Telos Blockchain Network — Weekly Report — October 25th, 2018

We could certainly launch Telos today.

Let that sink in a moment.

We could launch Telos today. Different BPs in the Telos Contributors Group have spun up networks almost 30 times checking different parameters. We’ve kept the most recent stage of the testnet alive for over 10 million blocks and almost 150 million transactions. That is more blocks and transactions than many high-value blockchains. So there’s really no arguing whether we could launch the Telos mainnet today. We could.

But we won’t.

We won’t launch the mainnet today or tomorrow, and it’s fairly unlikely that we’ll vote to launch on October 31st. We might, but I’m guessing that we won’t. Why not? Because we will probably still have one checklist item that isn’t green yet.

One!

The Telos Contributors Group has made promises not to launch the network until all promised features are ready. So if we have one item that’s not a green check mark we won’t launch. And that is KILLING me! It is so hard to know we could launch but not to do it because of one missing checkmark. But it’s the right approach.

The checkmark in question belongs to the ‘arbitration’ contract. I expect everything else to be done by Wednesday’s vote. The ‘arbitration’ contract is a single contract that handles the election and management of Telos arbitrators, the filing of cases (currently 15 distinct types), the handling of messages between parties, evidence submission, arbitrator recusal, tribunal proceedings, rendering decisions, enforcement by the BPs, and preservation of cases for which there are not enough funds to collect. This is a BIG contract. (One that no one has managed to deliver yet.) For a little perspective, if the Telos ‘arbitration’ contract were a DApp, it would be one of the top 3 most complex DApps in EOSIO. It’s exciting to be working on this, but it’s also frustrating, because — have I mentioned — we could easily launch Telos tomorrow.

When we do launch (soon, I pinky-swear), we will deliver all of our promised pieces. Now, we may still have some pieces to improve, like enabling more voting options or adding web portals for submitting proposals — things like that. But these are just conveniences that we will add as we go along. Everything that we promised will be there at launch. We all agree that launching Telos with all our promises fulfilled is more important than launching tomorrow, more important than “being done”, more important that launching on Guy Fawkes Day (Remember, Remember the 5th of November!). And so we will keep working away. A little bit longer. Because standing behind your promises can be agonizing, but it’s always worth it.

— Douglas Horn

Checklist Updates at a Glance

Functional/In Testing → Complete & Tested

Telos Foundation System
Agree upon ABP launch group
Lost tokens processed (processing will continue until launch)
Define final TLOS token balance (EOS snapshot + Rewards +/- lost/compromised keys)
Here’s what we accomplished this week:

Testnet 2.6 reaches 10 million blocks, 149 million transactions, 48 BPs
Telos ABPs selected
Testnet relaunch and voting system improvements
Telos key prefix changed (back) from TLOS to EOS
More TIPs voted and introduced
Telos Interim RAM Administration Director position paper
Introducing TLOS: The Telos Token

1. Testnet 2.6 reaches 10 million blocks, 149 million transactions, 48 BPs

The Telos testnet is hitting big milestones. On Wednesday, EOS Green produced the 1- millionth block on this stage of the testnet. Even more impressive, that includes over 149 million transactions thanks to ongoing stress testing by J.T. Buice (Big Iron BP/Kainos). This number signifies Telos’ commitment to launching only with an established and resilient network in place. There are currently 48 block producers who have have either successfully produced blocks on the testnet or are in the process of being rotated in to do so.

1. Telos ABPs selected

The Telos white paper calls for six public appointed block producers (ABPs) to launch the Telos mainnet after a successful “Go” vote. For nearly two weeks, the Launch Directors (see last week’s report) have been running test launches and dialing in various tests. The current count for full network launch rehearsals is 28. Now six Telos BPs have either completed all the requirements or are in the late stages of completing them so that the ABPs who will actually launch the network have been selected. This is a crucial step towards launching the network. The Telos ABPs are Blindblocart (Seychelles), CalEOS (USA), EOS Barcelona (Spain), EOS Metal (Iceland), KainosBP (Texas), and Telos Venezuela (Venezuela). Congrats to all of the newly selected ABPs — our launch is in your very capable hands!

1. Testnet relaunch and voting system improvements

The code for the final Telos testnet, Stage 3, is complete and in the process of merging. Telos Testnet Stage 3 is scheduled to be launched by one of the ABPs from the launch rehearsal group next week. This is expected to be the version of the testnet that continues beyond launch for the foreseeable future. This version will bring several new improvements and features including the injection of the Telos genesis accounts and key-recovery accounts submitted to date. Telos community members will be able to join the network, find their accounts and build their confidence and excitement about the upcoming launch.

Craig Branscom (GoodBlock) has been leading the development team in refactoring the voting system being used on the ‘worker proposal’, ‘ratify.amend’, and ‘arbitration’ contracts. In the previous version of this system, Madalin Barbulescu (Amplified Telos) discovered that a loophole in the voting process would enable a member to vote multiple times in the same election cycle. This was eliminated by revisions from Craig, Madalin, Peter Bue and Ed Silva.

