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November 2024

· 6 min read
Jean-Philippe Raynaud
Noon van der Silk
Sasha Bogicevic

This is a monthly report on the progress of 🐲 Hydra and 🛡 Mithril projects since October 2024. This document serves as a preparation for and a written summary of the monthly stakeholder review meeting, which is announced on our Discord channels and held on Google Meet. This month, the meeting was held on 2024-12-09 using these slides and you can see the recording here.

Mithril​

Issues and pull requests closed in November

Roadmap​

Here’s the latest on our roadmap:

  • Cardano stake distribution certification #955: the feature is pending activation on mainnet
  • Protocol usage metrics/statistics #2028: the feature is completed and has been released in November
  • Explore signer registration solutions #2029: we are exploring the signer registration options and preparing a document summarizing them
  • Cardano database incremental snapshots PoC #2047: we have started working on a proof of concept for incremental snapshots of the Cardano database.

Distributions​

We released Mithril distribution 2445.0, which includes:

  • 🔥 Breaking changes in the Mithril client library, CLI, and WASM with the removal of deprecated beacon in Mithril certificates
  • Stable support for Cardano node 10.1.2 in the signer and the aggregator
  • Stable support for Cardano stake distribution client library, CLI, and WASM
  • Stable support for the Prometheus metrics endpoint in the aggregator
  • Bug fixes and performance improvements.

Future distributions​

We plan to release new distributions in December:

  • 2450:
    • Availability of NodeJS and bundler targets in the Mithril client WASM npm package
    • Stable support for Cardano node 10.1.3 in the signer and the aggregator
    • Execution rights of pre-built binaries in GitHub releases.

Dev blog​

We have published the following posts:

Protocol Insights Dashboard v2​

We have created a new version of the Mithril Protocol Insights Dashboard, which is now available here. It provides a comprehensive view of the Mithril network and its performance metrics.

The Protocol Insights Dashboard is a valuable tool for monitoring the network and understanding its behavior:

  • Participation metrics
  • Usage metrics
  • Health metrics
  • Artifacts metrics
  • Software metrics.

The new Mithril Protocol Insights Dashboard on the Cardano mainnet

One line installer for Mithril binaries​

To facilitate the installation and updating of Mithril binaries, we have created a one line installer that downloads and installs the Mithril binaries and supports Linux and macOS. It is available for the Mithril signer, Mithril aggregator, and Mithril CLI.

Here is an example command to download the latest Mithril signer binary in the current directory:

curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://raw.githubusercontent.com/input-output-hk/mithril/refs/heads/main/mithril-install.sh | sh -s -- -c mithril-signer -d latest -p $(pwd)

This will download the latest signer binary for the correct platform and architecture (if available) in the current directory:

Fetching release information from https://api.github.com/repos/input-output-hk/mithril/releases/latest...
Downloading mithril-signer to latest from https://github.com/input-output-hk/mithril/releases/download/2445.0/mithril-2445.0-linux-x64.tar.gz...
Congrats! mithril-signer has been upgraded to 0.2.209+67dc6e4 from distribution latest and installed at ./home/user!

Client NPM package compatible with NodeJS​

We have created a new version of the npm package for the Mithril client WASM, which is now compatible with NodeJS and bundler targets. This feature was requested by the community and will be released in the next 2550 distribution.

New explorer status​

We have enhanced the Mithril Explorer with a new status section that provides some key metrics and insights about the Mithril network. This new section is currently available on testing networks and will be generally available with the release of the next 2550 distribution.

The new Mithril Explorer status section

Nightly and backward compatibility workflows​

We have implemented nightly and backward compatibility workflows to ensure more reliable and consistent releases. The nightly workflow builds Mithril Docker images every night and runs the backward compatibility workflow, which checks the compatibility of the upcoming Mithril distribution with previous versions, summarizing the changes.

The backward compatibility summary created by the workflow

Hydra​

We continued working on incremental commits, began supporting multiple versions in the Hydra Explorer, and started moving the hydra-explorer out of the monorepo.

Issues and pull requests closed in November

The roadmap with features and ideas

Snapshot of the new roadmap with features and ideas

Notable updates on our roadmap this month include:

  • Progress on incremental commits #199
  • Hydra + Midnight support #1727
  • Continued support of Hydra Doom, especially around the tournament!

Hydra Explorer​

The hydra-explorer has been moved to its own repository with independent deployment. As a result, supporting multiple versions of the hydra-node in the explorer is now necessary, and we are currently working on it.

Hydra Doom​

Following the success of Hydra Doom at Rare Evo and as an activation at various events organized by Input | Output (IO) and others(!), the Hydra Doom project has taken a significant step forward with the launch of a tournament offering 100,000 USDM. The prize is intended to be distributed automatically to the winners based on the outcome of the game as measured in the Hydra heads used for the finale.

In launching the tournament, we reached several milestones and pushed Hydra to its very limits in many ways. This included testing the performance of individual Hydra heads, which supported a multi-player game where every frame of each participant’s game session submitted smart contract transactions. At its peak (on December 3), the system processed 1.04 million transactions per second. Over a 24-hour period, it handled more than 15.5 billion transactions in total. This was achieved with a mix of real player traffic from around the world and artificial load generated by bots running the game, contributing transactions to more than 14,000 Hydra Heads.

While more work remains, this marks an impressive milestone, and the overall reception has been positive.

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/c9546d61-212b-490f-88b8-a3b15229aa15

Incremental commits​

The incremental commits feature is nearly ready for release. As a final step, we invite community members to test-drive this feature. The goal is to ensure the best user experience and identify potential bugs. The remaining tasks include improving documentation and testing and updating the protocol specification to reflect these changes.

Hydra + Midnight​

We’ve been collaborating with the Midnight team to explore how Hydra can align with their goals. As part of this effort, we’re developing a version of Hydra with a custom ledger to support arbitrary built-in operations that validators may need. This work is ongoing.

The monthly review meeting for November 2024 was held on 2024-12-09 via Google Meet, presenting these slides and this recording.