Welcome to the third edition of our monthly R&D updates for the Subspace Network!
Our engineering team has been working like crazy to bring several new features to our test network.
Subspace Blockchain Client
A highly-customized substrate node using our novel Proof-of-Archival-Storage (PoAS) consensus algorithm.
- Deployed our novel Proof-of-Archival-Storage (PoAS) consensus algorithm to the Aries Testnet, allowing us to identify and resolve a host of bugs and performance issues.
- Added a notion of Subspace Credits (our coin) and basic issuance, with the smallest unit being a Shannon. A vesting pallet for the team has also been implemented.
- Refactored our consensus code to be more readable and in-line with best practices in the Substrate ecosystem; established the first version of our Rust documentation.
Next Steps — Implement a proof-of-concept of decoupled execution framework.
️ Subspace Relayer
A standalone Node.js app that archives every block of the Kusama relay chain and all parachains on the Subspace Network.
Merged 28 PRs (backend) + 3 PRs (front-end)
- The Kusama Relayer is running in archival mode on our devnet and will soon be deployed to our testnet. Be on the lookout for several announcements on this topic!
- Resolved a variety of performance issues across the full stack of our substrate-client, relayer, and Polkadot-js, leading to over 10x better upload times from genesis.
- Significantly improved our backend infrastructure, we can now support multiple dev and test environments, with more automated deployments and smoother transitions.
Next Steps — Deploy to Aries Testnet, extend for new parachains and the Polkadot Network.
Subspace Farmer Protocol
A heavily optimized disk-based plotter and distributed storage node.
- Completed the refactoring of the farmer codebase from a binary to a library structure, abstracting plotting and farming so they are more composable for external applications.
- Extended the farmer with a basic RPC server, allowing for pieces of the blockchain history and archived objects to be retrieved over the network through a simple API.
Next Steps — Create an initial farmer K-DHT network and begin the transition from syncing a new node from genesis, which currently uses the substrate client block database, to instead use the encoded history stored by farmers.
Research Topics
Our ongoing efforts to explore and incorporate the latest and greatest ideas from industry and academia into our architecture, including collaboration with third-party partners.
- Security Research Labs, the same team that audits Polkadot, is scheduled to conduct a full audit of our substrate-based implementation of Subspace before Mainnet launch.
- Initiated a new contract with Supranational to prepare an AMD compatible GPU plotter and explore the ASIC resistance of our proof-of-time and proof-of-replication.
- Completed an initial review of our decoupled execution framework with our research advisors and validated the feasibility of an initial implementation in substrate.
Next Steps — Formally describe our vertical and horizontal scaling architecture.
Thanks for reading and don’t hesitate to reach out if you have any questions or ideas!
R&D Updates | Nov 2021 was originally published in Subspace Network on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
