The 2020.12.15.1 release is a bugfix release to add support for
HIP17.
Please find a detailed breakdown of the bugfixes below.
blockchain-core#697: Fix H3 Index Corruption
Before the team could activate support for HIP 17 in a previous release (you can read more about
this
here),
we realized that the network could run into a potential blockchain halt due to mismatching h3
indexes, which are updated on every add_gateway and assert_location transaction. We had an
internal discussion on the impact of this issue and collectively decided to address the bug and
postpone HIP 17 activation for a day. Please find the plan below.
The bug was quickly root caused to malformed case clauses in assert_location transaction which
were not correctly updating the h3 indexes when a Hotspot's location changed on the network. Please
feel free to view the commits on the bug
here.
Debugging HIP 17 Variables
The team continues to make improvements in how Hotspot owners can visualize their Hotspot
performance and needs to make some blockchain core changes to visualize the rewards scale. As a stop
gap, we've modeled all the Hotspots on the network with their corresponding scale values, we
currently use this debugging tool to help us understand reward scales
at a particular block height. This tool is not updated live and bound to the specific block height
that is in the legend (currently: 632627, approximately 2020-12-14 @ 5:47 PM PT).
As mentioned in a prior post, the scale value in the visualization does not apply to overall reward
scaling. It is only an indicator for PoC transmission reward scaling. A scale of 0.2 does not
mean that a Hotspot's overall rewards will go down by 80%.
Here are some updated images from the tool for reference
Sparse Density Scaling
Variable Scaling
Dense Cluster Scaling
Finally, here's San Francisco with Scaling
miner#580: Adjust Spreading Factor
This release also adjusts spreading factors again to take into account the lack of a LoRaWAN header for PoC. We're including this change in this release since it's a minor code change but a significant improvement for EU Hotspots and a useful improvement for US Hotspots. You can see a past description of spreading factor changes in this old post.
blockchain-core#699: Fix Bad Snapshot Binary Tag
We also fixed the snapshot binary tag which wasn't getting updated correctly therefore doing incorrect deserialization and enhanced the tests to avoid future slippage.
Plan
We began beta testing 2020.12.15.1 around 10:00 AM PT, December 15th, 2020 and plan to deploy to
GA on Tuesday, December 15th, 2020 around 3:00 PM PT.
We plan on activating HIP15 and HIP17 chain variables on Wednesday, December 16th, 2020 and will be announcing this change via push notification and on Discord.