Dot Leap 32
New bugfix release of the Polkadot node, new runtime for both Polkadot and Kusama, auction functionality added to Polkadot JS Apps UI, W3F's public Github actions for finding old files in repos, etc!
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Polkadot (v0.8.28-1)
⚠Polkadot v0.8.28-1 has been released, medium upgrade priority, fixes a bug with I'm Online transactions getting stuck
Polkadot Governance
✅ After a successful upgrade on Kusama, motion 56 passed on Polkadot and was fast tracked by the Technical Committee and enacted under Referendum 15. This upgraded the network’s runtime to v27.
❌ Motion 57 by Soramitsu did not reach majority for approval - A lot of work to be done with the team aiming to incorporate the Council’s feedback.
✅ Motion 58 (external motion) to increase the number of validators by 1 per era (14,400 blocks) for 100 eras has passed. The details of the motion can be found here, including preimage.
❔ Referendum 16 is proposing increasing the number of validators to 599. It is currently failing, but is up for vote for another while.
❌ Referendum 14, proposing to move a claim, has been rejected by the community.
❔ Subscan published a proposal to extend their Rococo testnet explorer and develop a Rococo PLO (parachain auctions) dashboard in preparation for auctions. These will be applied to Rococo network first and will after move to Kusama and Polkadot networks based on future PLO plans.
✅ Motion 60: Polkastats published a new proposal to cover operational costs for the period 21.12.2020 to 21.03.2021 (recurring): covering a 3 months period of servers rent (Hetzer and Digital Ocean) to operate PolkaStats for Polkadot and Westend network (shared with Kusama). It has been approved.
Polkaworld published a proposal for discussion: the submission aims to fund the the enhancement of their website on polkaworld.pro, allowing them to post content at any time and add a section of Real-time News and videos to enrich the form of content, to bring real-time info to the Polkadot Chinese community.
Vote for a better tomorrow!
I’m running for Council Member on both Polkadot and Kusama! Read more about why and what I can bring to the table in this post or click the banner below - the post also explains how to vote in screenshots. Remember, voting costs nothing but a transaction fee - and can be done with locked and staked funds - but has the potential to change the landscape forever!
Kusama (v0.8.28-1)
⚠Polkadot v0.8.28-1 has been released, medium upgrade priority, fixes a bug with I'm Online transactions getting stuck
The 900 validators increase milestone has been reached on Kusama, as executed by referendum 93 - the performance report is here. Overall the progress is stable: time to finality, bandwidth and
MinStake/AvgStakedratio have behaved as expected.
🏛 Kusama Governance
🔥 The Rotki team published their report on milestone 1 completion which you can review here. You can now import KSM addresses into Rotki.
✅ Motion 264 proposing a sub-bounties extension for the pallet is approved! The bounty has been funded, Bryan Chen has been proposed as curator in Motion 267, and the functionality is under development.
✅ Motion 269 upgrading Kusama Runtime to v2028 passed as Referendum 100. Some interesting changes: treasury tip slashes, free participation in Council governance for first-timers, refactor treasury pallet, changes for validators session keys to account for parachains and extensive multiaddress format in all runtimes!
✅ Motion 266 closes the invalid original of the above bounty: an error was found in the value requested and the proposal was replaced by motion 264.
❌ Motion 265, originally covering Kusama database snapshots project was not approved. The team was rewarded for the work with a tip instead.
✅ Motion 268: Polkastats published a proposal cover operational costs for the period 17.12.2020 - 17.03.2021 (recurring): covering a 3 months period of servers rent (Hetzer and Digital Ocean) to operate PolkaStats for Kusama and Westend network (shared with Polkadot). It passed.
🔩 Core Stack
( ͡✧ ͜ʖ ͡✧)
Release v0.8.28-1 has breaking changed in terms of DB structure, and some important changes in regards to session keys! Validators, take note!
( ͡✧ ͜ʖ ͡✧)
If you are interested in understanding cross-chain communication works in Polkadot, the README on the xcm-format repo is a great resource.
The Chain Extension now has a documented example on how to get smart contracts to talk to runtime pallets.
You can now disable automatically finding new peers by passing in the
--reserved-nodesargument.In the past, users of Frontier have to compromise and choose between two different runners:
Stack runner, which focuses on Ethereum compliance.
Builtin runner, which has better Substrate interoperability.
