Weekly progress update: hardfork date changed to Oct 6th

in HiveDevs4 years ago

In my last post, I mentioned that Sept 22nd was the earliest I thought we could potentially execute the hardfork, but we knew our chances of hitting that date were 50/50 at best. Despite that, we wanted to get exchanges to begin their migration process for their wallets, as the upgrade to hardfork 24 requires a long re-index and would probably require a certain amount of assistance from Hive exchange support personnel. In theory, the new snapshot feature makes it possible to avoid this, but we didn’t expect that many exchanges would take advantage of such a relatively new feature since it would require trusting a third party to provide them with a snapshot, and so far that seems to be the case.

Originally we were planning to fallback to a date of Sept 29th if we decided 22nd wasn’t feasible, but I recently learned that Sept 30 – Oct 4th is a long Korean holiday, so to avoid conflicts with updates by Korean exchanges, we’ve decided to set the hardfork date to Oct 6th. This will also give more time for Hive dApps to do rigorous testing. The final release for hived HF24 is tagged here:
https://gitlab.syncad.com/hive/hive/-/tags/v1.24.2

Hived work

We made one change to hived in the past week to provide some additional voting power information needed by hivemind:
https://gitlab.syncad.com/hive/hive/-/merge_requests/114

The only other change to hived was to set the new hardfork date.

Hivemind work

We completed the implementation of reputation data collection in hivemind and the latest implementation (this is the third one) seems to have reasonable performance.
https://gitlab.syncad.com/hive/hivemind/-/merge_requests/157

Work also continued on notifications:
https://gitlab.syncad.com/hive/hivemind/-/merge_requests/148
We will have one remaining issue to implement for hivemind-based notifications: scanning of posts for account name “mentions”. This will likely be completed tomorrow.

Performance optimizations, fixes to API responses, and code refactoring and cleanup:
https://gitlab.syncad.com/hive/hivemind/-/merge_requests/151
https://gitlab.syncad.com/hive/hivemind/-/merge_requests/154
https://gitlab.syncad.com/hive/hivemind/-/merge_requests/155
https://gitlab.syncad.com/hive/hivemind/-/merge_requests/127
https://gitlab.syncad.com/hive/hivemind/-/merge_requests/156
https://gitlab.syncad.com/hive/hivemind/-/merge_requests/158
https://gitlab.syncad.com/hive/hivemind/-/merge_requests/136
https://gitlab.syncad.com/hive/hivemind/-/merge_requests/163
https://gitlab.syncad.com/hive/hivemind/-/merge_requests/161
https://gitlab.syncad.com/hive/hivemind/-/merge_requests/164
https://gitlab.syncad.com/hive/hivemind/-/merge_requests/159
https://gitlab.syncad.com/hive/hivemind/-/merge_requests/142

  • Note for apps developers: we are intentionally planning to make a “breaking change” to the behavior of the list_comments API method, as the current behavior seems flawed. If you use this API call, please review this merge request for the new behavior and comment if you have any concerns about the change: https://gitlab.syncad.com/hive/hivemind/-/merge_requests/169

Condenser

We have been doing some limited testing using condenser (hive.blog software) to exercise our eclipse API node. Condenser uses a large variety of hivemind API calls so it makes a useful adjunct to our automated test system.

As a result of those tests, we also made one change to condenser itself:
https://gitlab.syncad.com/hive/condenser/-/merge_requests/106

This change resulted because of another potential breaking change to the Hive API: the get_profile API no longer directly reports post_voting_power. Instead, all frontends should use find_account API or a similar one that returns either database_api::api_account_object or condenser_api::api_account_object to get post_voting_power.

Plans for upcoming week

We plan to provide an updated full API node in the next day or so with the latest hivemind changes for apps testing. We’re also planning another full resync of hivemind (the fun four day process) to incorporate the latest changes such as reputation calculations and notifications, and we’ll update our eclipse API node again once that is completed, so that apps will have the latest changes to test against.

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Thanks for keeping the updates coming.

