ParityTech update for July 2024

Ecosystem
1

Hi all,

After the down and up in web3 the last 2 weeks, here comes our updates for July.

I am happy to report that the 2 most requested features from the community have been implemented:

  1. Polkadot.JS is supported, bugs have been fixed and some features have been built to catchup with the chains. At the same time, I hope to see a not too far away transition to PAPI which is the way forward.
  2. Stable releases for the relay chain are in place. I think this will have a real impact and since the process is new, you are welcome to propose improvements.

Please reach out or reply here to tell us what are the features or changes that you really want to see up have a look at.

Pierre

Educational content

  • Demystifying JAM from Kian.
  • Introduction of a dev-omni-node for testing only.
  • Extensive examples to the Polkadot wiki to show developers and wallets how to enable paying transaction fees in other assets on Asset Hub.
  • New dashboards with more data, charts and sections - Solo Chains stats, Block Weights, ink! Dashboard, Metadata for new Ledger app, new charts, dark mode - x.com
  • Some Decoded 2024 talks from Parity people:

Governance

Launches

Reliability improvement

New features

Polkadot 2.0

CoreTime

  • Request revenue information PR merged.
  • Revenue tests using zombienet v2 are under review.
  • The code is complete and ready for the Polkadot launch. We are working on Chopsticks tests that should run before that. For the release itself, the next step is to enable Coretime in the Polkadot runtime (rebase #354 on top of the node release 1.14).
  • The node implementation of on-demand core sharing fairness is under review. This will ensure that parachains sharing a core cannot starve each other.

Elastic Scaling

  • Elastic scaling MVP documentation merged (#4663)
  • Cumulus Node v1.15 release is right around the corner and will be the first release to support elastic scaling for testnets. In August, after the next fellowship runtime release is enacted, elastic scaling will be available on Kusama.
  • We’ve indentified the root cause of the reduction in validator rewards, which was caused by the node’s elastic scaling changes. A fix is under way (#4937)
  • Draft RFC 103 is up for feedback. The implementation of this proposal removes the trusted collator set MVP limitation.
  • First step of RFC 103 implementation is up for review (#4665)

Node

  • Fork aware transaction pool work is continuing in the PR. At the same time testing is still being done by mythical, with problems being discovered and worked on (#174).
  • Slot-based collator was reviewed and iterated upon, finally merged. It is integrated in the latest polkadot-parachain binary and can be used for testing.

Zombienet

  • The Zombienet team has continued working on the migration path of our CI to the new version (SDK), exploring a new integration wrapper to easily write new tests and making progress in the new fork-off/Doppelganger tool.

Frame

System Parachains

  • Transaction payments work via new fungible traits implementation, closing this issue.

Bridges

  • 10x reduction in fees deployed and tested on R<>W bridge, audit also complete, next month will be applied to P<>K bridge
  • R<>W bridge now supports arbitrary asset transfers between Asset Hubs, waiting for audit to complete before allowing same configuration for P<>K bridge,
  • Added machinery for slashing validators on BEEFY fork equivocations,
  • behind the scenes code changes towards Permissionless Lanes, but with no functional changes yet.

XCM

Contracts

  • Should we allow EVM compatible contracts on Asset Hub? has passed and we are now running full speed ahead delivering on it.
  • PolkaVM is still undergoing a big refactoring necessary to implement the new callback-less API.
  • Work on RISC-V 64bit support for PolkaVM has been started which will be the expected eventual target of JAM and contracts alike
  • pallet_revive (pallet_contracts fork for PolkaVM) is WIP and will see a first experimental release this month.
  • Work on porting revive to the browser has began which is needed in order to have a REMIX instance targeting contracts on AssetHub.
  • Ongoing work on our EVM RPC compatability layer for pallet_revive was published here: GitHub - paritytech/revive-ethereum-rpc: Ethereum JSON-RPC for RISC-V Smart Contracts

Front API

Polkadot JS

Asset Transfer API

The new Asset Transfer API release adds support to the new checkMetadataHash SignedExtension, new examples and other fixes.

Json RPC

Jsonrpsee 0.24.0 was released (see the CHANGELOG), removing a couple of dependencies and making a couple of minor refactors.