This PR removes the need of this compromise, and introduces an unified EVM runner that has both good Ethereum compliance and Substrate interoperability
16k new prefixes are now available, but must be prefixed using two bytes for any value above 48.
Parathreads are now a part of the Parachain lifecycle, not a separate entity.
Ethereum Compatibility
As Moonbeam and Parity’s Frontier mature, I believe it’s worth having a separate section discussing Ethereum compatibility with Substrate and Polkadot in general. The potential for collaboration between the two ecosystems is immense.
🛠 Tools
Simply VC’s Polkadot API Server has been updated to 1.26.
Simply VC’s PANIC has been updated to 2.1.3.
Substrate API Sidecar v3.0.1 is out. Breaking changes include a different chain properties API, and support for custom types with JSON files and/or ENV vars. Also, blocks will now be tagged as finalized when they meet this requirement. This is also a necessary upgrade to make things work with the v28 / v2028 / v48 DOT / Kusama / Westend runtime upgrades.
Polkadot JS API 3.8.1 is out with the chain checkpoint for runtime version 27, more contract support, CancelProxy types, and more.
Polkadot JS Apps will now allow imports of Ledger mnemonics (these are different from default Polkadot/Kusama mnemonic derivation). It’s not safe, but it’s good enough when locked out of your wallet due to an outdated Ledger app.
You will now be warned against nominating with too small amounts in Polkadot JS Apps UI.
The Polkadot JS Extension will now let you pick a specific chain for which to create an account.
Scale-info 0.6.0 is out. Reminder: it’s library to describe Rust types, geared towards providing info about the structure of SCALE encodable types. The definitions provide third party tools (e.g. a UI client) with information about how they are able to decode types agnostic of language.
You can now create polls with multiple options in Polkassembly, and it also now has search.
Crowdloan functionality has been added to Polkadot JS Apps 😱
🤝 Ecosystem
Subsocial Network is gearing up for a new release with email notifications, automated faucet, a Telegram notification bot and more! A feature many people are especially enthusiastic about is public Spaces - spaces you can write to (like subreddits!)
Polkaworld published a comparison of smart contract chains on Polkadot.
Web3 Foundation encourages external evaluations of milestone deliveries as part of their Open Grants program. Successfully merged evaluations will get up to 5 KSM! Find out more!
The Web3 Foundation has released two handy Github actions for projects that deal with documentation. The “Find old files” action allows you to export a list of all Markdown files from your project that haven’t had a commit for over X days where X is a user settable value. The “Create issues for old files” action will let you automatically create issues for those files, so that your repo can run on a cronjob and keep alerting you to outdated content. Many thanks to whitesunset for helping extract the logic out of our wiki into standalone actions! Example usage is here!
Due to recurring wallet scams, we are re-evaluating all contributions to the Polkadot Wiki Wallets page. All community contributions are subject to strict scrutiny.
Openzeppelin is conducting a survey to see how much interest there is in them developing a suite of open source tools for ink!, the smart contract programming language for Substrate-based chains.
Calling all Substrate devs! @OpenZeppelin is conducting a survey to determine the requirements for a version of the open source OpenZeppelin Contracts for ink! the @rustlang-based language for writing smart contracts on @Polkadot. Participate below:Are you a developer building with @Polkadot's ink! programming language? We're launching a survey to determine the requirements (and interest) for a version of the open source OpenZeppelin Contracts for ink! Please participate below: https://t.co/tvZmqkFhkf
OpenZeppelin @OpenZeppelin
📅 Upcoming Events and Webinars
Polkadot Decoded 2021 - Call For Proposals - Building an interesting project for Polkadot or Kusama? Submit your proposals choosing from a range of presentation formats, from high-level visionary talks to technical deep-dives and workshops. Deadline: Feb 28th.
Don’t forget to vote!
Your vote only costs a TX fee (a few cents) but it can change the protocol (both Kusama and Polkadot - depending where you vote for me!) for ever - good governance is responsible governance! Click the banner to learn about my candidacy!
Note: your tokens will be locked in democracy, but are still usable for staking, referendum voting, etc. If you want to transfer them, just cancel the vote and they’re free, no strings attached.
That's it for this week - I hope this was as useful for you to read as it was for me to write! Many thanks to Bill Laboon for his daily digest, which helps me not miss some important updates!
The Dot Leap is put together by Bruno Škvorc. Got any links for me for the next edition? Find me on Riot at @bruno:web3.foundation, on Twitter, or via email at bruno@bitfalls.com.