Oasis Q2 Engineering and Technical Progress: Wallet, ParaTime, Developer Platform Updates

Despite the recent unfavorable environment in the cryptocurrency market, the Oasis engineering team has been very busy over the past three months to ensure the best user experience!

The work on deploying Paratime on Oasis continues, and in the second quarter, our engineering team worked together to launch and run a new EVM-compatible ParaTime called Sapphire.

Our Oasis wallet (web version) has also seen significant developments, and in the future, we will have a shared codebase between the web wallet and the extension wallet!

We have also made some achievements in updating the developer platform and the Core platform, all aimed at optimizing the Oasis network and facilitating developers who want to build projects on the Oasis network.

Let's continue reading to learn more about the achievements Oasis made in the second quarter!

Wallet Updates

Our web wallet made great progress in the second quarter, and in the future, the Oasis web wallet and extension wallet will share a common codebase. Additionally, in the second quarter, we merged 69 requests, with notable mentions as follows:

• Use webext-redux for the extension (#787).
• Build and adjust the extension using Parcel to allow it to build in the main branch (#805).
• Simplify extension configuration, environment, and build scripts (#830).
• Refactor the sidebar and make all buttons focusable (#821).
• Add Slovenian and Turkish translations (#277, #808).
• Add a notification before staking to the top 20 validators to encourage decentralization (#831).
• Redesign the focus of the search address box and refactor it into a separate component (#844).
• Fix keyboard accessibility after creating a wallet (#864).
• Only display the send transaction component for one's own account (#865).
• Add Latin font to fix non-Latin character font rendering issues (#867).
• Document release process (#840).

Although we will have a shared codebase in the future, we are still continuously improving the user experience of the extension wallet and the stability of the wallet itself at this stage.

In the second quarter, we merged 15 requests and released versions 1.5.0 and 1.6.0. Significant changes include:

• Fallback to gRPC when querying account information fails using the Oasis Scan API (#257).
• Prevent potentially dangerous user actions (i.e., transferring to validators, depositing ParaTime into foreign accounts, withdrawing ParaTime to foreign accounts, depositing ParaTime into Ledger-supported accounts) (#271).
• Update the default gas fee for ParaTime transactions to accommodate the recent rise in minimum gas fees on Emerald (#261, #262).
• Fix transaction signing after importing short private keys (#273).
• Only display ParaTimes Emerald and Cipher (#267).
• Fix display errors from the backend page (#272).
• Improve inferred types for Promise and TransactionWrapper (#264).

ParaTime Updates

• The usage of Emerald ParaTime in the second quarter has remained healthy. Due to successfully preventing erroneous transactions from being included in blocks, the number of transactions has decreased. Usage steadily increased in June 2022, peaking at over 300,000 transactions per day on June 7, and reaching between 35,000 to 100,000 transactions per day by the end of the month.
• As of June 30, 65 nodes are running Emerald ParaTime on the mainnet.
• As of June 30, 30 nodes are running Cipher ParaTime on the mainnet.

ParaTime Development

Our development on ParaTimes has been progressing at full speed in the second quarter!

We have been developing a new EVM-compatible ParaTime, which has now been released. This new ParaTime is called Sapphire, and the code is open source! We will launch it on the testnet in July 2022.

You can click link to learn more about Sapphire:

Here are the highlights of the Runtime SDK development:

• Added support for signature queries (#984, #980).
• Added cryptographic support for our EVM module (#855).
• Added support for envelope encryption calls in our EVM module (#926).
• Added support for marking expensive queries and configuring the maximum gas fee to use when estimating gas fees during simulated transactions (#865).
• Supported adding configurable gas fee estimates through binary search (#981).
• Improved EVM compatibility in our EVM module and documented more differences (#983).
• Upgraded the Rust EVM we use to SputnikVM, upgrading to version 0.35.0 (#997).
• Added configuration options allowing node operators to specify maximum gas fee limits (#885).
• In check tx, only update fees/randomness after a successful call (#864).
• To comply with Oasis Core changes enforcing ParaTime scheduling control, always enable scheduling control in the Runtime SDK (#888).
• Propagate errors in WASM library calls (#894).
• Add optional error propagation in core. Estimated gas (#972).
• Added an option to disable gas usage event emission (#944, #1021).
• Use the key from the previous epoch to decrypt encrypted call data for smooth operation after epoch transitions (#1023).
• Added support for WASM contract ABI subversions to enable ABI evolution without breaking compatibility with deployed legacy smart contracts (#984).

Developer Platform Updates

Our Solidity and EVM-based smart contract development environment is available on the Emerald ParaTime on the mainnet.

