Dot Leap 8
Polkadot CC1 launch, Dot Leap becomes education platform, Ethereum on Substrate, archive node database on IPFS, Polkadot UI on IPFS, parachain teaser, and more!
Thank you for taking the Dot Leap!
We cover Polkadot, Kusama, Substrate, and all related and unrelated Web 3.0 projects!
For the Ethereum side of Web 3.0, please subscribe to Evan's newsletter.
The content in this newsletter is the author’s own opinion and not in any way endorsed by the Web3 Foundation. This is an independent and unaffiliated effort.
Infrastructure vs Apps: DotLeap.com launch 💥
Reading recommendation for this week: The Myth of the Infrastructure Phase.
On first read, I thought the post vindicates my insisting at W3F to attract dapp developers instead of protocol and chain developers.
The post explains how most of us in the web 3.0 space think we need infrastructure, scaling first and then apps will come, but notes that it’s actually a myth. The authors describe a reactive cycle where apps outdo an infrastructure’s capacities, the infrastructure upgrades, and the cycle repeats.
But the more I thought about this, the more realized it doesn’t quite apply to Substrate-based chains. Substrate chains are infrastructure, sure, and when they connect to Polkadot as parachains they become part of the larger infrastructure, yes, but Substrate chains are apps at the same time.
Still, in the back of my mind - perhaps because I come from a dapp development world myself - I still feel like there should be added focus there - UX and DX on top of Substrate-based infrastructure. For that reason, the Dot Leap education platform has finally launched.
On Dot Leap, you can expect explainers and development tutorials for humans. With a novel approach to LTS (long-term-support) content that’s always up to date, I hope Dot Leap’s educational resources will be an amazing new on-ramp for dapp devs alongside the mainly protocol-focused knowledgebase, wiki, and substrate.io.
Some examples of content so far:
Download an Archive Node Database!
Want to run a Kusama archive node but don’t have the time to wait for it to sync? Download pre-synced databases at block ~2.45m (May 25th).
Ethereum on Substrate 🚨
This tweet shows a replica of Ethereum on Substrate. Direct portability of unchanged Ethereum code, ready for direct connection to the Polkadot ecosystem. Made possible through the in-progress Frontier project.
🚀 Polkadot CC1 Launch 🚀
Polkadot Chain Candidate 1 is officially live!
You can see the nodes online on telemetry here. Polkadot will roll out in a similar fashion to Kusama, where it will first operate in PoA mode until enough validators submit their intent to validate. Afterwards it will switch to NPoS, and the phase after that will enable governance and transactions. If you own DOTs they now officially exist and you can claim them today. Validators should start to prepare their infrastructure to validate on Polkadot > join the #polkadotvalidatorlounge:web3.foundation
v0.8.0 Release
Polkadot has begun to release under the v0.8.0 release on github. The Polkadot Node Release can be found here and there is a Docker container too. To run Kusama, you should now pass the --chain=kusama flag to it. Otherwise, it will default to Polkadot, though if you want to be verbose in your commands (recommended), use --chain=polkadot.
Launch Roadmap
More details on the launch roadmap, including what the different phases entail.
Kusama (v 0.7.30.)
Parachains are coming!
💥 Chaos
The faucet is dead ☠
🐦Discuss!
Raul Romanutti has re-opened the discussion around Bounties in the Treasury - pre-funded tasks that candidates can grab and a curator can judge. If you want to actively participate in the direction of development, chime in on Polkassembly!
🏛 Kusama Governance
🚨 Something I didn’t know! 🚨
There is a maximum number of democracy votes your account can have, set to 100 in Kusama.
If you vote for a referendum with 1000 tokens at a conviction of x4, your tokens will be locked up for 64 days. Your number of votes is now 1 - you have voted on one referendum. Say there is another referendum 8 days later and you vote with 800 tokens at x4, which is again 64 days. Your previous vote is still locked for another 56 days, and you now have a new lock of 64 days. Your number of votes is now 2.
The only time your locks are cleared is if they expire, and you manually submit the democracy.unlock extrinsic to clear the locks.
Granted, it’s currently impossible to reach the count of 100 MaxVotes - there are only six lockup durations and a maximum of two parallel referendums at any given time in a period of 8 days. Still, fun fact!
Many thanks to Kusama superfan Jam for brainstorming this with me!
If you want a more detailed breakdown than the short descriptions below, read this digest about Kusama governance during the week of May 10th.
Referendum 53 to increase the validator count to 275 has passed and is pending activation on block 2,534,400.
Referendum 55 is a little more daring, aiming to bump the number to 350. The vote is in progress.
Liebi’s proposal 19 to add a new Kusama registrar into the system has still not been tabled - looks like the voters prefer pushing technical updates first.
Treasury Proposal 21 to fund PolkadotComics has been denied.
LocalCoinSwap has completed milestone 1 in the process of creating a local P2P marketplace for KSM tokens and is the first Treasury-driven grantee. They have submitted Treasury Proposal 22 which has already been tabled as Motion 144 and approved by the Council.
