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- With GoShimmer V 0.1.0 the IOTA Foundation has launched, earlier than expected, the Alphanet for a coordinator-free IOTA yesterday.
- The main features of the first version of GoShimmer are Autopeering, Gossip, Rate Control and an API for the Tangle.
With the fuss over the separation of the IOTA Foundation from Sergey Ivancheglo aka Come-from-Beyond (CFB) calming down at least for now, it’s time to take a look at the positive events and announcements from yesterday. It was no coincidence that David Sønstebø explained yesterday that the future of the project has never looked better.
With the Alphanet for Coordicide, the technical future for a coordinator-free IOTA was laid yesterday, earlier than foreseen in the roadmap. Furthermore, an intermediate update was announced for the mainnet with chrysalis ahead of Coordicide, which is intended to position the IOTA Tangle as an enterprise-ready solution.
IOTA Foundation releases Alphanet for Coordicide
Yesterday a blog post announced the long-awaited launch of the Coordicide alphanet, with version 0.1.0. As the IOTA Foundation states, a release was originally planned for the second quarter, based on the Rust-based node software Bee.
However, due to the success of the Hornet team and the close cooperation with the GoShimmer team, the approach was adapted and an early release became possible. In the blog post Jakub Cech states:
A key part of the effort was building the hive.go library. This library contains a number of core node components used by both GoShimmer and Hornet. This streamlines the development of both projects and will significantly speed up development both on the Coordicide alphanet and the current IOTA mainnet.
The most important features introduced with version 0.1.0 are Autopeering, Gossip, Rate Control and an API for the Tangle. Besides Gossip, which provides the network layer to send and receive transactions and an API that provides an interface to send data transactions and query the tangle, autopeering is certainly the most exciting feature.
It ensures that each node automatically finds its peers. Currently a manual peering process is being used. However, this process can be subject to attacks (e.g. social engineering) to influence the network topology. In order to prevent this possibility of attack and also to simplify the process of setting up new nodes, the Coordicide whitepaper introduced autopeering. In this process, each node seeks out its neighbor and connects to them automatically.
The first tests of the autopeering were very promising, states Cech:
In our tests, a new node joining the network takes only a few seconds to discover and connect to neighbors. Similarly, when a node goes offline, its neighbors find an alternative within a few seconds. This responsiveness of the network is particularly important for the dynamic environments we are designing IOTA for, where nodes can join and become active at any time, for any period of time — especially important with sporadic connections. In our tests, a fresh network of close to 200 nodes converged in less than 30 seconds.
Future versions will implement snapshots, Mana, a first FPC implementation, Tip Selection and a Mana based Rate Control. In addition, future versions of GoShimmer will “also include a number of performance improvements”. Coordicide’s updated roadmap foresees the launch of an Incentivized Coordicide Test Network in July 2020. Coordicide research and development is expected to be completed by the end of 2020.
The news about yesterday’s “drama” has apparently not left the IOTA price unaffected. Within the top 20 in terms of market capitalization, the IOTA price has recorded the largest loss at -9.1% (at the time of writing) and is currently at around USD 0.32.
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