Performance improvement

Network scalability

  • Referenda 416 was executed on Kusama and the network is running smoothly with 500 paravalidators and 100 cores.
  • Referenda 888 enabled the approval voting improvements on Polkadot.
  • The node was further improved to better handle approval voting message bursts by prioritising peer view update messages (#4755).
  • The PVF preparation logic is now aware of when the node will become active (#4791). Parachain validators will prepare the PVF artifacts in the session before they become active. We expect this will completely fix the finality lag spikes at session boundaries when the validator set changes are enacted.
  • The new parallelized approval voting implementation is progressing nicely, 4 stacked PRs up for review/feedback: #4845, #4928, 4846, #4849
  • A PVF execution priority queue is under development (#4837). The implementation aims to apply a smarter backpressure on candidate backing when the approval voting is lagging.
  • A short term fix for parachain inherent weight overestimation has been proposed: #5082

Bug Fixes:

Node

  • litep2p is seeing multiple improvement PRs with bug fixing (#162, #181, #154, #176) and debuggability and metrics (#174, #5077, #4977)
  • Recent changes in block pruning have caused some crashing and syncing issues with warp issues which turned out be a hassle, we have been working on stabilizing the implementation (#4997, #5103)

Frame

Forklift

Forklift still stable in gitlab pipelines, but some problems have been revealed in github actions

  • fixed forklift 403 bug(rework error handling)
  • rework forklift GCS storage driver
  • continue testing with github actions
  • user experience fixes and improvements (e.g. better log organization), optimization
  • ongoing process of improving forklift to work faster on github self-hosted runners
  • GHA migration work continuing, special runners for test-linux-oldkernel-stable tests were created

Implementing code coverage

Rust instrumented coverage works in gha, but it generates enormous amount of binaries and profiler data:

  • report generation tools couldn’t handle it. Now working on an effective method to split test execution
  • fixed build errors with -C instrument-coverage
  • researching different approach to split execution
  • researching possible alternative tools for reporting tools

Run

  • Metadata-hash feature required for signed extension added to testnet runtimes
  • Updated polkadot-js extension now continuously published to the Firefox extension store (Finally done, after 3 years!)
  • Supported Mythical with the infrastructure for the migration testing on their parachain testnets
  • Initiated the scale down of Rococo. Mitigated issues caused by this scale down by reconfiguring coretime (some parachains encountered intermittent block production stalls).
  • Deployed Mythical-Paseo parachain Polkadot/Substrate Portal
  • Deployed Polkadot-People collators and RPC nodes, the chain started block production as expected

Success

  • Organised the Brussels Polkadot Technical Summit 24’, which was widely attended by key ecosystem contributors, project teams, W3F & Parity Engineering.
    • Each of the workshops notes are currently in the process of being refined and posted to the forums, be sure to check the ‘Polkadot-Summit’ tag to stay in the loop
  • 1-Click Deployment assessment
  • Collaboration with Distractive about Polkadot Ecosystem Insight Blog targeting gradual handover
  • Setup Product Marketing Narratives for H2 along three communication assets: Innovation, Stability and Tooling
  • Implementing a strategy about Polkadot Documentation restructuring in collaboration with PaperMoon, W3F, and pot. Accelerate Polkadot
  • Defining an on-chain bounty to encourage community members to implement some PJS high desired UI/UX issues and support PJS KTLO organic effort
  • Continuous engagement with ecosystem to support coretime transition
  • Coordination with ecosystem to encourage transition from Rococo to Paseo test-net and contextually support Paseo enhancements (e.g. integration of Snowbridge)
  • Provided support to ecosystems to integrate Snowbridge (currently focusing on Hydration, Moonbeam, Neuroweb) and working with them to support the transition of Sovereign Account to AssetHub where ultimately Snowbridge will be integrated.
  • Polkadot Mobile App has been officially announced. We are taking care of Product Management & UI/UX in collaboration with Nova who is building the product.

Security

Code Audit

Smart Contracts template is in progress by OpenZeppelin, the audit of which is being managed by a Parity Security key vendor, SRLabs.
DeFi Runtime and underlying FRAME pallets is in progress by OpenZeppelin, the audit of which is being managed by a Parity Security key vendor, SRLabs.
Audit of the Bridge-hub codebase was executed by OpenZeppelin and preliminary results are being analyzed.
Xcavate parachain is being audited and expected to be completed before the end of month, part of the Alpha Program effort.

Security Bug Bounty

No valid submission received this month.

Security Hub

The Polkadot Security Hub is a compilation of resourcees and continuous projects to enhance security of the Polkadot Ecosystem. Here you can find security vulnerabilities disclosures, learn in detail about common security vulnerabilities (Top 10), find information on how to secure your Polkadot project, and how to get involved in the Polkadot security community. It is the first release and over time, it will be filled with more resources and initiatives.

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