ARK Development Report - March 8, 2024

Welcome to our latest Weekly Development Report, where we spotlight the valiant efforts of our development team. This week was filled with activity as we focused on various tasks. A new version of ARK Connect was released, addressing reported bugs and enhancing the Ledger import process. In addition, we announced the launch of the initial public testnet network for Mainsail. This testnet is open for anyone interested in helping us refine and test it.

#Development Summary

Below is a breakdown of total commits and authors by project for development activity over the last week from March 1st through March 8th, 2024.

Overall, the team has demonstrated consistent productivity and engagement over this period, with a total of 82 commits across all projects.

The number of commits and data for each project will fluctuate every week depending on internal sprints, objectives, and difficulty.

#ARK Connect Weekly Progress

Throughout the week, we rolled out the latest version of ARK Connect (v1.5.0) for both Chrome and Firefox . This update addresses several user-reported issues and resolves additional issues identified during our testing. Alongside bug fixes, we’ve implemented various improvements. Key highlights of this release include:

• Enhanced onboarding flow: Pick up right where you left off when reopening the extension.
• Fine-tuned Ledger import interface.
• Improved labeling for Ledger default wallets.
• Corrected crypto value formatting issues that some users encountered.
• Miscellaneous bug fixes and enhancements.

Check out the complete changelog on GitHub .

You can update/download ARK Connect by visiting ARKconnect.io .

In the next release, we aim to further enhance the Ledger import flow to minimize user errors and improve the experience. Additionally, we’ll address the issue of being able to inadvertently lock an extension during wallet creation. The update will also involve migrating to Tailwind CSS, introducing a disconnect option to the connection modal, and implementing various other improvements and fixes.

#Mainsail Weekly Progress

This week, we released the initial public version of the Mainsail testnet network, marking a significant step forward and a milestone in its development journey.

For this initial release, we’ve prepared comprehensive documentation and tools to assist anyone interested in testing this early version. Throughout the week, several active community delegates have joined us in testing and reporting bugs and issues, which we are promptly addressing. We are thankful for their participation and hope it continues in the coming weeks and months.

To learn more about the early testnet and how to get involved, you can read our introduction blog post here.

This week, we have accomplished the following:

#Mainsail

• Fixed active validators calculation in the validator-set-vote-weighted package and corrected the vote balance calculation.
• Added support for running validators in Mainsail Docker images.
• Refactored transaction schemas: now, the default allowed amount is 0, with amount deduction and schema changes becoming responsibilities of transactions that use the amount field (e.g., transfer, multi-payment). This resolves the reported multi-payment burn issue.
• Added the env:paths:clear command to mainsail and mainsail-api, enabling the clearing of common environment paths such as data, config, temp, logs, as well as specific paths like plugins and state exports.
• Implemented a limit of one username registration per sender in the pool.
• Enhanced logging with a list of loaded validators, reporting active, stand-by, resigned, and unknown validators registered in validators.json based on the latest known state.
• Improved documentation based on feedback and reported bugs.

#Mainsail EVM

• Introduced support for the initial evm_call JSON-RPC method, enabling users to call deployed EVM contracts like ERC20.
• Enhanced EVM error handling for the transact method.
• Implemented a transaction handler context providing the wallet repository and EVM instance to the transaction handler. The transaction pool and collator utilize an EVM mock that doesn’t run bytecode, while the block processor employs a real EVM instance.

Next week, we’ll continue monitoring the public testnet, addressing any arising issues promptly. Additionally, we’ll work on a new crypto package demo for browsers (for integration into ARK Vault), transition from CommonJS to ESM modules (ECMAScript), address reported issues related to validator resignation and API responses, and continue on the EVM PoC implementation.

#Feedback & Feature Requests

If you are using our open-source products and would like to provide feedback or request a feature, please feel free to contact us via the contact pages for the specific product you are using or open an issue on GitHub.

Quick access links to GitHub issues pages:

• Mainsail
• ARK Connect (Extension)
• ARK Connect (Demo)
• ARK Scan
• ARK Vault

#Follow on Twitter (X)

Follow us on X (Formerly Twitter) and keep checking the blog to stay up-to-date on all of our new releases. We post a weekly development report so you can easily see what we’ve been up to and follow along our journey towards making your decentralized future a reality.