- The specifications for IOTA 2.0 are nearing completion, so the research team of the IOTA Foundation is currently realigning itself.
- Besides the completion of the specifications, a new focus is on the testnet implementation of Nectar and the research of sharding.
In an update published yesterday, IOTA co-founder Serguei Popov informed about the current tasks of the IOTA Foundation in the field of research. As Popov stated, with the launch of Coordicide, IOTA 2.0, theoretical research in this area is coming to an end.
In the new phase, which is now starting, three tasks are within the focus: “tying up the last few loose ends in the specifications and completing specifications documents”, the implementation of the specifications for Nectar and the research on sharding in the IOTA Tangle.
Along with the new tasks, the group structure within the research teams will be reorganized. The new groups have the following tasks: Nectar testnet implementation, Nectar testnet study group, protocol (implementation of the protocol in Pollen and completion of the specifications), network (studying and optimization) and sharding.
The IOTA 2.0 specifications are nearing completion
Commenting on last month’s research, Popov said the GoShimmer team has released Pollen testnet v0.2.4, which, in addition to numerous improvements, fixes a synchronization problem and a crash of the node’s dashboard explorer. The team is currently working with the GoShimmer X Team, a group of selected community members, to begin testing the distributed random number generator (dRNG). This will be released with the upcoming version 0.3.0, as reported by CNF.
Another focus is the integration of the reputation system Mana in Pollen. This will be the next module for Coordicide, which “will be gradually integrated into pollen”. For this purpose, the research specifications were converted into a document for the “Implementation of Mana, including the calculation of Mana and its inclusion in the transaction layout”.
For the newly created study group on Pollen, research priorities have been set and a list of metrics has been created to measure each Nectar testnet module and what data it must store. This list was passed on to the Nectar testnet implementation team for inclusion in future versions.
In the area of protocol-level research, Popov’s team drew up a “comprehensive plan” covering both the work still to be done for IOTA 2.0 and the transition from the current draft specifications to a final version. To this end, the co-founder of IOTA investigated:
The specification drafts went through review, to check what is still missing and assess the current state of everything and assign owners for each file. We are happy to report this work is nearly done. The teams will return to work on the specs, and have the drafts become a proper version in a few weeks.
Furthermore, the research department of the IOTA Foundation is currently working on node bootstrapping, i.e. the way nodes join the network. As far as the network is concerned, the focus is on the analysis of consistency in the presence of malicious actors, with an initial proposal being investigated:
he task is non-trivial, as it should include: (i) a way to detect malicious behavior; (ii) the action of blacklisting the related issuing nodes; (iii) an effective packet drop strategy which optimizes latency; and (iv) a lightweight procedure for unsolid transactions. We are currently simulating the first proposal to address these points.
All in all, Popov repeatedly expressed his satisfaction with the progress.
Everything is progressing well and we hope to have all IOTA 2.0 research “loose ends” completed in a few weeks.
The complete research update by Serguei Popov can be found under this link.
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