Last Week: Completed the TASM code for transaction chaining along with most planned unit tests, leaving only a few end-to-end integration tests outstanding.
Coming Week: Initiate security reviews for the transaction chaining project.
Thorkil Værge
Last Week: Overseeed the release of version 0.16, established deployment and initiation strategies for validated block-sharing retention for syncing nodes.
Coming Week: Focus on understanding and scrutinizing the transaction chaining implementation, and integrate it into the transaction processing system.
3. Technical Discussion
Transaction Chaining Implementation & Security: TASM code for transaction chaining is complete alongside most unit tests, with end-to-end integration tests remaining. The remaining integration scope includes the mempool, peer loop, API, and activation of the hard fork. An immediate security review was mandated specifically to audit mechanisms protecting against undetectable inflation and theft before further integration proceeds.
Deployment & Initiation Strategy: To mitigate liveness risks, the team decided to keep the standard transaction pipeline as the default, requiring an explicit extra flag/argument to initiate transaction chaining. Deferring the transaction chaining default to future versions (v18–v20) allows for a staged deployment focused on soundness and eliminating the need for reactive hard forks.
Release 0.16 & Block Authentication: Version 0.16 was released adhering to semantic versioning, resolving medium- and low-severity issues. It introduces Merkle Mountain Range (MMR) authentication paths for block authentication during sync mode with compatible peers. While effective, MMR authentication may fail in rare edge cases (~1% of blocks) where a large MMR tree has recently collapsed. Syncing nodes retain the ability to share blocks per identified team requirements.
Transaction History & Wallet Scanning: Evaluated wallet scanning behavior when outputs are spent within the same block. Such outputs cancel each other out to a zero balance, and announcements lacking matching addition records function without breaking (producing only minor logging warnings). Downstream wallet UI/history enhancements remain outside immediate required scope and lower priority.
Network Difficulty Metrics: Network difficulty reached 100 trillion (10^{14}), representing approximately 10^{17} Tip5 invocations per block.
4. Updates and Announcements
Neptune Core Version 0.16 Released: Officially released with semantic versioning compliance, medium/low-severity bug fixes, and MMR path authentication for nodes in sync mode.