The Emerald Web3 gateway allows traditional Ethereum applications to interact with Emerald without modification. In the second quarter, we handled 35 user requests, focusing on improving performance, stability, and usability, and released versions 2.1.0 and 2.2.0. Significant changes include:

• Improved cache memory efficiency (#260).
• Implemented response caching (#242).
• Added transaction and transaction receipt caching (#244).
• Added log caching (#244).
• Implemented gas price prediction based on indexed blocks (#256).
• Added support for configuring the gateway to start indexing at a specific height (#233).
• Added support for Prometheus monitoring of API endpoints (#241).
• Added metrics for PostgreSQL queries (#253).
• Correctly used and propagated context throughout the codebase (#240).
• Added timeouts for indexing blocks (#238).
• Handled cases where early detected transaction failures were later marked as successful (#207).
• Query maximum block gas limits (#191).
• Added support for configuring the gateway to start indexing at a specific height (#233).

Our Rust and WebAssembly-based smart contract development environment is deployed on the testnet's Cipher ParaTime. Check out our smart contract guide to learn how to prepare the environment for developing Cipher smart contracts and how to use the new Oasis CLI to deploy smart contracts.

You can click link to view the guide.

We have added a new encrypted Hello World guide that will guide you in writing and deploying your first encrypted smart contract on Cipher!

You can click link to view the guide:

Our documentation on docs.oasis.dev is open source. If you want to contribute to improving the online tutorial documentation.

Please click link to make a request to us:

CORE Platform Updates

At the beginning of the second quarter, on April 1st, Oasis Core 22.1 was released, followed by a successful Damask upgrade on April 11th.

In addition to the above achievements, our CORE platform continued to develop at full speed in the second quarter.

We have been developing a new official Oasis Indexer, which will index the consensus and ParaTime transactions of the Oasis network in a PostgreSQL database and provide easy access to historical data. The code is open source and has just been released in the oasis-indexer GitHub repository. We will soon apply it in our wallet as the preferred backend for data retrieval.

In the second quarter, we handled 132 user requests. Significant improvements include, some of which are planned to land in Oasis Core 22.2, while others have been backported to 22.1.x.

• Rewrote the runtime transaction pool and processing flow to enable tracking of transaction senders and limits on pending transactions allowed per sender in the pool (#4665).
• Improved peer prioritization when fetching storage checkpoint blocks (#4671).
• Various fixes to the cryptographic runtime registration process (#4678, #4683).
• Calculated execution nodes' ability to handle dynamic key manager configuration changes (#4729, #4715).
• Improved the EnclaveRPC protocol to allow the runtime to report peer feedback based on higher-level protocol metrics, making the protocol more stable (#4757).
• Added support for the latest architecture enclave service manager (AESM) protocol (#4711).
• Defined the Intel DCAP proof package format and implemented v3 reference parsing and validation logic in Go and Rust. This will be used to gradually implement comprehensive support for DCAP authentication, which will also allow the use of third-generation Intel Xeon CPUs (#4720, #4789).
• Implemented Intel PCS client to allow retrieval of TCB information and QE identity required as part of the DCAP quote verification process (#4752).
• Implemented archive mode support (#4571).
• Ensured freshness of consensus state provided to the cryptographic runtime through light client verification and RAK registration (#4741).
• Collected runtime logs and emitted them as part of the regular oasis-node logs (#4709).
• Made it easier to view the current node and runtime status (#4669).

These are the main achievements of Oasis in the second quarter, and we welcome everyone to continue following the development of the Oasis ecosystem!

About Oasis

The Oasis network officially launched on November 19, 2020, and is the world's first decentralized blockchain network with privacy protection and scalability features. In terms of technological innovation, the Oasis network's unique layered architecture separates smart contracts into consensus and ParaTime layers, ensuring absolute security of user privacy information while achieving higher performance and stronger customizability, further unlocking new use cases and applications for blockchain.

At the same time, the Oasis network has innovatively proposed the concept of "data tokenization," allowing users to fully control their private data and earn rewards by sharing it, further achieving privacy protection and promoting the construction of a responsible data economy.

Oasis is also supported by a number of well-known industry investors, including Andreessen Horowitz, Polychain, Pantera, Dragonfly, and Binance Labs. High performance + security + privacy protection, Oasis will redefine centralized finance and fundamentally change the way open finance operates.

Since its launch, the Oasis network has conducted hackathons, global ambassador recruitment, ROSE token bloom plans, and other activities, attracting countless industry-leading application developers/blockchain infrastructure teams and node operators to join us, resulting in unprecedented prosperity in the Oasis network ecosystem.

Oasis Official Website