On March 18, 2020, Dash core team announced via a blog post that they have just released Dash Platform v0.11, which includes a significant update to Evonet, the testing environment for platform functionality.

This release represents the specific combination of platform components that comprises the most up-to-date software. The most important consequence of this release will be the update to Evonet, but individuals will also be able to experiment with the software in other environments such as local development or a private devnet.

The just implemented update on Evonet involves broad enhancements to security, with the main focus on improving light client support by integrating LLMQ’s into the platform consensus mechanism.

This will result in significant security improvements that enable anyone to create and register data contracts, thereby unlocking the potential to use Dash Platform as a decentralized, consensus-backed Database-as-a-Service.

What Does Dash Platform v0.11 Offer Users?

The latest changes to the Dash Platform on Evonet include a Register of Public Data Contracts, which has removed internal restrictions on the registration of data contracts on Evonet.

Dash core developers have added additional validation rules and now parse and validate state transitions in an isolated virtual machine on the platform.

This has been done so as to enhance the security of state transition execution in an effort to avert malicious contracts from affecting other Dash processes. In essence, the new updates have provided enough security for users to safely publish their own contracts without damaging the integrity of the entire network.

Moreover, the new platform now uses the latest version of Dash Core, which includes updates to the desktop wallet to improve the user experience and mempool improvements for syncing new nodes. There’s also PrivateSend which will improve the mixing process, and a significant number of backports to keep Dash up to date with Bitcoin v0.15.

Sweeping Changes In the New Platform

In the old Dash platform, many DAPI endpoints included in the previous release were either unnecessary, deprecated, or contained potential attack vectors that could be exploited by a malicious actor. Those endpoints have been removed from our newest release, making the DAPI interface more secure and simple.

Some of the most important updates included in the Platform v0.11 release will make data previously created on Evonet incompatible with this newest version, and developers will need to wipe any old data stored on their local setup.

In implementing continuous updates to the platform, Dash hopes to hope to build trust, better manage delivery expectations, and increase developer participation in the network’s repositories.