Validator Office Hours Notes (April 2023)

Validators
1

April 20, 2023

Agenda:

  • Devnet Reset
  • State Sync on Devnet
  • Mainnet 1B Updates
  • Delegation Program Updates
  • Open Questions

Note: I planned to record the meeting but the recording didn’t work. These notes summarize the call and I added some links to helpful resources.

Discussion Items:

Devnet

Dan:

  • Devnet was reset and devnet-17 started up last night (April 19)
  • New devnet software supports the new smart contract development stuff!
  • Vaults are live on devnet meaning devnet users can create IST vaults and have fun exploring Inter Protocol’s upcoming new feature.
  • Mainnet 2 devs can now deploy their applications on Devnet!

Devnet Portal available here

State-Sync

JD

  • High level overview of State Sync:
    • State Sync is an SDK module that allows validators to rapidly join a network by syncing a node from a consensus verified snapshot, rather than replaying blocks from the beginning of time. This drastically reduces the time it takes to sync with the network from days to minutes.

This blog post is a useful State Sync guide, and this blog post provides an overview for developers.

Mathieu:

  • Mathieu explained more in depth on State-Sync.
    Summary:

    • From the Cosmos level, we have to propagate it up to the state of the JavaScript system where validators generate snapshots.
    • SDK stores application state in IAVL, each module can setup it’s own IAVL database.
    • IAVL keeps historical versions of data so snapshots can be generated with new blocks being executed.
    • Snapshots are fetched via ABCI when a new node is syncing
    • Artifacts are found through state sync discovery
    • Everything shared through state sync is verified. Don’t have to trust individual validators, can trust consensus.
    • State Sync can be verified right to the apphash root

  • Agoric State Sync Testing

    • We want to verify that State Sync works as expected, to ensure it is the same as other Cosmos chains using state-sync. For that we are looking to have Devnet validators:
      • configure a node to generate a snapshot
      • Spin up another node from State Sync snapshot
      • Report findings, share feedback, ask questions

Dan:

Mainnet 1B Update

JD:

  • Summary of info from the recent community call #31
  • Next targeted release is mainnet 1B, which will be the completion of mainnet 1
  • Mainnet 1B consists of:
    • Virtual machine
    • Smart contract framework
      • Smart contract framework introduces the ability for a smart contract to upgrade in place. Beneficial for security, performance and scaling improvements over time
      • Smart contracts can have assigned controllers, such as a DAO or other electorate similar to the Economic Committee, that can control and manage smart contract upgrades. In short, a smart contract can permit a specific entity to make changes.
    • Full set of Inter Protocol smart contracts
      • Vaults
      • Liquidation
      • Reserve
      • Governance updates
      • Smart Wallet updates
    • Key infrastructure improvements
      • such as State Sync which we discussed

Delegation Program

JD:

  • Agoric OpCo launched the delegation program in 2022 with Phase 1 focused on supporting validators who participated in the incentivized testnet and helped to bootstrap the chain
  • Phase 2 was an additional delegation to validators who met security requirements (such as using TMKMS or Horcrux for key management)
  • Phase 3 is a new application round and will carry over the security requirements from Phase 2, meaning TMKMS or Horcrux are now baseline requirements.
  • Additional changes coming for the community contributions section (details TBD)
  • More details to come soon. Updates will be posted to the forum and shared in the #opco-delegation channel on Discord.
  • Feel free to reach out to JDLorax [Discord: J.D. Lorax#0777] with any questions.

Open Questions:

No questions from the validators.

Wrapping Up:

Dan shared a quick demo of Inter Protocol Vaults on Devnet, but got an error in the process.

“Welcome to Devnet.”