ChainSafe Conference and Ethermint Testnet; UX Working Group Chain Registry; Ape Unit Stewarding UX Working Group; NFT Working Group RFC on Specs; Confio Delivers CosmWasm IBC Testnet and New Features (Random Beacon, Multi-Sig, Sub-Keys, IBC Visualizer, Dapp StarterKit); Chainapsis Delivers New Keplr Features (Akash & Starname Networks, Vesting Accounts, CW20 Tokens, Advanced Account Importing, Multi-Currency); Althea gets Peggy an Audit from CertiK; ZKSummit Videos Coming Online; WalletConnect Published v2 Alpha; Akash & IBC Relayer
Welcome to the seventh edition of our bi-weekly update! We’ll be using this space to highlight some of the exciting activities that took place at the Interchain Foundation over the last two weeks. This will include some check-in meetings that occurred with various funding recipients, as well as goings-on that members of the Interchain ecosystem might find interesting and informative.
If any of the updates are especially relevant to what you are working on, feel free to drop us a line at hello@interchain.io.
If you’re interested in applying for funding, take a look at our process, our request for proposals and submit at apply.interchain.io by February 14th for consideration in Q1 of 2021.
If you missed the last update, check it out at ICF Update — Nov 17th.
Look out this week for the ChainSafe Conference CSCON[0] with talks running from December 2nd until December 4th. Notable Cosmos contributors Arianne Flemming, Billy Rennekamp, Ethan Buchman, Federico Kunze, James Preswich, Jelena Djuric and Peng Zhong will all be speaking. Tickets are FREE so be sure to pick one up here.
Also look out for the first Ethermint testnet! You can read about the announcement here and use the faucet to get some free tokens. Ethermint is ramping up for a mainnet launch sometime early next year so be sure to follow updates to make sure you have access to any air drops that may take place!
The UX Working Group had its third successful call on Nov 23rd. The next call is on Dec 4th and will continue to meet bi-weekly on Tuesdays at 3pm UTC. The calendar can be seen here and the event can be imported with this link. Please join the Telegram group to contribute. Right now the group is looking for feedback on the chain registry system that Jack Zampolin has built an initial version of. The CLI for registering a chain is here and the repository the chain info ends up in is here. This provides a convenient and transparent place to store seed nodes, genesis files and checkpoints for fast sync and light nodes all namespaced by chain id.
Ape Unit finalized a service agreement with the ICF this week to ensure the UX working group is properly stewarded. This will include administering and recording the meetings as well as synthesizing the results of the discussions into standards and recommendations for designers and developers to use while building Interchain user interfaces. They will also be building proof of concept apps that demonstrate these techniques.
The NFT working group, stewarded by Persistence One and IXO, is still looking for feedback on the NFT specs that are in development. This is the “Request For Comment” (RFC) phase and they can be found on the @internft github account. Specifically RFC-003 covers the bare bone implementation and RFC-004 covers more advanced capabilities. Get your comments in now before the spec is finalized!
Confio has released a massive set of new features on CosmWasm within the new Musselnet testnet. This release is using the latest RC of Cosmos SDK v0.40.0-rc4, also known as the Stargate release. That means IBC is enabled! Other new features released recently include a Random Beacon that allows contracts to use random numbers for anything from games to gambling. They’ve also developed smart contract Multi-Sigs with CosmJS support and implemented Sub-Keys that allow users to assign capabilities to specific keys and rotate them out for security or recovery purposes. There’s also a new DappStarter Kit that lets you use the create-react-app scaffolding tool to quickly build a CosmWasm app. They’ve also released the first work around an IBC Visualizer that will make debugging IBC transactions much better for all Interchain developers.
Chainapsis has released a number of new features to the Keplr browser extension. The biggest one is support for governance features! Others include adding Akash and Starname networks to the default list of protocols (remember Keplr can be used with any network by following this example). They’ve also added the ability to automatically detect CosmWasm CS20 tokens. The app also now supports vesting token accounts, the ability to import a private key directly or choose the derivation path for a mnemonic phrase, and shows your balance in a variety of new currencies.
Althea completed all recommendations from CertiK as part of an audit recently completed on the Peggy smart contracts. This brings peggy one step closer to production ready as the work approaches a mainnet launch on the Cosmos Hub. Join the #peggy 🐖 channel in the community discord for support, follow their twitter for announcements on the next public call and check out previous recordings on the Althea Youtube channel.
ZKSummit 6 successfully ran last week with two days of cutting edge cryptography talks. The videos are slowly being uploaded to youtube as part of a playlist where you can catch all of the replays if you missed them the first time around. Take a look at the ICF track that included talks from Chris Goes from Interchain GmbH on “Fault isolation and privacy in cross-chain shielded transfers” and Ania Piotrowska from Nym Technologies on “Nym: Combining mixnet and anonymous credentials to protect privacy” as well as a showcase profile of Secret Network.
WalletConnect recently published the first alpha release of the v2 with Interchain support. This is one step closer to a world where dapps and wallets can connect across the wide gaps between our screens and our hearts. Follow lead developer Pedro Gomes’s twitter for progress and opportunities to argue about standards and acronyms.
Akash has made progress on the IBC relayer in coordination with the IBC team at Interchain GmbH to make sure it’s stable for the Stargate Release. In parallel Akash is using the relayer on their own current adversarial incentivized testnet currently in phase 3, take a look at the details to participate.
Credit: Source link
