Cypher Update — May the 4th

Cypher closed testnet will continue throughout the month of May in preparation for open testing in June (date to be announced).

Cypher is Tangram’s final testnet before Tangram’s mainnet release.

The reason for the continuation of Cypher closed testnet throughout the month of May is three-fold for cypnodeand bamboo :

1. Serf only serves for node discovery and has several drawbacks and that blocks Tangram in enhancing the network communication protocol — not a blocker
2. Resolving the issue in bamboo (*see below)
3. Preparing install scripts and documentation for the wider community.

Tangram’s developers have decided that it is essential to halt Serf within Tangram’s network architecture and have the network communication libraries modularised for an extensible networking stack. This solves many challenges that Serf has intorduced, and reduces the need for many parallel connections. Consider these as enhancements, not blockers.

You can find one of the new libraries here: https://github.com/cypher-network/cyp2px which will host CYP2Px, the Cypher/Tangram Wire Protocol.

It will include the RFCs describing the protocol and a reference implementation of this protocol.

This new protocol will be included as part of the required updates to Tangram’s whitepaper but also a technical introduction to the new protocol for p2p node communication and how it facilitates the exchange of Tangram blockchain information between peers throughout the network, once completed.

Current critical issues to be done across cypnode and bamboo (CLI Wallet) include:

Cypnode:

1. Re-architecture of Tangram’s P2P node communication protocol to include (peer discovery, block synchronization, mempool synchronization, block propagation, transaction exchange, etc…) — Not blocking the finalization of closed beta testing.

Bamboo:

1. *Unable to verify MLSAG error, when receiving a second payment and then trying to spend, ends up with an MLSAG verify failed error

The above error has been triaged and fixed and an additional issue has been identified as a cause which is to be implemented to close the issue, which is defined as:

2. Work on combining the commitments into one transaction so that they may be spent as per the calculated output commitment

Bamboo issues will be resolved within the month of May and released to Cypher closed testnet testers.

Apart from the above, for the past week, many discussions have been had, implementation to node synchronization has been improved, and we have seen thus far that all nodes agree to the network's height. Further enhancements can be made to increase the safety and efficiency of nodes synchronizing to the most up-to-date information across the network, however, this will be done at a later stage, post-open-beta testing completion.

Other issues do exist ( cypherand bamboo) however, these are trivial, albeit required for open-beta testing and quality of life for the larger community to get up and running with cypnode and bamboo — for example, install scripts and documentation (as mentioned above).

An upcoming up-to-date release strategy will be provided in the coming weeks to inform the community where we are and ensure all community members understand more clearly the road ahead.

Thinking of contributing to Cypher?

You can find Cypher’s codebase here: https://github.com/cypher-network/

Connect with any of the core team members and/or community managers, OR simply create an issue/pull request!

If you’re interested, have questions or feedback:

Visit our website: www.tangrams.io

Read our blog: www.medium.com/@tangramd

Join the forum: forum.tangrams.io

Subscribe on Reddit: www.reddit.com/r/tangram

Discover us on Discord: www.discord.tangrams.io

Message us on Telegram: https://t.me/Tangrams

Follow us on Twitter: www.twitter.com/tangram

Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCoe5hPG_zjltaG_j2n1Oh4Q