Hi guys! We’re back with another edition of our monthly updates!
June was full of technical updates so make sure to head on over to our GitHub to check them out for yourselves! First of all, now users can get actual error descriptions when using fallible functions (e.g. msg::send, msg::reply, etc in gstd library) encoded by the SCALE codec. Also we made gstd::prog::create_program and gstd::prog::create_program_with_gas fallible which assists with detecting errors at early stages. We introduced the gasless version of create_program in the gstd library, along with all remaining send/reply functions (both sync and async) which now have gasfull and gasless versions. Note that gstd::msg::send_and_wait_for_reply function has been marked as deprecated and recommended to be replaced with the gstd::msg::send_for_reply and gstd::msg::send_for_reply_as functions. Deprecated function will be completely removed in one of the future gstd releases.
It is worth mentioning that before, the user had to specify the salt manually when creating a program from the program by calling gstd::prog::create_program function. Now one may use the ProgramGenerator::create_program function instead which calculates the salt automatically. This takes the hassle out of keeping track of salt uniqueness from the user. Get_gas_spent was renamed to calculate_gas_info to render its new logic: more details about the required gas for execution are now provided by the function. The new function added controls that determine whether the execution of secondary programs may result in a trap or not. The function calculates gas amount with greater precision. From now, it is also possible to get the gas amount burned after program execution in gtest. This enables individuals to use the gtest library to monitor and optimize the program’s gas consumption to make it more effective and cheap.
As another important update, we added meta state testing tools. New API in gtest::Program has the ability to execute the program’s meta functions. This allows covering meta functions by tests. The new API allows executing meta functions with incoming payload or without it. The payload can be provided as a byte array or as a struct that implements Encode and Decode traits. We presented the new design of depositing events and data that they contain. The new implementation is much more informative and compact and event duplication and some other problems have been solved. The new architecture allows us with minimal resources required to cover all needs of JS or another monitoring mechanism to have information of what’s happening on-chain, so we’re ready to integrate with any scanners, etc.
Among the other updates, from now on error replies contain error explanations in the payload so the programs and user side have more information about the occurred error. When an error message is sent to the user it contains a string explanation of the error in the payload, formed by the display formatter. When an error message is sent to a program, it contains encoded bytes of error structure.
Along with technical updates, we also have some news to share regarding our community and the events! At the beginning of June we took part in the 2022 Polkadot Hackathon workshop. Our focus at the event was to introduce and explain the concept of smart contracts to help the attendees better understand the Gear network and its role within the wider Polkadot and Kusama ecosystems. We also held our first workshop in Ankara and a workshop in China, Hangzhou which both went down great!
Additionally, our CEO and Founder participated in various AMAs this month. These events were held in collaboration with UniqueOneVN, AVG and CapitalB. We also participated in various meetups in the USA, including Hotsama Rooftop at the LINE — Consensus Polkadot Meetup and the Polkadot Hackathon Global Series Meetup. The meetups featured some of the most exciting upcoming projects from within the Polkadot ecosystem and they reminded us that the Polkadot Network is built for collaboration between projects, which is exactly the energy that we felt while there.
The end of the Month was also filled to the brim with events thanks to Polkadot Decoded taking place from 28th to 30th of June. Thanks to our community for voting and landing us 3 speaker slots for the event! Our Founder and CEO Nikolay Volf spoke in Berlin, Chief Ecosystem Officer Pavel Salas in Buenos Aires, and our Ecosystem Tech Lead (China) Frozen Xie in Hangzhou China. We also joined the Polkadot Decoded closing party in Mexico City!
In addition, we were incredibly honored to take part in the 2022 Polkadot Hackathon as sponsors! Our focus at the event was to introduce and explain the concept of smart contracts to help the attendees better understand the Gear network and its role within the wider Polkadot and Kusama ecosystems.
We would like to thank all participants that attended our events! We will be sharing more updates next month, however, to stay up to date, we recommend following us on Twitter as well!
