I also check the changelogs and enjoy reading the bulletpoints of new features or improvements. I appreciate much like others here that you save us the trouble of seeking that out as I only get to checking the change log in the pm usually so thanks for posting these. The want to get a grasp on versioning so I can perhaps get some foresight into what’s next but I also don’t mind just passively seeing the progress as it’s pretty quickly paced as it is. Hurray for maid safe!!
Ok Here is where we are tonight (again)
Good news
- Tcp hole punching has been very successful.
- Tried from China which worked perfectly well
- Automatic nat_traversal seems very good
- We are not using any more resource in Udp and variants now as the Tcp nat_traversal is much better than we thought.
- Much of logging is now improved, info for user facing logs and debug level for more information such as numbers of messages, amounts of data per vault. Should be interesting for people, but especially for devs.
- Service discovery switched back on (no need for config files)
- Overall design for
network dashboardagreed and log messages being altered to suit (think old visualiser with much more user facing data). - Many client updates to prevent abuse of self encryption (it was inefficient)
- significant reduction in data passed during churn
- Network full tested and works fine, adding more resource lifts client block when network is full.
- automatic deployment of vaults on publishing a github tag (release). Platforms so far X86 Win/Linux: X64 Win/Linux/Osx
- Docker containers in final test stage for auto deployment
- ARM (yes @happybeing) is already building (we do need to PR a 3rd party repo though) and will be added to auto deployment. There is a bug at runtime and Adam is on that right now. Looking good for ARM though
current blockages
Only one really, which is we have still seen machines being overwhelmed somehow to the point heartbeat messages fail to arrive. This causes nodes to restart and network instability. We are benchmarking parts of the system tonight to see if we can see just where this is. Tomorrow will see us try and squash this one. That should make way for test2 which I feel sure everyone will see a huge improvement with. The reason I am so delighted is now we can test on the network and now can demonstrate how quickly we can react to wishes and any bugs we find. It is a significant improvement.
So lets see where we get tomorrow and then get this test going.
For the folks wondering about releases we are moving towards Alpha and this will be the MVP. It will iterate though a few Alpha versions till we are happy to call it Beta. At Beta we will add messaging and test-safecoin. Then release and safecoin. I hope that describes the process we are following. MVP is a huge milestone and it’s around the corner as anyone can see and we can demonstrate. Just as soon as we squash this message processing issue we spotted this afternoon.
Where is the hug emoji? I really want to give you a million hugs and I could care less if everyone judged me for it!!!
Hope Ill be getting the odroid out this time 
Thanks for the update ! sounds like a big progress. I know maybe its not the correct place to ask but why did you include messaging (as I understand its like decentralized chat ? )as a feature in the MaidSafe network ?
It was meant to be more like a first example or demo app or early useful demonstration by the core team. Everybody and third party developers are free to come up with their own messaging.
There is an opportunity for the network to provide a generic messaging layer available to application developers so we took the rains on that one. Also for multisig there has to be a message layer to get a transaction to the many signatories. Multisig is important for structured data and ownership xfr of data (i.e. safecoin).
It does not though prevent other decentralised chat from also working on this such as tox etc. Just we had an opportunity to provide a layer that took care of messaging/ off line messaging and storage of messages.
Hope that helps.
So the messaging demo doesn’t causing any change in the API , it’s above the API and it’s like a 3rd party could have developed it ?
Read @dirvine s reply above. It doesnt stop other from using the network to do chat themselves. It is also probably not the only way to do chats or the universal way. That was as far as I understood a while ago. But a chat needs all those basic intrinsics and raw features of the network as @dirvine explained. Maybe they have a prominent place in the gui or launcher to put it, but maybe not, they said they dont want to compete or override other developers and third parties with special powers or so. So it would be like any or most other third party app on the network.
Yes my question was submitted at the same time with his answer, thanks.
Great update! Detailed and measured, with a hint of excitement!
Thanks @dirvine you’ve stolen my thunder in the most generous manner. What a nice update to come back you after a wonderful day scouting Gloucestershire for a future home.
This next update looks like the bomb
He’s one of us! 
but why don’t you just ask Mr. Irvine?
MaidSafe Journal:
“Today we utterly obliterated the great firewall of China.”
No biggie. Just another day in Troon
We rarely get time to speak to much, not about tech detail for sure. Lots happening at pace so we do not all get to read the same updates etc. The forum tends to pick good points before many in the office get to hear about them(at morning catchup).
Lucky man, I lived in Guiting Power beautiful and many great memories. Id give Florida up to be back there in a heartbeat!
Seems like the MaidSafe efforts are quite decentralised already then! us from the forum are all over the world
I am really confused on the URL hashes. Normally I would like have it directly connect to the hash but since we are all forced to use nfs, and dns. It doesn’t make sense to make a forum thread, and have comments tailed to that thread without seeing the hashes… Maybe I’m not thinking right but this is my biggest hurdle to date.
It can be anything other than forums. Such as Jury List, or court list. When I want users to add themselves into the list, it should create a hash, and add to the main app hash or whatever. Right?
Thanks for the “post-dev-update” (< 1/2 week from last) 
The last paragraph will answer a lot of people’s questions about what the MVP (now) refers to
MVP == Alpha release
MVP+Core Messaging+Test SAFEcoin == Beta release
So is corser the actor or the lawyers 
And all the best quashing that last bug.
“I’ve found the last bug” - the often repeated statement by an over confident lead developer.