Zenon Network April 2023 Community Update

(Any views expressed in the below are the personal views of the author and should not form the basis for making investment decisions, nor be construed as a recommendation or advice to engage in investment transactions.)

Starship update April 2023 - community developers are hitting on all cylinders.

This month we are trying a short version of the update. Let us know on twitter if you like this new (shorter) format.

Developer Update

• The HTLC and Bridge pull requests (PR) were accepted and merged into go-zenon. The network sporked and was upgraded to go-zenon v0.0.5. All nodes and pillars upgraded without issue.
• Several S Y R I U S PRs were accepted and v0.0.6 was released.
• Github Actions were accepted into all repos. Going forward community members can audit and download trustless releases of code on zenon-network.
• @DigitalSloth updated the explorer and API playground on zenonhub.io to support the new bridge and HTLC functionality. In addition, he released new pages for AZ Status and the node software version. In the coming months look forward to new user account functionality including custom address labels, privates notes and custom transaction alerts.
• @Sumamu and his team worked with @0x3639 & @Romeotheonly to engage ChainSafe to audit the Solidity contracts for the new bridge. In addition, he announced plans to develop an incentivized marketing plan. Check out the latest discussion on the forum. Finally, he started to discuss turing complete zero knowledge general computation L2 scaling solutions in the forum. !wen L2?
• The community nominated guardians to oversee the trustless bridge.
• The ETH <> ZTS trustless bridge will go live in May.
• @George started work on an AMM embedded contract and is finishing up the PTLC embedded contract. He has expressed interest in working on dynamic plasma, sentinels, and smart contract plumbing next.
• @AlienC0der and @Mik3Mast3rs continue to work on WalletConnect integration for S Y R I U S v0.0.7. Alien will start work on the EVM compatible extension chain next.
• @Vilkris and @Sol continue to work on native atomic swaps in S Y R I U S v0.0.7. Check out this youtube video showing their progress.
• @CryptoFish has been updating the C# CLI, C# Sdk, and Java Sdk as sporks are adopted. C# CLI commands can be found on the hypercore.one forum. He has also been working on S Y R I U S testing and bug fixes.
• @CryptoFish, @0x3639, @Vilkris, @Sol & @George setup a 5 pillar testnet. HTLCs and the Bridge sporks were adopted. You can find more tooling information here. Check out the testnet explorer. @CryptoFish is working to setup the Bridge in the testnet.
• @DrBlaze continues to work on the native iOS wallet. He indicated beta testing will start soon.
• @MrKaine discussed several important topics on Telegram over the last 45 days. Those conversations are quoted below.

We can design a system that inscribes code into Bitcoin that is used as a pointer to an execution environment. The pointer can be either active or inactive, depending on the state of the tapscript. Mr. Kaine

How to deploy smart contracts without touching the L1? Using an extension-chain. Basically a type of sidechain that can run in parallel and have a dual-pegging mechanism for moving assets between NoM and the extension-chain. Mr. Kaine

Dynamic Plasma has 2 implementation steps:
1. Order transactions by Plasma amount and remove the cap
2. Switch to CPU friendly PoW (RandomX)
Mr. Kaine

Extension chains are the fastest way for smart contracts at the moment. Dynamic Plasma and extension chains are the next milestones for the community devs. Mr. Kaine

Marketing Update

• Zenon.info published an article about the Liquidity & Bootstrapping Provisioning Campaign associated with the new bridge.
• A community member launched a new Twitter personality called @ScribeZNN and was funded by a generous pillar (tapwoot??) for the first two months.
• The community forum recently passed 200 members and discord passed 600 members. Slowly then suddenly. The forum community health continues to grow every week.

• $BAG needs a new chair. !wen moon?