Ed Silva (GoodBlock) refined the ‘removebp’ feature which removes block producers for missing too many blocks (so that other BPs can cycle in and hopefully provide better operations for a period of time). Madalin Barbulescu, and the rest of the Telos development team contributed feedback towards the solution to many edge cases that were revealed in stress-testing.

The development team has also designed a new, more robust ‘eosio.system’ system to resolve the issue of latency in the blockchain that caused additional missed blocks to be calculated where none existed. Additionally, the ‘trail service’, ‘ratify.amend’, and ‘worker.proposal’ contracts are being merged to the source repository and the newly forked ‘eosio.contracts’ repository so that Telos is compatible with future upstream merges.

Marlon Williams (EOS Miami) designed a new user interface for the Sqrl wallet to streamline the Worker Proposal submission process. Users will be able to propose, read, and vote WPS proposals from the main Sqrl interface. Marlon is currently working on adding interfaces for the ‘ratify.amend’, ‘arbitration’, and generic TIP-5 token voting contracts so that they will be easily used through Sqrl after launch.

1. Telos key prefix changed (back) from TLOS to EOS

When the Telos project first began, we anticipated there would soon be dozens of similar EOSIO chains and that as a convenience to users, changing the public key prefix would allow easy identification of which chain keys belonged to. Now, due to coding changes by Block.One, Scatter, and others, it became clear that it will be more convenient for users to have Telos public keys start with the EOS prefix as key prefixes are soon to be changed altogether and only ‘EOS’ will be preserved as a legacy key prefix. There are more immediate advantages as well including better Scatter integration at launch. The new code will go into the testnet with the EOS prefix upon launch of Stage 3. In fact, the new (old?) key prefix is the main reason for relaunching the testnet.

1. More TIPs voted and introduced

Several Telos Improvement Proposals (TIPs) were proposed, voted on and withdrawn this week as the Telos Launch Group continues to propose changes to network governance and operations.

TIPs 15–19 were previously withdrawn from consideration by Ian Panchevre of Amplified Telos, who later requested a down vote on these TIPs as a formality for closing the proposal process. All TIPs were voted down with a vote of: Yes — 0, No — 30, Abstain — 0

Text: https://github.com/Telos-Foundation/tips/blob/master/tip-0015.md

TIP-23: Increase block producer inflation on a one year schedule. This sets a very focused schedule for additional inflation for block producers for BPs. Passed with a vote of: Yes — 28, No — 3, Abstain — 6.

Text: https://github.com/Telos-Foundation/tips/blob/master/tip-0023.md

TIP-27 Title: Creating a RAM reserve for RAM Administration. Introduced for consideration by Telos Foundation Interim RAM Administration Director, Jan Smit (Dutch EOS)

https://github.com/Telos-Foundation/tips/blob/master/tip-0027.md

TIP-28: Modifying the TLOS token economy. Introduced for consideration by Ian Panchevre (Amplified Telos).

https://github.com/Telos-Foundation/tips/blob/master/tip-0028.md

1. Telos Interim RAM Administration Director position paper

This paper by Interim RAM Administration Director Jan Smit (Dutch EOS) defines the roles of the RAM director and RAM advisory council and their obligation to establish fair and stable RAM prices on Telos. The document expands on the RAM specifications outlined in the Telos white paper by holding specific roles within the Telos Foundation accountable for maintaining a functional RAM pricing and distribution system.

Jan and Douglas Horn (GoodBlock) spoke for an hour on Telos Talks, Weds Oct. 24th about how RAM will work on Telos, how Jan’s office will work with block producers to limit speculation, and to vigorously debate the merits and concerns around Jan’s TIP-28 proposal. It’s required reading for anyone interested in RAM on Telos, especially prospective speculators.

Read the full document here: https://medium.com/@teloslogical/telos-interim-ram-administration-director-position-paper-ace4aaf7c467

See the Telos Talks show here:

1. Introducing TLOS: The Telos Token

Read this comprehensive guide to the TLOS token to learn how to acquire TLOS and about the many ways they can be used and exchanged on Telos. The guide also explains about how TLOS tokens will be distributed to community members including launch group contributors and EOS genesis snapshot token holders. If you’re looking for one paper to share with friends about Telos, this is it!

Read the full TLOS guide here: https://medium.com/@teloslogical/introducing-tlos-the-telos-token-d6af451e161f

Join the Telos conversation and get more info!

Telegram: https://t.me/HelloTelos

Twitter: https://twitter.com/HelloTelos

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TelosFoundation.io

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/TheTelosNetwork

Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/TelosNetwork/

Discord: https://discordapp.com/channels/466757729508261889/468500684858327040

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/telosfoundation.io/

(Link to original article https://medium.com/@teloslogical/telos-blockchain-network-weekly-report-october-25th-2018-c044c03f7fb)