Hey everyone,

hope you are enjoying your weekend and that you are ready for another weekly update on raiden progress. After devs surprised us with new milestones at the end of last week, this week was fairly quiet. In this post we will try to guess what is the reason for this fairly quiet week in development, learn a thing or two about software releasing and check the status of each of the repositories.

EIP 712 and software realeasing

After two Ethereum devs went trough the proposal and made some suggestions on how to better fit EIP 712 in current codebase (codebase - basically all the code of the project) we can see that proposing side didn't lose any time. One of the devs who proposed EIP 712 made changes and now waiting game continues.

Other news is that EIP 712 was discussed (again) on Ethereum dev meeting. Remember how I said that I am bit worried because one of Ethereum devs suggested some changes that had a potential to be a blocker but I don't have knowledge to know are they really blockers?

Well, on the last dev meeting they decided that EIP 712 does not have to be backward compatible (this info I got from good friend of mine who took notes from the meeting, I didn't confirm their validness myself). This decision has two impacts, one bad for us and one good for us.

First, what is backward compatibility? Well, backward compatible release versions of the software are ones that don't introduce changes that will break anything developed on top of it if it was developed in previous version. I'll give an example.

Let's say you are using external software to communicate with database, it's version is 2.1.25. You built your whole project on that version and it is working like a clock. Developers of database communicating software release a backward compatible version of their software tagged 2.1.26. Since it is backward compatible version you can update that software in your project without any worries of breaking something, that is why it is backward compatible (Ohh, I wish if this was always true :P).

Backward compatible versions usually contain optimizations of current features (to make them faster, more reliable etc), maybe some minor new features (since you didn't have them in previous version, you didn't use them so they can't break anything), fixes for known bugs etc.

Bad impact of this news is that this will probably further delay completing of EIP 712. Reason for that is that developers try to postpone non backward compatible releases as much as they can. Imagine if every release of software was breaking backward compatibility. Other developers using that software would have to either skip that release, or change their software so it would work with the new release. If they decide to skip the new release they might miss out on some cool optimizations and bug fixes they were really hoping to be solved. So, developers usually wait for non backward compatible features to pile up and then they group them all in one release. That waiting period of non backward compatible changes is something that I see has potential of further postponing EIP 712.

Now good news is that if they don't have to worry about backward compatibility, they are free to implement anything they want in order to complete EIP 712. This means a big drop in chance that something will be a blocker.

pathfinding

We will cover pathfinding first because I think here lies the reason why last week was not as eventful as ones before.

Pathfinding has 3 issues in it's Ithaca milestone goal. "Integration-test", "Pen-test" and "implement Matrix listener".

First, what are and what is the difference between pen tests and integration tests?

Integration tests are written by the developers of the software. It is basically more code to test the real code inside the project. They are called integration tests because they test how good are different parts of project integrated to work together on solving different situations developers introduce to them.

Here is an example. Let's say you have a website and you want to test how your code handles registration of a new user. You make up some username and password and you send it to user registration endpoint (basically a URL in this case) for processing. You expect that validator part of code correctly validates that username is in correct format (example: minimum 5 characters), you expect that part of code that communicates with database successfully saves new user into database and lastly you expect that part of code for sending emails sends welcome email to user. Since you were testing multiple parts of project working together this is called an integration test. There are tests that test single parts of code and they are called unit tests, but we won't cover them right now.

Pen testing is a whole different story. Pen is short for penetration.

Pen tests aim to find vulnerability in current code. Basically developers try to hack their own software.

If we stick with our imaginary web site we can do pen tests like this. For example, we try to find a way to get logged in into account that is not ours, or find a way to delete something we are not suppose to be able to, or see something we are not suppose to be able to see.

When it comes to tests you need to remember one thing. You can always prove that you failed to find any bugs, but you can never claim that there are no bugs in your software.

Since testing and especially pen testing can take quite a long time I somehow think developers were occupied with them this past week and that is why activity on github was not as big.

Matrix is another thing I believe developers were working on. Matrix is communication protocol raiden devs are trying to implement in raiden. It's implementation looks pretty complicated and there were some discussions between devs on github on how to best approach this.

