Secure Web hosting, Network chains explorer, BeaconChain & Devs…
For this last release (end of September), Archethic's core team improves the network in few areas: P2P, explorer, beacon chain and also a significant change in our decentralized web hosting solution (AEWEB). Thanks to the bug bounty contributions, we are also bringing more stability to the network.
Also, to make it more accessible for developers, we worked on SDK to bring a better adoption.
A few of the most significant changes are described below.
Secure websites hosting with AEWEB
As today, we are browsing websites mostly by leveraging a technology which ensures websites are not tampered and provide secure communication, this is called: HTTPS. It encrypts every request and responses to make sure the information coming is really originated from the website you searched for.
On the road of the decentralized web, few technologies deliver websites on a blockchain network. But regarding secure web browsing, there was not yet a simple and decentralized solution to tackle this problem.
Websites other networks (like IPFS) are delivered by centralized or self-hosted endpoint. Â So in order to uses domain name & HTTPS for your decentralized website, you have to use either a private VPS (pointing to IPFS) or using something like Cloudflare.
Today we are proud to announce, Archethic resolves this issue by using its decentralized network to leverage domain name & secure website resolving the gap between decentralized and centralized world (WWW & HTTP).
Because Archethic transaction supports authorizations and delegations natively, during the website deployment, you can inject the HTTPS certificate and private key of your website for your domain. The key will be encrypted, so only the network nodes would be able to decrypt it to delivery your HTTPS website.
The only remaining thing to do by the website's owner, it's to have a book a domain name, to redirect the traffic to Archethic network (as explained here) and to obtain a certificate. (`Let's encrypt` allows you to get a free certificate).
When someone will browse your website, the domain name system will redirect to Archethic's network. The nodes will detect the request and resolve your website on-chain. Once resolved, the network will inject the HTTPS key and certificate in the response, so the browser will qualify the response as secure, and all the traffic on the website will be secured.
No need VPS or centralized system to manage your website safety and delivery, everything is on-chain. This is a breakthrough in the hosting industry and the first step of a complete decentralized on-chain web hosting solution.
Live demonstration of the AEWEB CLI
Check the result
Explorer changes
For this last release, we have added some new pages in the explorer to provide more transparency and better browsing experience for network transactions
To add to the existing Oracle and Beacon explorer, new pages are present to browse Miner rewards, Node shared secrets  & Origins transactions easily.
We also worked on improvement of the live dashboard to provide better insight of the network in real time to show some metrics like validation time or transaction volumes across multiple nodes. (Other metrics will come later)
BeaconChain changes
In the road of the release of the mainnet and to bring more stability while resolving complex issues of distributed systems, we worked on the BeaconChain layer to improve it.
A new structural change is now defined for the BeaconChain to improve its scalability and performance.
BeaconChain is partitioned into Slot which embed the transaction summaries (transaction timestamping) – like block in blockchain. All those slots are sent to a dedicated pool at regular internal to build a final Summary. It will aggregate all the transactions within the BeaconChain interval (for example each day) maintaining a global view.
So to reduce the size and the complexity, the BeaconChain doesn't rely on transactions and ARCH consensus. The reason is, the sharding model and criticality of the BeaconChain would not be safe in case of Byzantine faults.
All the possible data are integrated and aggregate during Self-Repair (way to synchronize the Archethic's BeaconChain each day)
By bringing this change, we store fewer data, we increase the efficiency and the performances of the system, particularly on the Explorer.
We also work on optimization of the global P2P view included in the BeaconChain. The change makes more predictable and more accurate the node availability detection.
This improves the distributed yet synchronized P2P view of the network participants and result in less decentralized network issues (known as Split Brains)
Developer tools
- Javascript SDK
The SDK have been reworked to simplify the usage. No need to specify which node to connect with, the SDK will detect and fetch the closest nodes to reach. You just have to specify which network to use: mainnet / testnet.
- AEWEB GitHub Actions
Exciting news in terms of contribution and Foundation integration for interesting projects!
A new project has been brought by an external contributor to the ecosystem.
This project delivers a better adoption for website hosting deployment directly into GitHub.
Started as an individual Open-Source initiative, it's now integrated into the Foundation.
Please check out the repo if you are interested: https://github.com/archethic-foundation/aeweb-github-action
The Foundation is still open and awaiting exciting projects to highlight making the ecosystem more robust, more efficient and more easy to use.
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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