Charles Hoskinson’s Brief Cardano Update via Twitter - 29/2/2020
(Written by @Eric_Czuleger)
On February 29th 2020 Charles Hoskinson gave a brief update here…
https://twitter.com/IOHK_Charles/status/1234218989653348352?s=19
…on the approach of Shelley.
Quick summary:
-There is an internal date for the launch of Shelley, but it will not be released publically until after the Byron Reboot, and the launch of the Haskell Shelley Testnet.
-The ITN has gained increased stability due to our weekly update cadence. These updates will continue throughout March.
-We are currently in the process of updating Cardano.org and Cardano Docs.
-The launch party for Shelley in Kyoto depends on the proliferation of the CoronaVirus.
Oncoming milestones
In the prior update we stated that there would be an announcement regarding the launch timeline of Shelley. Currently, we have an internal range of time during which this will likely occur. This range is a band of two months and we are clear during which sprints it should fall within. However, we have not completely derisked this date. Therefore we will not announce this time range because of the possibility that it will be inaccurate.
Before we announce the date we have decided to wait until several additional milestones are achieved. > They are as follows:
1. Launching the Byron reboot. This will connect the Haskell wallet backend to the new Haskell code. We anticipate this will be available in March.
2. The launch of the Haskell Shelley testnet. This is an aggregation of all these features together.
Once these two milestones are achieved we can announce the band of time during which Shelley will be launched with a high degree of confidence. This could be announced during the next Cardano Development broadcast that we do. Aparna Jue will make the decision and possibly announce it during her monthly product update.
Managing expectations
The reason that we have decided to withhold the information at this time is because of public reaction around dates. Often, the crypto news cycle and those interested in the project do not realize that dates are tentative and treat them as hard deadlines. This often leads to the perception of failure to meet the requirements of our roadmap. With that being said, once the time period is derisked after the Byron reboot and the launch of the Haskell Shelley testnet, we should have increased confidence and make a public announcement.
We are still on the weekly update cadence of the ITN, and users are reporting fewer issues with Daedalis and the network stack. The OBFT hard fork launched on time and we have been working with exchanges to design staking-as-a-service protocols. We are also rewriting libraries and adding new explorer capabilities specifically for Shelley.
Next steps
If users are having difficulties with Daedalus they may be using old software. We encourage them to purge their system of the outdated Daedalus software and update it as necessary. Otherwise, they may choose to use Yoroi. We will continue to update the ITN through March, this means that there are four more update windows to resolve ITN issues for everyone.
The Shelley Haskell testnet should be far more stable at the launch of the Haskell side. The point of the ITN was to build up a large group of stake pool operators to gain community engagement. The Haskell Shelley testnet will begin by migrating all of the staking infrastructure over to the Haskell side, taking lessons learned along the way. The next step will be to verify balances and ensure that rewards from the ITN are reported over. This will all be discussed in blog posts, and videos as time goes on.
Ledger and launch party
We are also finalizing negotiations to upgrade our ledger software. We believe this will allow, cold-staking, access to ledger live, and multisig support with ledger devices. At the moment, we are in the middle of a large documentation refresh. In the coming weeks we will start converging all information to a single source of truth, this includes Cardano Docs and the Cardano.org website. This information will include the USPs and components in an extremely consumable manner.
We were planning on having a launch party for Shelley in Kyoto, however this is dependent on the Covid19 virus. If the disease spreads then logistics will become quite difficult. We are currently considering other sites for this event, should the need arise.