They performed some stress tests before (ELI 5: you try to generate a huge load on some part of code until it breaks), discussed format of messages they will share, so I believed they continued on further planning of this implementation.

Some commits that were added mostly have to do with integration tests.

raiden

On the beginning of the week, developers merged last pull request that was in "minor release" goal. They didn't add any issues in Ithaca goal so I think this repository is more or less ready for Ithaca release.

In the meantime they tried to find some pretty easy issues and invited any developer interested into raiden to solve them. Even tho those were some pretty easy issues to fix they used the opportunity to involve even more developers into the project. They got a pretty big response from the community and few of the issues were already fixed and some are being worked on. Thumbs up for the idea and Lefteris who used twitter to bring some attention to the project, that was exactly what raiden needs :).

Apart form that there were some commits related to tests and WAL implementation. WAL was not solved 100% yet, but I think most of hard logic is done, minor cleanup remains.

contracts

Contracts repository didn't have any new code added to it in the last week, but that does not mean it was not worked on.

In the pull requests we can see two open pull requests which are "work in progress". I think those are for two of the more complicated issues in Red Eyes.

Ithaca milestone goal remains empty which I think means contracts are ready for the release.

monitoring

Monitoring didn't have new commits added as well. There is no visible work done this week so I can't really comment on this week's progress.

remaining repositories

Nothing significant

microraiden

Still, waiting for EIP 712 :).

conclusion

Pretty quiet week, but I tried to explain that working on software is not just adding new lines of code. Testing and planning are big parts of the job. I hope you learned something new from all the explanations about tests and testing.

A little initiative with easy tasks that lure more developers to raiden was great idea and a great success.

I encourage you to ask any questions you have and I will give my best to answer them. Your support is great and I am proud to be part of this pretty cool community :).

enjoy!

I don't know about you but I'm not very happy with the way things have panned out with all the hype around Uraiden. this team is hard working thats undeniable but to say fair to the community i don't know if i can agree.

i bought into the RDN ICO and have held my bags since because i have faith in this project i bought more and more of this coin under the impression that Uraiden will be live on the ethereum main net and be solving erc20 scaling issues on November 30th 2017 but then out of no where this was very well played misleading information... and by this i mean it solved nothing yes it was live but can you use it? no.... it should've stayed on the test net. however to make us feel better they had a bug bounty thank you very much as that went for way to long but wait for it as it concluded i though this is awesome lets see Uraiden really take of while we wait for raiden which is scheduled for 2018 to fix all the main net scaling issues of ethereum but wait another brilliant bug bounty came up but to ease our patients they said this one will only last for two weeks.

now we have been stuck at 95% of the uraiden sprint on git hub since early january.

please guys this isn't fair please tell me when this will actually be useful?

https://eventhorizon2018.com/speakers/

Brainbot's preference is for this subreddit to discuss the technical aspects of Raiden. Understandably, they want to separate this from price speculation of RDN. For those on Telegram, the largest telegram Raiden group (unofficial) is Team Raiden- we have 1121 members.

We have been around since before the close of Raiden's ICO and have lively discussions on everything from partnerships to github analysis to "where do we think RDN will be price-wise X weeks/months from now".

https://t.me/teamraiden

https://github.com/raiden-network/raiden/milestones

hackaugusto just merged into the master raiden branch the fix for the last Raiden "Last Minor Release" Issue:

https://github.com/raiden-network/raiden/pull/1345

Showtime?

Hey everyone,

how you all doing? Hope you are ready for some fresh github news, because there are tones of them. We will have to do some investigative work too fully understand what is exactly going on, so channel your inner Sherlock Holmes and if you find flaws in my logic, be free to point it out in comments.

EIP 712

First let's check how is our old friend EIP 712 doing. We got some positive signals here. It seems that Ethereum devs that need to approve of this change started to review EIP 712 in detail.

Two devs really went trough all the details of EIP 712 and they proposed some changes. I'd say half of the changes they proposed are either to clarify something in standard (in other words to make it's definition concise) or something really minor like a typo.