Is it possible to implement some kind of notification on the condenser to let people know there is a hardfork coming? I have recently discovered that a lot of people don't know. I know that this HF might not have a huge impact on enduser experience, but I think it is worth the effort to inform. At the very least, it would mitigate some panic if something does go wrong in some way and people can't access the chain.

Your question is well timed, since I think there's a plan to put a countdown timer on hive.io. It wasn't done sooner as no one was comfortable as to the date being final. But this date looks pretty final.

That would be perfecto 👌

Maybe on peakd as well?

That is pretty viable. cc @asgarth

Anything we should tell users ABOUT HF... anything a normal user would benefit from knowing that you think we should mention?

Personally, I think a simple date (countdowns are always fun) and a link to a page with bulletpoints of core changes and perhaps a short description of what to expect (nothing) or to be patient if there are technical issues.

Maybe this isn't the most exciting user HF, but hopefully we can generate hype around the future ones.

Thanks for the quick reply too! :)

You could write "the network is getting stronger, faster and a lot more secure concerning consensus attacks with this update"
Don't write "funds are safe". No need to mention it if they are indeed safe.

Brilliant. In the future, it might be good to have a candidate announcement there too. I know it can get messy with conversation and argument, but I think that is part of what gets people to invest themselves into learning and becoming a part of the community.

I havent been I chain sooooo much, but this is the first I'm hearing of it 🤣

Then again, some users might get spooked by a countdown to a (inherently scary) hardfork ... sometimes ignorance IS bliss ... :-)

Potentially :)
But perhaps on average it is better to know.

So judging from what you said hivemind is now basically done or is there just a little bit more work needed? it seems the two items you mentioned the rep and the notifications are not going to be a stopping point for hivemind/hived working together issues.

Does it feel like the 6th of October is going to be a pretty firm date in your mind and the mind of others working on the hard fork? Will the API/condenser work possibly effect the anticipated HF date?

There is still a bit more work to be done, but at this point I think we've become familiar with all of the hivemind code base and created enough tests that I don't think there's any areas left that can really surprise us with missing functionality we didn't know about. So I think the 6th of October is a pretty firm date.

Great news to hear then, we in the North get to go into winter with a renewed Hive a finalized split from steem. Thanks for all the hard work you and the developers have been putting in.

How many merge requests are there in total today for this HF?
How many thousands of lines of code will be implemented/changed?
How many combined hours have been put into this by 80+ devs?

I guess this Eclipse will make any previous STEEM hardfork look like a childrens game.

Thank you for the update.

Can’t wait for October 6th

Keep Up the awesome job you've been doung so far. I wish you good fortune in the wars to come!

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Your post generated a lot of interactions and was the most commented of the week
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To support your work, I also upvoted your post!

Do not miss the last post from @hivebuzz:

Update for regular authors

Great work, any ideas what is going on with hive.blog? down since more than a day

Hive.blog is operating ok, but I know there was one other person reporting a problem with cloudflare that impacted their ability to use hive.blog. I'm using hive.blog to reply, so it's definitely ok.

Here in Vienna, Europe hive.blog is down since several days:

hiveblogerror200922.jpg

I found the solution: I had to delete the cookies, then the site worked again. Strange, maybe there is a cookie bug somewhere. https://peakd.com/hive-121566/@vikisecrets/hive-blog-down-found-the-solution-delete-your-cookies-september-2020

Thanks for ongoing updates and work being done, timer will be a good reminder as mentioned in comments.

So many delays... hard to be patient. Thanks for the update and the good work.

Ok. This answers it. I have asking around on discord if the HF24 will not be happening today again. The date is better shifted for a smoother experience than rushed and run into hiccups. Kudos to everyone involved.

I have recently discovered that a lot of people don't know. I know that this HF might not have a huge impact on enduser experience

You copied that from another comment

i was agreed with his comment

Thanks for share this info with us.. Is good know it.

Thanks for your great work and the updates to this.

It creates a safe feeling to the upcoming HF as it looks well prepared.

What else as a virtual !BEER and my Thank you could I send to you.

Awesome . I am so glad when that HF has happened and I will get my coins back.

Hi @blocktrades. Do you have Discord?

Thanks for sharing this wonderful information with us you are doing well