2025-12-16 Technical Fellowship OpenDev Call

Tech Talk
1

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_7-vqf6Dlo
Previous: 2025-11-18 Technical Fellowship OpenDev Call

Summary

  • New Polkadot website launched with cyberpunk aesthetic, serif fonts, philosophy/tech/platform sections
  • 500ms blocks PRs open, audit in progress → targeting Q1 2025
  • Snowbridge V2 live on AH ↔ Ethereum, app integration pending runtime fix in unstable 257
  • Ethereum Fusaka hard fork executed successfully, lowering gas costs significantly
  • Fiat Shamir protocol for Snowbridge: 1-2 min confirmation instead of 30 min, audit completed
  • Issuance curve audit finished, ready for runtime 204/205
  • RFC 150 (vote + delegate simultaneously) code complete, awaiting review
  • AH migration fix needed: double derivation accounts require runtime patch
  • BLS signatures blocked on Basti’s PR merge → targeting Westend activation
  • Currency → fungible migration continuing across pallets (treasury, lottery, indices)

Rank 6

Basti:

  • 500ms blocks
    • All PRs now open for 500 millisecond block times
    • Audit in progress with 2-3 comments so far, looking good
    • Targeting early 2025
  • Next things
    • Potentially porting parachains to JAM
    • Some smaller product-related groundwork tasks

Rank 3

Oliver:

  • Social recovery backend
  • AH migration fix
    • One account missed during relay → AH migration
    • Issue: double derivation of two parachain sovereign accounts
    • Fix planned for runtime 2.0.4 to unlock and move funds
    • Appears to be the only incident of this kind
  • Issuance curve
    • Audit finished
    • Dom to provide more details
  • Marketing bounty closure issue
    • Bounty will close but funds won’t return to treasury immediately
    • May require another referendum or runtime fix for 2.0.4/2.0.5

Rank 2

Clara:

  • Snowbridge V2 integration
    • V2 live for AH ↔ Ethereum
    • Web app integration pending runtime fix in unstable 2507
    • Much lower costs for users
    • TypeScript SDK updated with flags to detect V2 support per parachain
    • Third-party chains (e.g., Hydration) need SDK upgrades for V2
  • Snowbridge UI refresh
    • Lighter dapp experience
    • Improved token dropdown with search functionality
    • support Turtle
    • Potentially releasing this week
  • Ethereum Fusaka hard fork
    • Upgrade referendum executed one day before hard fork. Everything went smoothly
    • Gas costs lowered considerably
    • V1 uses fixed price model (no immediate benefit), but V2 tx fees now comparable to multisig bridges
  • Fiat Shamir protocol
    • working together with W3F to improve latency
    • Uses BEEFY differently for faster confirmations: 1-2 minutes instead of 30 minutes Polkadot → Ethereum
    • Audit completed last week, fixes in progress
    • More expensive ($5-10) but faster
  • Social recovery frontend
    • Building UI for Oliver’s backend
    • Final integration needed in coming days
  • L2 bridging
    • Demo working on testnet
    • Using Across for double bridging (Ethereum → L2s)
    • Q1 2025 release target

Pablo:

  • Treasury pallet migration (currency → fungible)
    • One of the biggest changes, involves almost every other pallet
    • Initially required adapters to connect slashing to treasury
    • Migrating treasury first opens path for other pallets
    • Runtime upgrade to 2512: Need to wait 1-2 weeks for release, working with forked SDK branch locally

Rank 1

Dom:

  • Issuance curve
    • Audit completed
    • Code ready, rerunning checks after merge from main
    • Should be included soon
    • Takes effect from ~March 14
    • Will target runtime 2.0.4 or 2.0.5
  • RFC 150: Vote + delegate simultaneously
    • Code completely done
    • Awaiting reviews
  • Crowdsourced decision deposits
    • Picked up work Basti started
    • Increasingly important after decision deposit increases
    • More democratic approach to referendum deposits
    • Handed off to rank 0 candidate for learning opportunity
    • Needs: migrations, benchmarking, unit testing

Seyed:

  • BLS signatures
    • Waiting on PR merge to activate on Westend
    • Optimizing BLS library for faster verification
    • Preparing library for audit
  • JAM Array proof library
    • Testing Python implementation
    • Providing benchmarks
  • Host Function Discussion
    • Q Clara: Would it be possible to use for Snowbridge? And beneficial? We use BLS for the Ethereum signatures. 2 years ago we spoke about host functions to verify the signature
    • Seyed:
      • Two philosophies in Polkadot on host functions: minimal vs liberal
      • RFC exists for new host functions including BLS verification
      • Native verification ~10x faster than runtime
    • ECDSA+BLS combined host function not recommended (temporary use case)
    • Pure BLS verification host function has merit
    • Basti: Plan is to bundle host functions with breaking changes in coordinated upgrade
      • Includes: allocator work, pallet-revive PVM execution, BLS
    • Seyed: commented on Polkadot SDK PR, unclear who’s reading
    • Clara
      • Current bottleneck is Ethereum consensus, not header imports
      • Snowbridge doesn’t pay consensus update fees for valid updates
      • Would switch to host functions if available and beneficial

Ludovic:

  • Currency → fungible migrations
    • Two pallets mostly done: lottery and indices
      • Lottery required migration file and benchmarking
      • Indices didn’t need migration
    • PRs awaiting review
    • Oliver: will review, smaller pallets may get lower priority
    • Basti: committed to reviewing with Oliver
    • Will pick next pallets, seeking priority guidance

Alexandre:

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