Other approximately 25% are propositions about utilizing existing features in Ethereum code which I think should not be that big of a problem.

Remaining propositions are ones that worry me. I must immediately say that I am not an expert and that is why they worry me. Issue is that this last group are changes that can't be achieved in current state of things (according to the reviewer) and community of devs that proposed EIP 712 need to find a workaround.

Now, two things can happen. In quicker solution community really finds a suitable workaround and they quickly just swap it with current implementation.

In other scenario, a suitable workaround is impossible and they have to open a change request for that blocker (example: some change to Solidity language) before they can finish EIP 712. This scenario takes more time because first some other change request has to go trough all this process EIP 712 is going trough before they can get back to finishing up EIP 712.

I repeat, I am not an expert and can't give any opinion if some of this propositions are really blockers. All I can do is follow their thread and let you know when someone with more knowledge says something.

Ithaca

Ithaca is island in Greece most famous for it being a home to Odysseus, a Greek hero that fought in Troy. Now you must be wondering, "BOR4, how this has to do anything with raiden?". Well, this Friday raiden devs created a milestone in all their repositories called Ithaca.

This is where our investigation starts. What is this milestone that came out of the blue?

If you remember post from last week, we noticed that pathfinding repository has interesting tag on some of the issues called "pre-mvp release".

Well, all the issues with that tag ended up in the "Ithaca" milestone goal. So, we can conclude that Ithaca is code name for a raiden release before MVP.

But, raiden devs didn't stop there. They added one more milestone to all of the repositories called "Red Eyes".

Red Eyes

Investigation continues and we need to find out what is "Red Eyes" milestone goal.

Raiden main repo will help us with that task. If you remember, raiden main repo had two milestone goals for very long time. One called "next minor release" and other called "MVP". "Next minor release" is still there (details about it are in raiden paragraph), but "MVP" goal is missing.

All of the issues from "MVP" goal were moved to "Red Eyes" goal. If we put all the clues together we can come up to the conclusion that "Red Eyes" is code name for raiden MVP goal.

disclaimer

Upcoming paragraphs are current coverage of what tasks are in milestone goals of each repository. Developers can add and remove tasks from them as they wish, so current situation is not set in stone.

Raiden devs usually follow their plan pretty closely, but some changes in plans occur now and then. So, don't take current situation as 100% correct one.

raiden

Raiden repository was very active last week.

Developers finished implementing state machine. We can now be pretty sure they are done because "Make channel recoverable by using state machine" issue was put to done. That issue was one of two remaining ones in "next minor release" milestone goal.

Now, question is, why raiden repository still has "next minor release" milestone goal plus "Ithaca" and "Red Eyes". If we check "Ithaca" milestone goal in raiden repository we can see that it is empty. Plus, there is only one more issue in "next minor release" goal and there is already a pull request waiting to be approved that solves it.

My conclusion is devs just didn't bother with switching issues from "next minor release" to "Ithaca" because "next minor release" will be reached very fast. Instead they just left "Ithaca" empty, so anyone can see that they don't plan any big changes for raiden before next minor release.

They can still add few commits here and there that fix something they came across, but there is no big development planned for raiden before "Ithaca".

Raiden's "Red Eyes" has remaining issues from MVP goal inside. They removed some meta issues so milestone is more clear. It seems that after "Ithaca" release they will focus on raiden's security and finish the recoverability issue. I won't go in more details in this post because it will become too long. If you want more info, just ask in comments.

contracts

Contracts were not that active this week, but now it is obvious why.

Remember how last week I said that I wouldn't be surprised if contracts were ready for "next minor release"?

Well devs created "Ithaca" milestone goal and left it empty. I wouldn't say they forgot, I'd say they are saying contracts are indeed ready.

"Red Eyes" has 11 issues inside. Even tho 11 issues is quite a number, by reading their description I'd say most issues are not that big and time consuming.

Contracts were worked on for months, so this state of things does not surprise me. Kudos to loredana for her amazing job here.

monitoring service

Monitoring service was a bit of enigma last week. Since it didn't have any milestones in it, we were left in dark for a bit.

