In accordance with the release process outlined in an earlier blog post, Dash Core Group (DCG) is proud to announce the release of Dash Platform v0.13. This is the 2nd release in our newly defined process, where observers of Dash’s development can expect new functionality delivered roughly every 6 weeks. In that regard, observers can expect the next release to arrive sometime between July 14–28.

Release Highlights

As usual, due to the breaking changes introduced in this release all data on Evonet has been wiped. Developers should make adjustments to their local setups to reflect this. The effort involved with the Platform v0.13 release was mainly focused on reliability and bug fixes. Below you’ll find a list of the most important updates, several of which lay the foundation for light client support. You can view all of the updates in greater detail by visiting the release notes for each platform component, which are included in the last section of this article.

• Identity Top-Ups: The platform credit system is a significant step closer to completion with the addition of identity top-ups. Now, a user can add credits to their identity by initiating a financial transaction on Layer 1. In doing so, users can buy and spend platform credits as if they were on mainnet, thereby incentivizing nodes to host Dash Platform and preventing spam attacks through a system of rising fees associated with data storage on the network.
• Fast Recovery of Identity Associated with Wallet: When a user submits data to the platform, it is necessary to include their identity as part of the state transition, which effectively asserts their ownership of the data. Previously, retrieving an identity was an expensive and time-consuming process, which represented a poor developer experience. Now, there is an association between a user’s wallet and their Dash Platform identities, which provides developers with a deterministic way of retrieving an identity.
• Retry Policy for Client Requests: Due to the decentralized nature of the Dash p2p network, clients attempting to connect to Dash Platform could run into a variety of problems. Some masternodes might have incompatible versions of Dash Platform running at the same time, nodes could go offline, have latency problems, or be improperly configured. In order to remedy these problems, a retry policy has been added to the Dash SDK, so that in the event your application requests a connection to a node that is not reachable or responds with an error, it will automatically request a connection to another node.
• InstantSend and ChainLocks on Evonet: The deterministic masternode list (DML), InstantSend, and ChainLocks are all now activated on Evonet. In doing so, the environment on Evonet now more closely approximates the Dash network mainnet environment. In addition, financial transactions used to top-up identities benefit from the same speed and security Dash users have come to appreciate due to ChainLocks. Activating these features sets the stage for the Platform team to deliver functionality related to light client support and integration of long-living masternode quorums into platform consensus. Within the deployment tool, Layer 1 sporks are now automatically activated.
• Command Line Interface Added to Distribution Package: The distribution package has been improved in order to streamline the developer user experience. In that regard, a CLI was introduced so that developers can more easily operate their node and avoid having to use docker-compose to start and operate a node. Some of the commands introduced include register masternode, start, stop, and reset data, all of which can be viewed on the Readme for mn-bootstrap. We will continue adding relevant commands as our understanding of user needs improves.
• Hotfixes for Network Stability: Through the period since the release of Dash Platform v0.12, the team has been releasing minor, hotfix versions of various components in order to improve performance and stability as new problems arise. In that regard, hotfixes were released for DPP (0.12.1), Drive (0.12.1, 0.12.2), Dash Network Deploy (0.12.1, 0.12.2, 0.12.3, 0.12.4), and the Distribution Package (0.12.1, 0.12.2, 0.12.3, 0.12.4, 0.12.5, 0.12.6).

Conclusion

I’d like to take this opportunity to thank the members of the platform and documentation teams, for all of the work and coordination that went into accomplishing this release. In addition, I’d like to thank the DCG mobile teams and the burgeoning developer community self-organizing on Discord for their detailed feedback and identification of bugs within the platform. Without the combined efforts of many individuals within DCG and the Dash community as a whole, the timeliness and quality of this release would not have been possible.

DCG remains committed to exploring and implementing new ways to increase transparency and knowledge sharing among organizations participating in the growth of Dash. Recently, a new page has been created on the Dash website to encourage contributions to the core repositories, which interested parties can visit here: www.dash.org/contributing. Beyond this, the members of DCG are constantly brainstorming ways to improve release frequency, bring community members into our problem-solving processes, and preserve the decentralization that we all value so highly. Stay tuned for more releases and updates, and as usual, your thoughts, feedback, and pull requests are greatly appreciated.

Release Notes

• Dash Platform Protocol v0.13
• Drive v0.13
• DAPI v0.13
• DAPI Client v0.13
• Distribution Package (mn-bootstrap) v0.13
• Dash Platform Services Controller v0.13
• Dash Network Deploy Tool v0.13
• Dash SDK (JS) v3.13.0, v3.13.1, v3.13.2
• Wallet-lib v7.4.1

Author: Dana Alibrandi
Original link: https://blog.dash.org/release-announcement-dash-platform-v0-13-on-evonet-53c86b081b64