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February 2025

· 5 min read
Jean-Philippe Raynaud
Noon van der Silk

This is a monthly report on the progress of 🐲 Hydra and 🛡 Mithril projects since January 2025. 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 took place on February 26, 2025, using these slides, and you can see the recording here.

Mithril​

Issues and pull requests closed in February

Roadmap​

Below are the latest updates on our roadmap:

  • Cardano database incremental snapshots MVP #2047: we have started the optimization and production readiness phase on the MVP for incremental snapshots of the Cardano database
  • Redesign the website and improve documentation #2051: the Mithril certification section has been created. Home page redesign is in progress.

Distributions​

We released Mithril distribution 2506.0, which includes:

  • ⚠️ Security:
    • This distribution embeds a fix for the Mithril certificate chain could be manipulated by an adversarial signer security advisory GHSA-724h-fpm5-4qvr
    • All users running a client library, client CLI or client WASM are strongly encouraged to update them to the latest version
  • Stable support for Cardano node 10.1.4 in the signer and the aggregator
  • Dropped support for Thales era in the signer and the aggregator
  • Stable support for traffic compression in signer, aggregator and client
  • Bug fixes and performance improvements.

In February, the following events have taken place:

  • Switch to the Pythagoras era on the release-mainnet network (which occured at transition to epoch 539)
  • Re-genesis of the certificate chain of the release-mainnet network (which occurred at the end of epoch 539).

In March, the following events are planned:

  • Release of a new distribution

Dev blog​

We have published the following posts:

Incremental Cardano DB certification​

We have worked on the implementation of the client library, CLI and WASM to support the incremental Cardano DB certification. This feature allows the Mithril client to restore a partial Cardano database rather than the full one, by providing a range of immutable files:

  • Restoration up to a given immutable file
  • Restoration from a given immutable file
  • Restoration for a range of immutable files
  • Full restoration of all the immutable files.

We will keep working on stabilizing and optimizing the feature to make it ready for production.

New 'Mithril certification' section on the website​

We have created a new section on the website to provide a better understanding of the Mithril certification process. You can find it on the Mithril certification page.

The section includes:

  • Mithril certification: an overview of the Mithril certification process
  • Cardano transactions: a detailed description of the Cardano transactions certification process
  • Cardano stake distribution: a detailed description of the Cardano stake distribution certification process
  • Cardano node database: a detailed description of the Cardano database certification process
  • Cardano node database v2: a detailed description of the upcoming incremental Cardano database certification process.

Mithril certification section on the documentation website

The Cardano transactions certification page on the new 'Mithril certification' section

Protocol status​

The protocol has operated smoothly on the release-mainnet network with the following metrics:

  • Registered stake: 4.7B₳ (22% of the Cardano network)
  • Registered SPOs: 248 (9% of the Cardano network)
  • Full Cardano database restorations: 325 restorations
  • Signer software adoption: 99.9% of the SPOs are running a recent version (one of the last three releases).

You can find more information on the Mithril protocol insights dashboard.

Hydra​

We have released incremental commits in version 0.20.0.

Issues and pull requests closed in January

The roadmap with features and ideas

Snapshot of the new roadmap with features and ideas

This month, some notable roadmap updates include:

Multiple versions in Hydra explorer​

Starting from version 0.19.1 (a backport), we now list all known versions of Hydra on the explorer.

Multiple versions in Hydra

Etcd-based networking​

A breaking change in command-line arguments and system requirements (see release notes) is currently unreleased but available on the master branch. This update significantly improves the networking architecture, leading to greater stability (ie, fewer stuck heads!). Please try it out!

Bounded memory for hydra-node​

In combination with the etcd-based networking, we have been working on bounding the memory of the hydra-node by switching to an event-streaming model, instead of loading and keeping all events in memory. This should allow for the long-term running of hydra nodes. This work remains in progress.

The monthly review meeting for February 2025 took place on February 26, 2025, via Google Meet. The presentation slides and the recording are available for review.