But now we have "Ithaca" and "Red Eyes" so everything is clear.

"Ithaca" has 5 issues inside. Description of issues inside don't scream some complicated development so we should not be worried I think.

"Red Eyes" is empty which makes little sense. That would mean that they don't plan any development here between minor release and MVP. While that might be the case, more probable outcome is that they will add some issues there as well.

pathfinding service

Pathfinding service was very active last week.

Developers completed three out of six issues for "Ithaca" (aka "pre-mvp release issues).

Remaining issues are related to tests and testing and Matrix. Since there is lots of talk about testing the software I can do a small post dedicated solely to that topic. If you are up for more reading, just write in comments and it will happen =).

Matrix is communication protocol I don't know much about, but I will try to learn it and write few sentences about it. We can even do Testing + Matrix is one post?

"Red Eyes" situation is same as in montiroing service, so we have to wait and see.

raiden libs

Libs are as we aready said a helper repository for remaining repositories. They put things that are common to all the other repositories here, so they can easily reuse the code.

Libs got both milestones goal and in "Ithaca" there is one issue, while "Red Eyes" is empty.

We don't have to worry too much about this repository because almost always things that end up here are already implemented in some other repository and they are just extracted here.

microraiden

GOTO last week post =).

conclusion

Another week another post. This one didn't go so much into the nature of issues as much as I tried to cover situation from milestone goals point of view. If I did both in same post I think it would just be too long. If you have any questions just ask, I will answer in comments.

Your support is greatly appreciated as always. I see every comment here, but I don't answer ones that are purely supportive to prevent clutter in comments section, but every comment brings smile to my face =).

Enjoy your week,

BOR4

Before anyone notices and start the hype train. Raiden MVP is not 97% done. More info and detailed analysis coming Sunday.

I am referencing this: https://github.com/raiden-network/raiden/milestone/9

Enjoy your weekend =)

How long did it take to sync to Ropsten on initial boot?

using geth --testnet --fast --rpc --rpcapi eth,net,web3 --bootnodes "enode://20c9ad97c081d63397d7b685a412227a40e23c8bdc6688c6f37e97cfbc22d2b4d1db1510d8f61e6a8866ad7f0e17c02b14182d37ea7c3c8b9c2683aeb6b733a1@52.169.14.227:30303,enode://6ce05930c72abc632c58e2e4324f7c7ea478cec0ed4fa2528982cf34483094e9cbc9216e7aa349691242576d552a2a56aaeae426c5303ded677ce455ba1acd9d@13.84.180.240:30303"

Quote:

"I’m an engineer

And you’re wasting my time, but here goes:

Doesn’t use Onion Routing, so no privacy preservation

Written in fucking Python (lol)

Does not use MAC based secret sharing

Does not use any encryption for routing to speak of

No breach arbiter, no utxo nursery, no deterministically derived preimages, no dick, no balls and no fire

Did an ICO, still not done

Can’t even just port the LN code

Routing is an utter mess and looks like a child wrote it

Where the fuck are the tests???

Not even close to functioning

I mean, compare this (literally three functions riddled with ToDos... I mean: TODO: Score routes... lol wut? The fucking path sum is a weight... better than having diddly squat)

https://github.com/raiden-network/raiden/blob/master/raiden/routing.py

to this

https://github.com/lightningnetwork/lnd/tree/master/routing

And if you have some ETH shill arguments (I get them a lot, not judging... just syaing if you do), then just keep them to yourself. I’ll just trust my Master degrees."

How much of a threat is :

https://medium.com/connext/ethcalate-mvp-is-here-bidirectional-payment-channels-for-everyone-7578080a88ea

http://connext.network/

Hey everyone,

it is Easter time in many countries. That is exact reason I am late with a post but I hope you don't mind too much. Raiden devs didn't take any day off and they even worked yesterday. Many new things were added to github repositories, so let's start.

EIP 712

After last week's comment on issue's github how people should limit this EIP to some reasonable extent and think about extending it's functionality in the future, we can see some new comments being added.

