November 11, 2021
Tari Development Update
Are we there yet?
Things are really starting to buzz in the Tari development space.
We have the usual array of bug fixes and performance improvements. We also report on progress that’s been made on multiple fronts, including Covenants, cross-chain atomic swaps and the provisionally-named DAN validator nodes.
What are we working on?
As described in Wen Mainnet?, Tari has a complete set of Layer 1 features.
The current development focus is full steam ahead on Layer 2 features for the Digital Assets Network (DAN).
Covenants
Covenants are a method of placing restrictions on how a given transaction output can be spent. For example: you may want to specify that the original NFT creator receives a commission on each subsequent sale, or that Bob’s crypto vault can only be spent to a specific address belonging to his niece.
Work is progressing on a draft for covenants implementation on Tari, which will soon be published as an RFC for community feedback.
Barring any complications, implementation will start after the RFC period!
BTC Atomic Swaps
We recently published an RFC for implementing BTC - XTR atomic swaps. These are trustless transactions that enable users to swap Tari (XTR) for Bitcoin (BTC) or vice versa, without requiring a 3rd party.
“In an Atomic swap, both users lock up the funds to be exchanged on their respective chains in an HTLC-type contract.”
HTLCs are Hash Time Locked Contracts: scripts placed on transaction outputs that require the receiver to cryptographically prove the payment was received before the deadline, or the output is spent back to the sender when the time lock expires.
The initial development in sending and claiming these HTLC transactions is currently in review on PR #3552.
Validator Node
Validator Nodes are the core of the Layer 2 DAN. They work as a committee to manage the registration and state of assets on behalf of Asset Issuers. Development on the Validator Node binaries is progressing on the validator-node branch. The current focus is on generating and spending the checkpoint transactions for asset transfers.
Tari Collectibles
“Collectibles” is the current working name given to our new application for issuing assets and minting NFTs. It is a cross-platform GUI application using Tauri (what a fantastic name 👏) which is a new application builder allowing the use of web technologies to build the GUI. Similar to Electron, but developed in Rust and with a very strong focus on security.
If you know Javascript then come hack on this new app with us on GitHub at tari-project/tari!
Tari Web Extension
We’ve just started working on a web extension à la Metamask, to enable a Tari wallet in modern web browsers. It’s still brand new, but the goal is to allow interactions with validator nodes and your Assets and Tokens from right in the browser!
Follow or join its development on GitHub on the validator-node branch at applications/tari_web_extension.
Wallet Improvements
Many performance improvements are in development on the Tari console wallet, as well as new features and improvements to the libwallet FFI library and the Aurora mobile apps on Android and iOS.
Follow their development here:
Hack on the future of Digital Assets @ Tari
As always, come join us to chat about ongoing development in the dev channel on our Discord server, or on IRC in the #tari-dev channel on the Libera.Chat IRC network.