Nightshade | NEAR Update July 1, 2019

We deployed a test version of Nightshade, our new consensus model, and have been working to integrate it into the rest of our codebase.

This all happened while Illia was behind the Great Firewall, managing to both contribute code and give presentations to Chinese audiences on NEAR in collaboration with the Web3 foundation. On the ecosystem side, we have been heads down preparing some future programs to be announced soon.

We announced the winner of our DWeb Camp ticket giveaway, who won with an idea for a decentralized VPN (Well done Grace!).

#FutureisNEAR pic.twitter.com/5IGM0ptjom

— Grace Yu (@graceyuuu) June 17, 2019

COMMUNITY AND EVENTS

We are gearing up for another hackathon, and some other (secret!) programs for those who want to get more involved with NEAR, so stay tuned for updates in the coming weeks.

• Alex gave a talk on usability and scalability at IBM’s Blockchain Developer Summit [https://blockchain-developer-summit.splashthat.com/]
• By the time this goes out, Max will have given a talk on using Rust to build smart contracts at RustLab in Florence, Italy
• Illia presented a workshop to the Denver blockchain community 
• Illia is back from China, and will be back in China again presenting at a Proof of Stake conference on July 10th 

WRITING AND CONTENT

We had a relatively light couple of weeks publishing content. You can check out these new whiteboard series videos and a tour of the economics model we’re implementing.

• Augur whiteboard: https://youtu.be/kpW08CiSK9g
• NEAR economics design: https://youtu.be/65CKc39lNTw
• FOAM whiteboard: https://youtu.be/5L-XbpC4kY0

ENGINEERING HIGHLIGHTS

If your blockchain is using #webassembly for the smart contracts (written in @rustlang or @AssemblyScript) then join us in discussing the WASI module for the smart contracts here: https://t.co/VcTSdKFCqI

— Maksym Zavershynskyi (@mzavershynskyi) June 29, 2019

We’ve had 39 PRs across 10 repos and 10 authors in the last two weeks. Featured repos: nearcore, nearlib, near-shell, and near-wallet. Don’t forget, it’s all open source.

• Recently streamlined our release process
• App Layer
  • Updates across all libraries for Nightshade merge
  • Added advanced access keys in core
• near-shell
  • Updated syntax
• Wallet
  • Bug fixes and UI improvements
• Blockchain
  • First version of staking is complete and currently being tested
  • Deployed test version Nightshade, our new model consensus
  • Chunks for sharding are underway in a ~1800 line PR
  • Proper validators tracking and rotation between epochs (commit).
  • Shard chunks proper signature and merkle proofs validation (commit)
  • Tests for cross-shard transactions (commit)

HOW YOU CAN GET INVOLVED

Join us! If you want to work with one of the most talented teams in the world right now to solve incredibly hard problems, check out our careers page for openings. And tell your friends ?

Learn more about NEAR in The Beginner’s Guide to NEAR Protocol. Stay up to date with what we’re building by following us on Twitter for updates, joining the conversation on Discord and subscribing to our newsletter to receive updates right to your inbox.

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