RChain Weekly Update (Debrief 81) — 13 June, 2018

Update Summary

The hangout opens with updates from the dev team about progress in the implementation and integration processes. Casper has been integrated with RSpace and metrics set to measure COMM events on RSpace. Next is a demo from Derek showing the formal semantics of Rholang using the K-framework. The Reflective team grows its relationship with the MIT and Harvard Blockchain group and also has a deal with Rubica. Pithia is engaged in meetings with portfolio companies. Deanna introduces herself to the community and gives an update on the German Co-op.

The German Co-op will be made in time for RCon3, our conference in Berlin where we will launch the testnet of RChain and much more. If you are interested in attending look at the conference page here https://goo.gl/gztvxy.

Finally, Greg M gives feedback on the challenges of getting research institutions to accepts grants in cryptocurrency.

Timeline

Contents in brief:

Medha technical update

The Node 0.6 specification is in progress.

Medha is authoring the release specifications for sharding.

Kyle will be delivering a preliminary costing model as part of Node 0.6 in preparation for testnet.

Discussions about validator economics have started. Notes on the discussion can be found on the wiki page.

Rholang team

Have implemented variable references, opaque processes, error handling, sets and maps.

Good progress has been made in specifying deterministic unforgeable names, using TF random with Blake2.

Casper has been integrated with RSpace.

Node 0.5 is promising to have production components in place for consensus.

Casper will be implementing the blessed REV contract.

Node team

Execution traces is on track; this brings support for the deterministic outcome of races.

Metrics have been implemented to measure COMM events on RSpace. The team is committed to doing 40,000 COMM events per second across the network, prompting the measurement of the tuple space.

Integration test was moved to Gitlab but the team experienced a serious outage. Consequently, the team is going off the cloud solution to an on-premise instance.

The team is leaving SECP256R1 transport layer with need to separate concerns between communication protocol and consensus protocol.

No change to support for Ethereum keys.

A node test was performed on Tuesday the 12th of June and will continually be held every Tuesday at 7:00am PT.

The team faced a challenge with peer-to-peer communications during the last node testing. Pawel checking the issue.

Rhoscala team

The transition function has been implemented; Timm is working understanding the Actor model.

Object code import into rosette is in progress.

Website

For updates on the RHOC-REV token swap specifications, click HERE.

RCon3

Registration for the RCon3 conference is open. Special offer of early-bird registration until July 31 and special rate for students.

Q/A/Comments

Navneet: “As we move forward for release cycles, are we doing anything about the security…making sure that…release software has adequate security measures in them and then somebody is doing some checks and balancing sort of thing? Are we starting the process? If not, what is the process of starting the process?”

Medha: “Yeah, we do have action items on the backlog to do hardening test and security penetration test. I have been working with some of the community members… they have some great ideas on how to do pen-testing. One of the ideas on the table is maybe engaging with organisation such as HackerOne… we don’t have a concrete plan in place yet but it’s definitely on our list as part of testnet. I have also been talking to community members about possibly doing an incentivized testnet and breaching the network is definitely one of the competition/incentive you will have as part of the testnet program”

Mike Stay: “ “…we are also putting code signing into place.

Navneet: “If you look at the bars height like Ethereum and Bitcoin; usually this people have done third-bar verification from the security point of view and thats was the direction that I was going; because we came across one other company they have expertise in that area.”

Greg M: “I did a fairly extensive review of companies who can do security audit. I am now of the opinion especially based on the results we’ve seen Ethereum and other offerings that have gone through this kinds of auditing processes,…on approach where we hire organisation like HackerOne… from that angle it’s going to give us some much better analysis or review into the possible holes. … we are doing everything we can in terms of the design and architecture and implementation to ensure that we have as much security cover as we can. …the next level kind of security that we want is for both the community and organisations like HackerOne to come at it and do their best to break it.”

Mike Stay: “The other thing that we are going to eventually do, not before Mercury but certainly in our plans is formal verification of the code… finding bugs by means of auditing is not particular a good way of finding bug…”

Derek demos verifying the formal semantics of Rholang

Derek is working on a document specifying the operational semantics.