Treasury Proposal 23 by Soramitsu to create a mobile Kusama wallet has been approved.
Two accounts managed to get their KSM irrevocably reserved. They uploaded a runtime upgrade preimage that never ended up getting used. Normally these reserved funds could be reclaimed once the preimage was removed, however an upgrade cleared the preimage and its accounting information without unreserving the funds. The council has executed a motion to unreserve these funds.
🔩 Core Stack
( ͡✧ ͜ʖ ͡✧)
Alpha8 is out, which means a version bump for Substrate, Substrate Node Template, and the Front End Template! RC1 is also out, but tutorial content has not been updated yet!
( ͡✧ ͜ʖ ͡✧)
🚨 Something I didn’t know! 🚨
It is not possible to launch a Substrate chain with the Balances pallet configured in such a way that an account is reaped only at no-balance. In other words, you cannot set ExistentialDeposit to zero - it has to be at least some positive value. [source]
Two new Prometheus metrics have been added to Substrate:
proposer_block_constructedandproposer_number_of_transactions, indicating how much time it’s taken to construct a block and how many transactions were included in it, respectively. Additionally, some default alert rules have been added for Prometheus which make it scream at you out-of-the-box if something goes wrong.Off-chain Phragmen will now emit the full output of the nominations-among-validators calculation in a verbose event.
Extrinsic events will now include the correct value for post-dispatch weights. Previously, only the maximum weight was returned making it hard to estimate how much a call really weighed.
ink v3 will have a breaking change regarding constructors and referencing the smart contract scope (i.e. no more
self). The PR also fixes the currently attackable HashMap storage type by adding storage2 which exposes new collections for developers to use, and some interesting methods like defrag which let the code get rid of unused storage.The
frame_systempallet now has aMaximumExtrinsicWeightconstant. Previously, the weight of an extrinsic was compared against the remaining weight within the block’s weight limit, but due to the heaviness of some pallet operations, that limit may have been reached before a transaction could have made it in. This change reduces the chances of an extrinsic being rejected because of hoardy pallets.The EVM pallet got an upgrade - it is now one step closer to how Ethereum works. You can now define accounts in genesis of an EVM substrate chain to pre-seed them.
Keccak hasher has been added to Substrate as a block hashing method. Use it in your chain by setting
type Hashing = Keccak;The
export-blocksandimport-blockscommands now both default to JSON format instead of binary. To export/import in binary, add the--binaryflag.
🛠 Tools
Apart from descriptive changelogs in releases, Polkassembly will now show full on-chain identity information about thread participants, as long as they set a default linked address in their account settings.
Reminder that if you are interested in deploying your own Polkadot, Kusama, or other Substrate-based chains, or running testnets, you should check out polkadot-deployer.
Polkadot JS Apps UI now also auto-deploys to IPFS. You can access the IPFS version directly at polkadot.js.org/apps/ipfs which will redirect you to the IPFS.io gateway. If you’re running your own IPFS node (as you should!), you can download and pin the current content ID as shown at polkadot.js.org/apps/ipfs/pin.json.
Here’s a single command that does all the CID discovery and pinning for you: (Linux only - make sure you have
jqandcurlinstalled on the same machine as your IPFS node):curl -shttps://polkadot.js.org/apps/ipfs/pin.json| jq -jr .IpfsHash | xargs -0 -I CID ipfs pin add --progress CIDWhen visiting Polkadot Apps through an IPFS gateway, keep in mind that account creation will be disabled - this is because creating accounts without the Polkadot JS extension relies on
localStorage, something that’s problematic when running sites via IPFS.
To take decentralization further, there is now an Electron App wrapper for Polkadot JS Apps, so you can run the UI outside of the browser. The Electron builds will be published on release from now on, so be sure to check there for your operating system’s executable!
🤝 Ecosystem
Registrar #1, Chevdor/Will is now almost fully automated, which makes registering your identity on Kusama easier than ever. If you’re not familiar with the identity registration process, there’s a good guide in the Polkadot Wiki page on Identities. The implementation got a well deserved Tip from the Kusama Treasury.
The Web 3.0 Quora Space is flourishing with over 400 members! Join today and keep up!
SubstraTEE allows you to develop Substrate-based chains that run in a trusted execution environment. The "SubstraTEE Book" now includes instructions for creating your own trusted state transition function.
Robonomics has announced plans to have their open implementation of ROS (Robot Operating System) run as a parachain. This would allow robotic systems to be operated via blockchain.
My personal opinion (experience-based) on private blockchains.
With 930 nodes, Acala now has the most nodes running of any Substrate-based chain (according to telemetry stats)
A new proposal for key derivation in Substrate-based chains and their clients is out and requesting feedback from the community.
📅 Upcoming Events and Webinars
There will be a "Parity and Friends" crowdcast on 27 May, which will include discussions about Polkadot governance, nomination, and DeFi for smallholder farmers.
On 9 June, Jonathan Marcus of Staked will be holding a webinar on staking on Polkadot and Kusama.
That's it for this week - I hope this was as useful for you to read as it was for me to write! Special thanks to Bill for his Daily Digest!
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.