Testnet 6.1 and 6.2 have been deployed, the Witnet Testnet Incentive Program is now live ($10,000 up for grabs in the first round!), events coming up in the US and Europe, and lots more. Start the decade as we mean to go on 🚀!

🤑Announcing Witnet’s Incentivized Testnet Program!

First up— the Witnet Testnet Incentive Program is now live! This is your chance to explore and experiment with Witnet before Mainnet, and get generously rewarded for doing so. For Phase 1, we’re looking for 15–20 technical node operators in the community to stress-test the network, provide valuable feedback, and break stuff. We’ll be distributing $10,000 DAI in this round, including $500 DAI to each of the 5 most active nodes!The details for Phase 2 are still being hashed out. If you wish to have your say on how it’s run, head to the Community Discord and drop a comment.Full details on the program (and how to apply) can be found on the announcement article below.

Calling all tech-savvy node operators: get your portion of the initial $10,000 DAI bounty!

🏗️ Development Update

Witnet Testnet Version Updates

• With the release of Testnet 6.1 came “migratable” capabilities! This means that node operators can now move from one Testnet version to another (and then Mainnet) without having to generate a new set of keys.
• With Testnet 6.2, requests now have provable finality — they are always resolved with either a result OR an error, within a finite time. This means consumer contracts will never get stuck or remain unresolved.

Protocol

• Reveal transactions are now resent until included in blocks, which reduces the chance of erroneous penalties for witnesses
• The protocol now reuses cryptographic context. This means a huge boost in performance and speed.
• RadError and RadonError smart handling was implemented, which enables witnesses to signal errors as the result of data requests, i.e. if a request is querying an API that returns an error, the result of the request will be the error itself.
• Modified data requests to include explicit rewards for witnesses (not just the sum of a data request’s value).

Wallet

• The process of sending transactions is now simpler and easier to use or integrate with other software.
• A full assessment of Actix 0.9.0 (the Rust actors framework) was made. However, it was decided that the resulting changes to base code would be too vast at this point, so other options are being explored.

Sheikah

• In the Aggregation-Tally stages, Filter (filter specs e.g. no. of witnesses) and Reducer (specs on required consensus) parameters have been added.
• Sheikah wallets now have a function (Get balances) to display balance.
• Improvements have been made to error handling; errors are saved in a uniform manner in Vuex.
• Try Data Request result is now shown in Sheikah’s Console component. This means you can import a request template, try it out, and view the result directly from the UI.
• The transaction labels (e.g. value of a transaction) are now saved using the wallet’s key-value store.

Ethereum Bridge

• The rad2sol.js has been converted to a node-js “bin” task that you can run with npx rad2sol. This allows users to simply take a solidity project and install it, without the use of Truffle Box.
• Several npm run tasks have been added to the Truffle Box, including flattening. This enables verification of complex contracts that use experimental Solidity features, and means we can put all project pages into one file.

Witnet <> Ethereum Block Relay

• A proxy contract was developed, which means the Block Relay is now upgradeable!
• Implementations have been made to prevent double-voting in the Active Bridge Set Block Relay.
• The Block Relay Finality gadget is now live: this means only blocks proposed by at least ⅔ of the Active Bridge Set are accepted.

🗣️ Discussion

Our Monthly Q&A is out, where we will attempt to answer in detail the key questions posed by the Witnet community. This month ‘s edition covers Witnet Rust and reputation.

Monthly Q&A : This time we cover Witnet reputation and Rust. 

If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to post them on the community Telegram group or Discord, or send them via email.

Our new community article, crafted by Gorka, covers the vulnerabilities of Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs), and explores the reasons why the Witnet community has chosen not to embrace SGX (or any current TEEs).

The case against using SGX in your crypto project

Please have a read, and let us know in the comment section if you have any questions or suggestions.

🎉 Events

ETHDenver is coming up fast. If you’ll be there, let us know on Telegram or Discord — We’d love to connect with you!

ETHDenver 2020 - Denver, CO - February 14-16

If you can’t make it to Colorado, a few members of the community will be representing Witnet at ETHCC in Paris on the 3–5th of March. They’ll be presenting topics related to Witnet’s infrastructure, from decentralizing workload distribution using VRF and reputation, to exploring how to bridge non-PoW & PoS sidechains to Ethereum.

EthCC

For more Witnet-related content:

• Read the Witnet whitepaper 📃
• Check out Witnet’s code on Github 🤖
• Read Witnet core documents❓
• Subscribe to our blog 📬
• Join the community Telegram group and Discord 💬
• Follow @witnet_io on Twitter 🐦