14th update of 2021 on blackTardes work on hive software

Below is a list of Hive-related programming issues worked on by the BlockTrades team during the last week or so:

Hived work (blockchain node software)

We released a second and third release candidate earlier this week with several fixes and improvements for testnet-based testing:
https://gitlab.syncad.com/hive/hive/-/merge_requests/243
https://gitlab.syncad.com/hive/hive/-/merge_requests/244
https://gitlab.syncad.com/hive/hive/-/merge_requests/245

https://gitlab.syncad.com/hive/hive/-/merge_requests/250
https://gitlab.syncad.com/hive/hive/-/merge_requests/251

But we found some more issues associated with those release candidates and we also decided to reduce the vote powerup delay to one day for the testnet (this value is configured for 30 days in the mainnet) to simplify testing scenarios where accounts stake their coins and then vote in new witnesses. So we’re about to tag a fourth release candidate for hived (probably will be tagged tomorrow).

We’ve actually launched a new testnet with an untagged version of the planned release candidate to get the testnet jump-started quicker (we're simulating a transition of the code from HF24 rules to HF25 rules in this release and the transition test is scheduled for tomorrow so we wanted to get the testnet up as fast as possible). We haven’t tagged the new code yet as 1.25.0.rc4 because some of the automated tests failed when we changed the vote powerup delay for the testnet, but we’ll tag it after we have committed updated tests. As part of the changes to the tests, the response checking will be modified to test for the configured delay value rather than a hardcoded value, to avoid a repeat of this issue in the future.

I’ll add a link here to the new release candidate after it’s tagged.

Hivemind (2nd layer applications + social media middleware)

Earlier this week, we merged develop branch changes to master and released a new 1.25.0 version of hivemind (so just pull from the head of the master branch to get the new version), and now we’re assisting API node operators as they upgrade to the new version. Note that the old version and the new version are broadly API compatible: most of the changes in the new release consist of bug fixes and performance improvements.

Currently the API nodes for api.hive.blog (@blocktrades), api.deathwing.me (@deathwing), and api.openhive.network (@gtg) have been updated to the new release.

Also, to eliminate the multi-day hive sync requirement for anyone setting up their API node for the first time, @gtg has provided a hivemind database dump for the new release that can be used to quickly initialize a new API node: https://gtg.openhive.network/get/hivemind/

Modular hivemind (Application framework for Hive apps)

We’ve been working on the documentation for modular hivemind’s internal architecture this week and doing individual code reviews. We have a meeting scheduled Monday to do a group code review. After that meeting, I should have a better idea as to when we can expect an initial release of the software, but from what I’ve seen so far, I’m thinking we could make it available for beta testing next month.

An early draft of the documentation for the architecture is here: https://gitlab.syncad.com/hive/psql_tools/-/blob/23239a592bd77b3b2cefc648e5c25880e0f76ffb/src/hive_fork/Readme.md

Testnet

We’re seeing more apps join in and hookup up test sites to the testnet. Note that as a regular Hive user, you can typically login with your normal credentials and test via these sites.
For example, you can login to either of these blog sites on the testnet
https://testblog.openhive.network (hive.blog-like testing site)
or
https://testnet.peakd.com/ (peakd-like testing site)

You can also browse the testnet with this block explorer: https://test.ausbit.dev/

New testing tool for testnet

We’ve also created a new tool to convert an existing block log to a testnet block log to ease creation of more realistic “real-world” testnet-based test scenarios. The new tool is undergoing testing now.

Tentative date for hardfork 25 is June 30th

Release candidate 4 has the hardfork scheduled for June 30th. Assuming we find no further issues by late next week, we’ll make that date official, create an official release by merging the develop branch to the master branch, and notify exchanges of the need to upgrade their wallets.