NKN Bi-weekly Report July 16-July 29, 2019

[zbruceli]

Highlights

• Taxa partnership adds trusted compute (TEE)
• Ankr partnership for decentralized web3.0
• D-Chat Chrome and FireFox extensions available
• Mining Reward Fairness
• New Kind of Proposal (NKP) Updates
• New Multi-Client SDK
• Testnet Future Plans
• NKN-IoTeX IoTalk winners announced
• Community: nknX “Fast Deploy” on Raspberry Pi 3

Mainnet technical development updates

Latest Stats July 29th, 2019:

49 countries

295 ISPs or cloud providers

24,449 full consensus nodes

1 minor revisions to fix bugs

NKN mainnet code development progress over the last two weeks is mainly reflected in nkn, nnet, nkn-wallet-js, nkn-client-js, nkn-sdk-go, nkn-crawler, web-ui, and nkn-cloud-image repositories and different branches.

Pull Request	Commits
15	41

The latest stable release for mainnet is v1.0.4-beta.

(https://github.com/nknorg/nkn/releases )

NKN Mainnet v1.04beta

• Increase measured RTT if ping msg timeout: This will avoid packets being routed to recently timeout neighbor
• Update lastRxTime only when receiving ping message: This may fix the case when remote node has extremely slow upstream bandwidth and all message timeout, but it still stays in other nodes’ neighbors.
• ToRemoteNodeList only returns remote nodes that are not stopped

Taxa partnership adds trusted compute

On July 29th, NKN announced a new partnership with Taxa, which brings together NKN’s decentralized network and Taxa’s trusted compute (TEE) to enable a new breed of high-performance, trustless applications and services. NKN, together with Taxa, will also be collaborating to attract developers to build new innovative Web 3.0 applications. The initial focus will be game streaming and Artificial Intelligence (AI), which will be among the first applications that can take advantage of our combined resources and scale.

NKN and Taxa fuse decentralized network with trusted compute

NKN and Taxa fuse decentralized network with trusted compute

[image] San Mateo, CA (July 29th, 2019) NKN and Taxa Network are pleased to announce a collaboration to bring together decentralized network and trusted compute (TEE) to enable a new breed of high-performance, trustless applications and services. This strategic partnership will allow NKN to integrate Taxa’s compute environment and smart contract platform on NKN’s global P2P network. The result will provide developers a truly secure and decentralized platform for building the next generation of…

Ankr partnership for decentralized web 3.0

NKN is pleased to announce a new partnership with Ankr, a distributed compute platform that uses idle computing resources in data centers and edge devices. NKN and Ankr will combine our crowdsourced computing and networking resources to build the infrastructure for decentralized web3.0. The collaboration will also help carriers get the most out of newly deployed edge computing hardware. Together, we can ensure that everyone has access to secure, private, low cost, and rich Internet experience of the future.

NKN and Ankr Partner to Build Web 3.0

NKN and Ankr Partner to Build Web 3.0

[Ankr-NKN2] July 23rd, 2019 San Francisco, California NKN is proud to announce a new collaboration with Ankr, a distributed compute platform that uses idle computing resources in data centers and edge devices. Both NKN and Ankr have adopted a sharing economy business model that seeks to leverage the unused resources that are available in today’s Internet while advocating for a decentralized web. However, to unlock the full potential of the decentralized web, we need to provide a foundation fo…

D-Chat Chrome and Firefox extensions available

Thanks again to community member Lynn for his continued improvements on his D-Chat messaging application. More than 70+ commits since July 1st!

D-chat is a decentralized chatroom based on NKN pub/sub and messaging services. Supporting e2e encryption, persistent message history, and system notification without the use of a central server.

Chrome and Firefox Extensions:

D-Chat – Get this Extension for 🦊 Firefox (en-US)

D-Chat

Mining Reward Fairness

On July 26th, we addressed concerns by the community regarding the distribution of mainnet mining rewards.

While NKN software and code is exactly the same and fair to all nodes, we cannot guarantee that all nodes will earn equal amount of mining rewards. Two factors that can affect your reward rate are processing power and network conditions. Because NKN uses a routing algorithm that is both random and favors low latency, determined by handshake response time. It is the diversity in node hardware and network connection decides the difference in mining outcome.

Read more on “Why my nodes get so little mining reward, even averaged over long time?”

Why my nodes get so little mining reward, even averaged over long time?

There are some discussions in the router mining community about they are getting much less mining reward after mainnet. The main reason is that some of them have low cost routers, and some of them have limitation on uplink, and some have both. First of all, NKN implements a routing algorithm that is both random and also favoring low latency links. The “latency” in NKN network, which decides which route will be chosen, takes into account of both processing power and network condition. it is not …

New Kind of Proposal (NKP) Updates

NKN community has introduced 5 new NKP’s. These new NKPs include enhancement to our name registration service, Pub/Sub messaging, and transport layer.

