district0x Dev Update - April 3rd, 2018

Development progress and product changes from district0x

This past two week cycle marks the end of the first quarter of 2018. And while this quarter did not include a major launch, it did include a ton of extremely valuable development work — the kind that saves countless hours in the future, and makes it easy (and fun!) to integrate on our platform for others.

We’ve made considerable progress with the GraphQL module and have been “lite”-ning the IPFS wrapper we mentioned last time in order to achieve better performance. Additionally, we’ve begun the necessary work of building a CLJS library/gateway for the 0x Relayers API. These three pieces together, if completed in our native Clojure/Clojurescript language, will serve not only the development community within cryptocurrency, but also to the greater Clojure beyond.

d0xINFRA Updates

In Progress

As mentioned above, after conducting testing of the Clojurescript IPFS wrapper we deployed last time, we saw in-browser performance was unacceptably slow. As a result, we’ve decided to make a second iteration that’s strip down to the bare minimum needed for our purposes on web. This should allow us much more flexible inclusion in future web dApps.

Additionally, the Clojurescript library for the 0x Relayers API has encountered a historically problematic issue with the requirement of NPM modules, which typically are compiled to JavaScript via Closure compiler (NOT Clojure). We encounter the need for these NPM modules elsewhere, but the clever workaround we normally use (involving bundling certain dependencies through the browser) does not work in this instance.

As a result, we’ve begun grappling with an instance of shadow-cljs to compile, whilst attempting to remain compatible with all of our other builds. This work will likely continue for weeks. With no perfect solution, we’ll build towards the trade-offs that hurt the least.

Meme Factory Updates

In Progress

With the recent completion of the remainder of the odds and ends of our GraphQL module, the focus at this point has shifted almost entirely towards documentation and tutorial writing. It’s worth noting that this really has grown to be a piece of d0xINFRA, and will be included in those sections in following updates.

Our GraphQL module was originally an effort to lower the time it would take to develop Meme Factory and redesign Ethlance, but has quickly turned into a design pattern that will not only assist in the rapid deployment of districts, but will also serve the larger development community interested in this pattern for all manner of traditional applications.

What’s Next?

With the recent launch of Aragon v0.5 to the Rinkeby Testnet, we draw one step ever closer to being able to execute on our long march of goals outlined in the district0x whitepaper. The team is in active discussions with Aragon regarding the best way to take an early implementation to Mainnet for our purposes whilst still planning the greater portion of the district0x Network’s future. In many ways, we can use it as a manual “dry run” for how things might work more autonomously in the future. If all ends well we expect a straightforward sequence of events:

Open the Meme Factory Community Design Contest Construct a Meme Factory entity on Aragon to allow staking of DNT. Allow users to stake DNT in order to vote on winning submissions to the design contest. Issue DANK token rewards to eligible voters. Launch Meme Factory (including winning designs) along with Dank Registry

From there, we can build and deploy the District Registry, tying a district’s submission and creation to a corresponding entity launched on Aragon. After giving Ethlance a complete rework, we will then move to building and deploying the District Staking Interface, which will be an implementation of the Simple Staking Interface specifically for DNT holders, allowing users to stake to the Aragon entity of any districts within the District Registry.

At the rate we’re going, we’ll be there before we realize it. We hope to see you there.