Archethic Mainnet 1.0.7: Improved Security, Speed, and Usability
Mainnet Update
Since the launch of our Mainnet in the last December and thanks to the entire Archethic community, the network has really been improved.
A lot of issues are now solved to increase the security and the confidence in the validation of your transactions, but also the speed of the network in terms of data retrieval for exploration, web hosting, etc.
For those which have not noticed yet, the network is now on the version 1.0.7 - Â meaning 7 new versions have been released since the mainnet launch. To get more details of the changes related to each version, you can visit the release page on Github.
For the next steps, we are following our roadmap to embrace:
- on-chain governance (with hot reload of the network)
- Smart Contract enhancements (SPOILER: better language !!!)
- Stability and so on.
AEWeb Update
Since the mainnet release, many websites have been deployed due to the easiness and the cost effective solution proposed. Thanks to that we worked to improve the usability of it.
- Faster delivery
We decreased the latency to fetch a website and deliver contents using some caching solution. This means, if a website is frequently requested, we cache the files contents which have the highest demand.
Hence, the "hot" websites will be deliver faster, while allowing the new comers (websites) to be in that cache until furthers requests. - Seamless updates
In the previous versions of AEWeb, each time a website was updated the entire files were deployed again. This is not the case anymore !!
Each website's update will be applied only to the latest changes, reducing the cost for you & the load on the network.
This works by using a diff solution using checksum & digest of the files.
Your website transaction's chain contains the reference of the files, their hash to make update easy & also verifiable. - Developer friendly
Nowadays, websites are developed using version control system such as Git, helping to version files and updates. Developers tend to use .gitignore capability to intentionally untracked files.
In the recent version of the AEWeb CLI, this is supported by default.
So, the upload to Archethic using AEWeb will not deploy unexpected files such as build dependencies, and other files required for the development not but for the production output.
Bridge
We announced our bridge a month ago, opened to testnet. Thanks to those which have contributed and helped us to make it more stable and functional.
Since so far, we didn't really explained how the bridge was working and we wanted to give some material of understanding of its functioning.
So, you might have noticed on the FAQ, the bridge is using a technology called Atomic Swap. In crypto, there are two kinds of ways to exchange assets between chains: Cross-chain bridge, Atomic swaps.
Cross-chains bridges are designed with the concept of token burning/minting with some wrapped tokens on the other chains.
The problem is the requirement of a lot of trust in the cross-chain bridge transfer. And this trust can be exploited.
Also, because those are based on token minting/burning the vector of attack is big. The contracts managing the transfers are by tokens while on atomic swap, there is one contract by transfer.If some attacker could compromise the bridge token contract it could steal a lot of tokens, while on atomic swap it will be limited to a single transfer.
So, in the opposite, atomic swaps direct exchange between parties. The transfer is "atomic" in the sense that it would either finalize or would not initiate at all. Â In other words, an atomic swap comes with functionalities that ensure that two sides of trade fulfill all predefined conditions before the trade can be achieved. This is possible thanks to the smart contract.
More specifically, it is based on Hashed Timelock Contracts (HTLCs) which function as a two-way virtual safe. The contract relies on sophisticated mathematical-based encryption known as "hash function". But it also introduces a time constraint such that transactions are reversed when either of the parties involved does not fulfill their sides of the bargain within a predefined time frame. Â
To be more clear, let's take an example.
Alice wants to swap a token (X) on a chain A to Bob using a token (Y) on the chain B.
- Alice will generate a secret and a lock from it using a hash function.
- Alice generate a smart contract with the rules: send tokens X to Bob if he can provide the secret or refund the tokens  X to Alice after 24h
- Bob will generate a contract on the chain B, taking the lock from Alice's with the rule: send tokens Y to Alice if she can provide the secret or refund the tokens Y to Bob after 24h
- Then, Alice can claim the funds by revealing the secret in the chain B. Hence, Bob can use this secret to reveal the secret on the chain A. Both parties can fullfil the transfer and the atomic swap is completed.
After this example you can have a view of how Archethic's Bridge is working where Alice represents your wallet and Bob represents Archethic Technologies delivering ETH/MATIC/BSC towards UCO.
Thanks
We also would like to thank all the contributors which are giving us feedbacks and report issues for the bug-bounty campaign, bringing more stability and security to the network.
Archethic Public Blockchain
Archethic is a Layer 1 blockchain that seeks to empower people over data ownership, decentralized applications over slow internet, and cost-effective energy solutions over expensive carbon emissions.
Due to the use of a new consensus called "ARCH," its blockchain architecture is the most scalable, secure, and energy-efficient solution on the market.
With the addition of an internal oracle, time-triggers, editable content, and interpreted language, Archethic smart contracts broaden the capabilities of developers and builders!
Archethic provides an open and interoperable ecosystem for all blockchains with native integration for Defi, NFTs, and decentralized identities.
Let us work together to empower {Human; Nature; Apps} era of Web3
Archethic Foundation Non-profit to manage decentralized governance of the public blockchain
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