvements made to pattern designs: we have ported some of our contracts into static Solidity libraries.
- Tool audit and code review.
🗣 Discussion :
There’s a heap of new content to check out on our medium channel, collected and collated by the community based on conversations over recent months:
- How to prevent Sybil Attacks without PoW/PoS
- How can Decentralized Oracle Networks deal with Inconsistent Source Attacks?
We’ve also started a new monthly Q&A, where we will attempt to answer in detail the key questions posed by the Witnet community. Here’s November’s edition.
If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to post them on the community Telegram group or Discord, or send them via email.
👏 New contributions and bounties
As usual, new bounty opportunities have been posted on Gitcoin — the network is a great way to get stuck in to Witnet’s product, and gives you the chance to be generously rewarded for your open source contributions.
Are you interested in contributing to the development of witnet-rust? The Witnet community would love to have you involved. Visit the contributing guide, and join the Witnet Discord so we can help out with any questions you have.
Being Witnet an open protocol, the community is also very interested and receptive to anyone curious about building a separate implementation. Have a favorite language you’d like to try to build Witnet with? Let us know on the Witnet Discord and we’ll be happy to help you set up.
🎉 Events
A few members of the Stampery Labs team (one of the organizations in the Witnet ecosystem) will be representing Witnet at ETHDenver on February 14–16 2020. Applications are still open (and it’s free to attend) — let us know on Telegram or Discord if you’re coming!
For anyone who didn’t attend DevCon5, you can now watch the full presentation on RADON, from key Witnet #Buidlers — Adán, Mario and Gorka from Stampery Labs. If you have any questions or need any clarifications, feel free to post them in the comment section at the bottom of the post.