Reflective Ventures Update

The Reflective team are having a good time and developing a stronger relationship with the MIT and Harvard University blockchain group.

Mrinal and Steve are preparing for their trip to Germany.

The team is in a deal with Rubica, a company concerned with both personal and cybersecurity for high net worth individuals. They provide enterprise-grade cybersecurity for individuals.

Pithia Update

About five companies providing hardware-based blockchain solutions are in the pipeline. One of them will be leveraging the new SGX chipset.

The team will be meeting with about a dozen companies in Vancouver in the second week of July.

Some members of the Pithia team will be going to eastern Washington to talk about building a blockchain center there.

Lawrence Lerner is going to San Francisco. There are about 17 meetings lined up with new companies and investors there.

Navneet talks about two other portfolio companies in the pipeline. One of them intends to operate at the same scale as Uber/Lyft They are especially excited about RChain because of its transaction speeds. The other company wants to manage an organic products supply chain. They want to improve transparency, certification, and speed.

Navneet seeks the community’s engagement and participation in their meetings with companies.

Deanna introduces herself and gives an update on the German co-op

Deanna has 20 years of experience as a software engineer and architect. She has recently been working in program management with business customers. She will manage the formation of the German co-op, coordinate between Pyrofex, Reflective ventures and RChain co-op on node validator enrollment. She’ll also help in the bounty system.

Deanna is working with Ella Kagel in refining the draft of the bylaws for the German co-op, which after being reviewed by their attorney will be submitted to the auditors.

They still need to come up with a business plan and a finance plan that will cover the next three years of how RChain Europe’s is going to be funded.

The next step is defining the board of directors and supervisors for the German co-op.

Comments/Other updates from Greg M

Greg M will make available Ella’s diagram on the relationships between the European and U.S. co-op. The community will also review the business plan.

Greg M reiterates his recommendation of Steve Ross Talbot for the European co-op Board. He was one of the leaders at the W3C and others in the deployment of the mobile process algebra and employing related technology in the financial industry.

The cooperative is forming a RChain consulting service group that will be helping to support companies that are signed up for the RChain platform. Anyone who is interested in helping or can recommend someone should get in touch..

The community is also looking to building a core hardware infrastructure to support staking and validation of the network.

Centers will be built in Utah under the auspices of Pyrofex. Similarly, there will be a dual build-out in Seattle.

Greg M wants people to be apprised that there is insufficient RHOC in distribution required for the staking process. The 200 million RHOCs approved for sale by the community has remained untouched and Greg M will propose to the board to make available 80 million RHOC for people who wants to stake validators.

Q&A/Comments

Christian: “… just to give you guys an idea of the potential scale of the problem: If you look at EOS, they launched on the 10th; their mainnet is still not officially live. … they have about 8.8% needed of 15% voting. That’s a $400 million ICO, so it’s not really a money thing. It’s more about people needing to be aware of what’s happening because if you are an EOS whale, why would you move your coins from an exchange ?…There needs to be a serious discussion happening between now and the mainnet. I’m sure that EOS will do it because there are only 6% away from hitting their launch but it’s still massive…to get going.”

Greg M: “You are absolutely right and we need to be looking this problem square in the eye, we need to onboard validators… across lots of different market segments. Anyone who has a stake in RChain needs to be stepping up to the plate to help us find people and institution and organizations who are appropriate for staking the network.”

RChain Research Update

Research proposal from Hans Futo has been approved. The next step is to discuss deliverables and resources.

The research team is in touch with Nobuko Yoshida, one of the luminaries in mobile process calculi.

One observation is that research institutions show conservatism with respect to accepting research grants in crypto assets. As a result, there will be conversations with Imperial, Oxford and Alborg [and Sorbonne?] about providing larger crypto grants relative to fiat-based grants.

Q&A/Comments/Reply

Rudy: “Greg, I have a statement to make. I think that discussions we’ve had shows that getting people familiar with how this works helps, regardless of the vertical. We’ve seen this with La Marzocco…”

Greg M: “You are absolutely right…”