February Development Review
In February, our team was focused on the peripheral features of our ecosystem, as well as on logistics ahead of our hardware going live. On the network front, we had two successful sprints with developments in metrics collection, Windows and macOS clients, and the introduction of the first bandwidth scanners. We also upgraded the distribution protocol to include multiplier and administrative logic. And crucially, in the run-up to ETH Denver, we produced and distributed our first batch of ATOR Relay hardware!
In the first half of the month, we tested and integrated a monitoring system stack and set of metrics endpoints. We build the first visualization and monitoring tool for the network, powered by Grafana, including tools to track the downloads of the Anon client. The development of metrics also include endpoints for relay statistics such as active relays, bandwidth and more. These tie into frontends such as the dashboard and relay bot, ready to go live when the network opens.
Additionally, our network team has developed Windows and macOS clients, to be included in distributions down the line. These are simple and portable executable programs that make configuring your relay, though currently are initiated via the command line.
In the second sprint, we created crucial services for the functionality of our relays and hardware. We built the AnonCheck service, used by our hardware and clients to verify that traffic is successfully going through the network. We also updated the build automation for the anon client, introducing the Windows and Mac clients to our GitHub actions pipeline.
Our team have also set up the first fully functional bandwidth scanners in the network, that verify each relay’s reported bandwidth and contribute it to consensus (a mechanism we will look to decentralize later down our roadmap!).
This sprint also saw resources dedicated to research — looking into the ATOR Lightweight SDK, UDP and SNI-based routing, and signing executable files for better user experience installing the Windows and macOS clients.
Protocol
The introduction of reward and onboard logic in our tokenomics paper mandated an upgrade to our distribution protocol — a multi-month effort which was completed this month.
These changes were in two main categories — new logic for protocol registration, and an upgrade to the distribution contracts. For the first, we built the oracle for ETH mainnet and testnet data to be used as an input to Smartweave logic. This allows the registration contract on Arweave to track balances within the registrAtor contract on ETH. The new logic also includes a mapping contract interface that has been implemented for both address->value and fingerprint->value mappings, which allows for a live cache of mainnet balances to be stored on Arweave.
The second category — upgrades to distribution contracts — saw the implementation of score multipliers and relay-family enforcement directly within the distribution logic. As part of these upgrades, our network team have created administrative control scripts to allow these multipliers to be adjusted and, down the line, synced to on-chain multiplier data stored in RELAYUP NFTs.
Hardware
February was a huge month for our hardware team — the first version of our setup UI was finalized, creating the first build image that runs on the relay. We then produced and assembled our first batch of hardware which were distributed at ETH Denver!
Handing out the inaugural hardware at Denver was a great success — and it was a pleasure to receive the warm feedback from some of our most loyal atornauts. We identified number of minor improvements to the setup process, that we will ship out to both existing and new units.
As the network moves from staging to live, so too will the binary running on the hardware. This can be updated without disassembling the unit through our USB-script method — this will be publicized as soon as the network goes live for existing hardware holders to update their units. The repository lists on the OS (that enable the one-line installation of the Anon binaries) will be expanded to ensure easy switching between dev, stage and live environments. The revamped reward dashboard, started in Q3 of last year, will be completed to match our new network and provide a seamless reward-claim experience.
Moving forward, we are excited to work with our fulfilment partners to launch the first shipping batch of relays this month, and get relays in the hands of atornauts as the network enters the live stage.
Next Steps
Our network team is devoted to bringing the Anon network to its live environment over the next sprint. The new pipelines for the live environment will be created with GitHub action, using labelling on pushes to automate builds. The next few weeks will see the hardware update created to bring every relay from staging to live environment, and align it to the distribution protocol and rewards. In addition, our network team will dedicate resources to generating signing keys for macOS and Windows client to broaden the pool of potential relay operators as soon as possible.
It’s an exciting month for our network, with multiple moving parts — the network, protocol and hardware will all transition to the live environment over a multi-stage rollout. It’s a pleasure to serve this community, and we’re excited for our collective force as we begin to start running relays again!
