Charles Hoskinson on “Thursday Release, Delegation Portfolios and Hardware Updates” - 19/08/2020
(Written by @Eric_Czuleger)
Charles Hoskinson recently released a video about delegation portfolios and the latest hardware update.
Improvements everywhere
Daedalus version 2.2 will be coming out with Smash and the new node, version 1.19. We believe that this will add significant performance improvements. Last minute checks are underway, but we believe that this will be launching on Thursday August 20th.
There should be an update notification through Daedalus itself. This improves sync speeds, chain validation, the opening and closing of databases and of course, improvement overall. We will continue to work on performance but we are quite proud of our team. We have been able to make significant improvements to optimization. In the next couple weeks, the wallet backend will be improved as well.
Of the 15 top exchanges we only have 2 currently in the red. We are working directly with these exchanges to get them where they need to be. We are looking at the logs which are provided to us by them. This is iterative development and we are quickly moving toward where we need to go. We are optimistic that this week we will resolve some of the key tail issues.
In some cases, this improvement will be 100 times faster than previous performance. Our teams have done some incredible work over the last few weeks. We are working closely with SPOs as we find out what features they are looking for and challenges they are experiencing. We are looking specifically about how to help smaller stake pool operators.
New features
We are also looking forward to September which will include hardware wallets, and QR codes in order to enhance security features. Atix is currently working on multisig as we discuss coordination servers and how to maximize decentralization. We will discuss this more in September once Shelley has been digested more completely.
There have also been discussions about a Cardano UX index. This would be a numerical way of looking at releases to enforce discipline on standards for different stakeholder groups whether they be enterprise, exchange,or consumer groups. We are now talking with Daedalus, benchmarking and other teams to develop an end to end standard for user experience. This will come, it is a high priority. It is a post-Shelley refining requirements.This is the kind of polishing we are doing right now.
Given the Shelley release and the advanced architecture we have been able to achieve a 100x performance boost. We can also go from user feedback to new feature development rapidly. If this is the trend we will become incredibly strong by the beginning of Q1. We hope that everyone enjoys the release and the substantial performance improvement that comes along with it.
DELEGATION PORTFOLIOS AND HARDWARE UPDATES
New features
In the beginning, when Shelley was launched, one wallet could delegate to one pool. If people wanted to delegate to many pools, multiple wallets would have to be created to delegate to various pools. This was the initial setup, but it has some undesirable consequences.The lack of choice to do one-to-many delegation means that individuals are encouraged to do atomic swaps. This means that they delegate all of their ada at one time.
We are now going to implement a feature which allows one-to-many delegation. We will also introduce the idea of delegation portfolios. This is user driven. The idea is that in Daedalus, the tiles which represent stake pools can be selected and ratios can be determined. This will represent delegation of ada stake. This creates a de facto portfolio. Our hope if that we can encapsulate this in a JSON file.
Building portfolios
This means that individuals can delegate to this portfolio, but they can also share. This means that users can create a playlist or portfolio to share with the broader community. The Cardano Foundation could, for example delegate to a vetted portfolio. The user would then be able to use and share this. We have a product called Atlas coming out, which will include a portfolio explorer. This will help people find new pools to delegate to.
Furthermore, it will help ada move to smaller stake pools. We are also thinking about how to upgrade Ledger and Trezor. We are in particular interested in two features. We want multisig pledge as a feature so that many people can come together to create a multiple pool pledge, through a hardware interface.
Evolving Security
We would also like to see Key Evolving Signature (KES) in the ledger and Trezor devices. This will guarantee secure erasure of the KES. This means that we will have the most secure hardware environment which is air gapped from the network so it can’t be penetrated, we can have multisig pledging, and we can have KES on a hardware device. This means that we can have smaller trust relationships with small pool operators.
These adaptations will come shortly. We are working with Vacuum Labs and bidding out this update. We are also actively talking with stake pool operators to find out which features they would most like to see integrated into Cardano. Portfolios will be coming soon as well. This will allow the creation of portfolios, the sharing of them, and these portfolios will soon end up as explorable assets in Atlas.