Hey everyone,

how you all doing? Hope you are ready for some fresh github news, because there are tones of them. We will have to do some investigative work too fully understand what is exactly going on, so channel your inner Sherlock Holmes and if you find flaws in my logic, be free to point it out in comments.

EIP 712

First let's check how is our old friend EIP 712 doing. We got some positive signals here. It seems that Ethereum devs that need to approve of this change started to review EIP 712 in detail.

Two devs really went trough all the details of EIP 712 and they proposed some changes. I'd say half of the changes they proposed are either to clarify something in standard (in other words to make it's definition concise) or something really minor like a typo.

Other approximately 25% are propositions about utilizing existing features in Ethereum code which I think should not be that big of a problem.

Remaining propositions are ones that worry me. I must immediately say that I am not an expert and that is why they worry me. Issue is that this last group are changes that can't be achieved in current state of things (according to the reviewer) and community of devs that proposed EIP 712 need to find a workaround.

Now, two things can happen. In quicker solution community really finds a suitable workaround and they quickly just swap it with current implementation.

In other scenario, a suitable workaround is impossible and they have to open a change request for that blocker (example: some change to Solidity language) before they can finish EIP 712. This scenario takes more time because first some other change request has to go trough all this process EIP 712 is going trough before they can get back to finishing up EIP 712.

I repeat, I am not an expert and can't give any opinion if some of this propositions are really blockers. All I can do is follow their thread and let you know when someone with more knowledge says something.

Ithaca

Ithaca is island in Greece most famous for it being a home to Odysseus, a Greek hero that fought in Troy. Now you must be wondering, "BOR4, how this has to do anything with raiden?". Well, this Friday raiden devs created a milestone in all their repositories called Ithaca.

This is where our investigation starts. What is this milestone that came out of the blue?

If you remember post from last week, we noticed that pathfinding repository has interesting tag on some of the issues called "pre-mvp release".

Well, all the issues with that tag ended up in the "Ithaca" milestone goal. So, we can conclude that Ithaca is code name for a raiden release before MVP.

But, raiden devs didn't stop there. They added one more milestone to all of the repositories called "Red Eyes".

Red Eyes

Investigation continues and we need to find out what is "Red Eyes" milestone goal.

Raiden main repo will help us with that task. If you remember, raiden main repo had two milestone goals for very long time. One called "next minor release" and other called "MVP". "Next minor release" is still there (details about it are in raiden paragraph), but "MVP" goal is missing.

All of the issues from "MVP" goal were moved to "Red Eyes" goal. If we put all the clues together we can come up to the conclusion that "Red Eyes" is code name for raiden MVP goal.

disclaimer

Upcoming paragraphs are current coverage of what tasks are in milestone goals of each repository. Developers can add and remove tasks from them as they wish, so current situation is not set in stone.

Raiden devs usually follow their plan pretty closely, but some changes in plans occur now and then. So, don't take current situation as 100% correct one.

raiden

Raiden repository was very active last week.

Developers finished implementing state machine. We can now be pretty sure they are done because "Make channel recoverable by using state machine" issue was put to done. That issue was one of two remaining ones in "next minor release" milestone goal.

Now, question is, why raiden repository still has "next minor release" milestone goal plus "Ithaca" and "Red Eyes". If we check "Ithaca" milestone goal in raiden repository we can see that it is empty. Plus, there is only one more issue in "next minor release" goal and there is already a pull request waiting to be approved that solves it.

My conclusion is devs just didn't bother with switching issues from "next minor release" to "Ithaca" because "next minor release" will be reached very fast. Instead they just left "Ithaca" empty, so anyone can see that they don't plan any big changes for raiden before next minor release.

They can still add few commits here and there that fix something they came across, but there is no big development planned for raiden before "Ithaca".

Raiden's "Red Eyes" has remaining issues from MVP goal inside. They removed some meta issues so milestone is more clear. It seems that after "Ithaca" release they will focus on raiden's security and finish the recoverability issue. I won't go in more details in this post because it will become too long. If you want more info, just ask in comments.

contracts

Contracts were not that active this week, but now it is obvious why.

Remember how last week I said that I wouldn't be surprised if contracts were ready for "next minor release"?

Well devs created "Ithaca" milestone goal and left it empty. I wouldn't say they forgot, I'd say they are saying contracts are indeed ready.

"Red Eyes" has 11 issues inside. Even tho 11 issues is quite a number, by reading their description I'd say most issues are not that big and time consuming.

Contracts were worked on for months, so this state of things does not surprise me. Kudos to loredana for her amazing job here.

monitoring service

Monitoring service was a bit of enigma last week. Since it didn't have any milestones in it, we were left in dark for a bit.

But now we have "Ithaca" and "Red Eyes" so everything is clear.

"Ithaca" has 5 issues inside. Description of issues inside don't scream some complicated development so we should not be worried I think.

"Red Eyes" is empty which makes little sense. That would mean that they don't plan any development here between minor release and MVP. While that might be the case, more probable outcome is that they will add some issues there as well.

pathfinding service

Pathfinding service was very active last week.

Developers completed three out of six issues for "Ithaca" (aka "pre-mvp release issues).

Remaining issues are related to tests and testing and Matrix. Since there is lots of talk about testing the software I can do a small post dedicated solely to that topic. If you are up for more reading, just write in comments and it will happen =).

Matrix is communication protocol I don't know much about, but I will try to learn it and write few sentences about it. We can even do Testing Matrix is one post?

"Red Eyes" situation is same as in montiroing service, so we have to wait and see.

raiden libs

Libs are as we aready said a helper repository for remaining repositories. They put things that are common to all the other repositories here, so they can easily reuse the code.

Libs got both milestones goal and in "Ithaca" there is one issue, while "Red Eyes" is empty.

We don't have to worry too much about this repository because almost always things that end up here are already implemented in some other repository and they are just extracted here.

microraiden

GOTO last week post =).

conclusion

Another week another post. This one didn't go so much into the nature of issues as much as I tried to cover situation from milestone goals point of view. If I did both in same post I think it would just be too long. If you have any questions just ask, I will answer in comments.

Your support is greatly appreciated as always. I see every comment here, but I don't answer ones that are purely supportive to prevent clutter in comments section, but every comment brings smile to my face =).

Enjoy your week,

BOR4