MaidSafe Pre-Dev-Update Update :safe: 25th April 2016

Hello,

We thought we would share a brief pre-dev-update update :slight_smile:

Since Thursday’s update and test, the team’s primary focus has been looking at ways to reduce the amount of network traffic we saw between nodes and also to allow for data to be gradually relocated around the network, rather than instantly when we lose a node. We have specific areas that we are concentrating on and once these are in place we shall internally test then release to the community for the next round of testing.

I shall briefly give an overview of the areas the team have been / are currently working on:

  • The ability for the network to remain functional while lots of nodes are starting or stopping at the same time. This was addressed and implemented on Friday and reduces network fragmentation.
  • Allow groups to repair by stopping accumulating particular messages when a group goes below quorum. Disabled for just now and the security side is being investigated.
  • Churn tweaks, specifically handling data more sequentially in order to reduce node traffic. Currently being reviewed and implemented today.
  • Streamline Routing Tables (RT) - to drop connections that are no longer required. This is achieved through mutual agreement between nodes - send a message to a node in my own RT that I no longer need, telling them I no longer want you in my RT and if that node agrees to drop me, a Crust disconnect is initiated. This needs to be agreed by both nodes. The motivation here is that the larger the RT = more messages, heartbeats, etc going through you, so having more relevant RTs will also reduce overall network traffic and increase efficiency. Testing today.
  • Removing the threading block between Routing and Vaults, eliminating potential issues occurring from a backlog of events. Currently Routing handles its events (from Crust and Vault) in a different thread from where Vaults handles its events (from Routing). It turns out that Vaults needs a lot of information all of the time; that is only available in Routing’s event handling thread, so we are planning to have only one event handling thread.

So this is what the majority of the Dev team have been focusing on over the last few days and these will be the areas that we shall be closely monitoring for improvements during the next release iteration. Big thanks to everyone that took part in the rolling release test last Thursday, this real world testing helps us a lot and is really appreciated. Expect some quick changes and more short test phases like this to come.

Thanks guys - until tomorrow.

Ross

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@Ross, very helpful and much appreciated. Thanks:relaxed:

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Thank you! Lately feeling more and more anxious for MVP. I am a patient person and been waiting for a long time, but more frequent incremental updates really quenches the anxiety a bit until the next update. Can’t wait for the next test. Congrats to everyone so far for the hard work we appreciate all the hard work and efforts!

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Will the easy non techie installers be part of the next test? Where does the MVP fit into all this?

Getting place to read!

@Ross great update, I love the details. Really cool to get insights on how this fine motor is getting engineered for efficiency.

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Can we still expect an update tomorrow?

He actually said that in the post…

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For some reason I missed that too. But I wasn’t concerned about that either.

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Well, it´s kinda in the “Pre” as well :wink: Reading the post from the last week, people seem to get nervous in the face of the Bitcoin race. Implicit spread of fear. Certainly not gonna put more stress on the devs (#irony)

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Do you an estimation for an MVP ? is it going to happen this year ?

It’s only April!?

MVP will happen this year… I’d say you can think in terms of weeks rather than months or years, it’s just very hard to pin down exact dates because complex and cutting-edge software development is prone to delays… as we all know. It would take one hell of an upset to push MVP back to 2017 wouldn’t it?!

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Just trying to remember exactly how so many people got the idea that the MVP would be released a couple of weeks ago.

From memory it was polo trollbox where some whales wanted the price to jump up ever so high so they start the MVP release rumour and then it started being repeated in the forum. Even just before the first test release it was claimed to be the MVP coming out. THe price jumped to 24K and the whales had bought up big time and been selling off ever since. But now the price of BTC is seeing the last of them sell off

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Heard that back in December when everyone was like “then it´s going to be happen before March”…

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I heard that even in summer 2015, that this was just a matter of days or weeks, and we are still here, april 2016, with absolulty nothing tangible.

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There is progress being made consistently but of course your lack of technical skills does not allow you to understand that.
It’s better to spread FUD again as BTC is rising and all altcoins are falling, right?

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That’s very true… Here’s a commit in Vaults done yesterday. If people watch GitHub they’ll see bulks of code in a lot of different libraries come by.

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The definition of MVP has changed since people started talking about it. Originally we thought this test client was the MVP. Then it changed to become a bigger beast to justify that title (which I think was fair as the test client didn’t do most of the cool stuff that would qualify it as a viable ‘safenet’ product). I don’t think that’s the fault of any traders or trolls, I’ve never heard anything over-inflated or hyped up lies, it just depends what posts you read and who was talking about ‘MVP’ at the time. I think that confusion came from maidsafe and was only corrected post test client launch. No biggie, but I think the confusion has been quite understandable and unmalicious.

I can understand why people feel impatient, I do too, but really we’ll still be waiting many months or years after launch to see the best returns and network effect of safecoin, so I’m not sure why people get so short or tetchy.

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Now is the time to be building apps: test apps to test on a test network :slight_smile: that become more real with their versions keeping step with each iteration of the test network.

I’m frankly jealous of the MVP and don’t want it to appear soon, so that app devs can fill the gap.

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