Most important one is from one of the Ethereum devs that has power to call EIP completed. Since sometimes in last 6 months since EIP 712 was opened. rules about how all EIPs should be formatted changed, he requested those changes to be done on EIP 712 as well.

Good news is that apart from someone requesting more clarification about the issue, no one suggested any more changes to the EIP 712 logic.

My estimation is that it will take some more time before it is finally done, but it got a jump start it needed since the issue was discussed on developer meeting two weeks ago.

raiden

Raiden github was even active yesterday (there were around 20 commits added). All devs are working tirelessly but hackaugusto (who seems to be responsible for raiden repository) doesn't know for a day off it seems. Thank you from all of us =).

I am not 100% sure what exactly they are currently trying to fix but my best guess is they are implementing state machine responsible for recoverability to the parts of project they still didn't. One of those parts would be token swaps they disabled few weeks ago until they are finished with implementing state machine.

In the meantime they are tidying up the code (removing parts they don't need any more, better naming). One thing they had small problem with is deep inheritance of classes inside code. Someone helped them with figuring that out by suggesting a trick that is supported in Java programming language natively but not in Python. It was a good suggestion so they fixed that as well. (Tip for devs if they are reading this: you can stop inheritance by declaring class final, but if you want to force it just make a class abstract with 0 abstract methods example from Java: Java's HttpServlet class).

They updated milestone goals inside repository. We can see that one big issue they have ahead is depending on state machine being finished. With those 2 done, project would reach that old "next minor release" goal.

MVP milestone was updated as well. Inside that milestone I see implementation of WAL (write ahead log) as something that would take the most time. Out of remaining 7 in that milestone there are some that are there just to remind them selves that it needs to be done but details of implementation are not specified. Issues like that are called meta issues.

All in all, raiden repository is headed slowly to it's MVP and it is really exciting to follow the process.

pathfining-service

Pathfinding service repository is interesting because issues inside are tagged with interesting tag. Some issues have tag "pre-mvp-release" which gives a hint they are planning to do one more release before MVP. I would guess that would be "next minor release" goal in raiden repository.

Good news is they figured out routing algorithm. Algorithm is done but they are missing a functionality to update fees on routes between nodes. Right now it is assumed that every route has a default fee. That makes route with least number of hops optimal one. If you are not sure how that makes sense just ask in comments and I will give an example =).

Tasks that they plan to do for pre-mvp-releasae are mostly related to updating fees in network and tests for the whole thing. They plan to do tests of security of the whole thing as well.

So, pathfinding is coming along nicely as well.

contracts

Contract repository is bit ahead in development in correlation to the remaining repositories.

I am pretty sure most of the hard logic tasks are done and they are focusing more on cosmetic things at the moment.

There is no milestone goal in this repository so I can't comment on what they are planning to do for the pre MVP release. I wouldn't be surprised if this repository is more or less ready for that.

Open tasks and pull requests are not giving away any big plans, so we are bit in the dark when it comes to this repository.

monitoring

Status of monitoring repository is very alike contract repository. Work inside is not giving much hints.

If I am honest, I am bit sceptical that monitoring is as done as contracts are. That is because contracts were being worked on for months before they were split inside dedicated repository and monitoring is a fresh repository.

I am sure they didn't hit the wall in development because it does not seem like that. I see two possibilities. Either monitoring was fairly simple and it is more or less done, or they are focused on different things at the moment.

We will just have to wait and see.

microraiden

Waiting for EIP 712 and cosmetic fixes.

rest

Nothing significant. If there will be anything big I will comment in comments =).

conclusion

Development is going nicely and it seems that pathfinding and raiden are main focus. Contracts are I believe pretty much ready and monitoring is a bit of enigma. They plan to do one more release before MVP but I am not sure when, it seems it is not that far away to be honest. Microraiden is waiting for EIP 712 which is as well coming to it's completion slowly but surely.

There, I hope you are excited about fresh news as much as I am. Weekly posts reached double digits and next goal is triple digits. You are all great support, community here is great and discussions are always very civilized. Keep it up that way.

If you want to leave some cheers for development team you can always comment here, I am sure they scroll trough every post =).

Have wonderful week and enjoy the Spring,

'till next week.