[NKP-0007] Include subscribers in txn pool in getsubscribers RPC response

[NKP-0007] Include subscribers in txn pool in getsubscribers RPC response

Currently get subscribers api returns subscribers of a (topic, bucket) in block history. It takes around one block interval (~20s) for new subscribers to be included in the response. This is quite slow for many use cases. Since we impose strict txn check, it’s almost guaranteed that txn in txn pool will eventually be included in block. Thus it makes sense to include subscribers in txn pool together with subscribers in block. Doing so will make subscribe much faster without compromising correctn…

[NKP-0008] Name registration price

[NKP-0008] Name registration price

Making name registration not free is effective against recent abuse of name registration. However, how to determine the price of a name is very difficult. Existing on-chain name service (e.g. ENS) use a complicated bidding design. We think this is generally a good choice (and has been verified), but it’s better to implement such logic in VM. So we are proposing a very simple mechanism: Registering name will cost a constant but small amount of token (e.g. 1 NKN) regardless of which name is bein…

[NKP-0009] NKN Transport layer

[NKP-0009] NKN Transport layer

The NKN message protocol isn’t reliable wiki - networking reliability which is fine in some cases (offers better performance, lower latency), but some use cases might need a reliable protocol implemented by client SDKs. Current message protobuf encoding (simplified) is as follows: Message { Recipient; EncryptedPayload { UseEncryption YES/NO; enc( Payload(Type; Data ) } } where Type can denote difference between BIN/TEXT/ACK packet. I suggest a change that Payload would contain not just Data i…

[NKP-0010] NVPN - Virtual private network functionality in the NKN core

[NKP-0010] NVPN - Virtual private network functionality in the NKN core

First of all: Thanks for making the internet better with NKN, great project, well done, just needs some more features probably! I worked in IT for 5years, been in the blockchain space for 2 years so I hope i can contribute a bit also. Maybe it collides with " [NKP-0009] NKN Transport layer", feel free to close it. Background story of this proposal: I tried to transfer binary files (1MB+) using NKN in 8kb chunks, they arrived sometimes out of order or some packets were dropped. I guess this h…

[NKP-0011] Extend subscription and unsubscribe

[NKP-0011] Extend subscription and unsubscribe

Current subscribe API is not friendly to reliable applications. Specifically: cannot subscribe indefinitely cannot extend existing subscription and has to wait for subscribe to expire before subscribe again cannot unsubscribe 1 and 2 will cause subscriber to miss a few blocks of subscription (and we’ve seen this cause troubles already in d-chat) What I proposed: (Maybe) allow subscribe indefinitely Subscribe again before existing subscription expires will refresh (extend or shorten) existi…

New Multi-Client SDK

NKN recently launched a new Multi-Client javascript SDK. This new SDK is capable of creating multiple client instances that can send/receive data concurrently for improved reliability and lower latency at the cost of bandwidth. More information on Multi-Client and its usage is available on our Github

nkn-multiclient-js

nknorg/nkn-multiclient-js

Testnet Future Plans

Now that NKN Mainnet has been launched, v0.8 testnet will be retired. The following timelines will apply:

• V0.8.x testnet will close on August 15th 04:00 UTC time.
• tNKN to NKN token swap tool will also close FOREVER on August 15th 04:00 UTC time. So hurry up! https://swap4testnet.nkn.org
• There is zero mining reward on v0.8.x testnet from now on until its closure.

Future plans for NKN Testnet

Future plans for NKN testnet

With NKN mainnet Narwhal launched, testnet will soon be deprecated. Here is the timeline: V0.8.x testnet will continue to run for about one month, to enable the remaining tNKN to ERC-20 token swap. https://testnet.nkn.org V0.8.x testnet will close on August 15th 04:00 UTC time. tNKN to NKN token swap tool will also close FOREVER on August 15th 04:00 UTC time. https://swap4testnet.nkn.org There is zero mining reward on v0.8.x testnet from now on until its closure. Once Mainnet completes its …

NKN & IoTex - IoTalks Winners Announced

In connection with the recent IoTalks interview with NKN’s Bruce Li and Allen Dixon, We held a special campaign for the IoTeX & NKN communities to share their best blockchain + IoT + connectivity use cases. From the entries, three winning were chosen along with 2 honorable mentions. Please help us congratulate the campaign winners!

IoTeX & NKN — IoTalks Campaign Winning Submissions!

IoTeX & NKN — IoTalks Campaign Winning Submissions!

Community contributions

nknX “Fast Deploy” on Raspberry Pi 3

Community created node and wallet management tool, nknX, will soon have a new “Fast Deploy” feature. This feature creates a customized script for your Intel or ARM CPU based machine that will quickly and easily install and configure an NKN node in minutes. Bruce successfully tested this feature using a Raspberry Pi 3 in 4 minutes 17 seconds. A newly revamped nknX that includes this “Fast Deploy” feature will be launching in early August.

nknX “Fast Deploy” on Raspberry Pi 3: a successful test drive:

nknX "Fast Deploy" on Raspberry Pi 3: a successful test drive

[nknx-fast-deploy-timer] [Canakit] Tonight I got my new Raspberry Pi running NKN in 4 minute 17 seconds, by copy pasting one line of script. The new “Fast Deploy” by nknx.org works and works great! This is my short write-up: Preparation: Get the hardware goodies Lazy person like me will just get a CanaKit: https://www.canakit.com which includes Raspberry Pi 3 B v1.2 (Quad Core 1.2GHz 64bit CPU, 1GB RAM, 802.11b/g/n WiFi), 32GB microSD, case, power supply, etc. You can find out the full spec…

About NKN

NKN is the new kind of P2P network connectivity protocol & ecosystem powered by a novel public blockchain. We use economic incentives to motivate Internet users to share network connection and utilize unused bandwidth. NKN’s open, efficient, and robust networking infrastructure enables application developers to build the decentralized Internet so everyone can enjoy secure, low cost, and universally accessible connectivity.

Home: https://nkn.org/

Email: [email protected]

Telegram: https://t.me/nknorg

Twitter: https://twitter.com/NKN_ORG

Forum: https://forum.nkn.org

Medium: https://medium.com/nknetwork

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/nknetwork/

Github: https://github.com/nknorg

Discord: https://discord.gg/yVCWmkC

YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/c/NKNORG