Nightshade | NEAR Update July 1, 2019
COMMUNITY
July 1, 2019
We deployed a test version of Nightshade, our new consensus model, and have been working to integrate it into the rest of our codebase.

This all happened while Illia was behind the Great Firewall, managing to both contribute code and give presentations to Chinese audiences on NEAR in collaboration with the Web3 foundation. On the ecosystem side, we have been heads down preparing some future programs to be announced soon.

We announced the winner of our DWeb Camp ticket giveaway, who won with an idea for a decentralized VPN (Well done Grace!).


COMMUNITY AND EVENTS
We are gearing up for another hackathon, and some other (secret!) programs for those who want to get more involved with NEAR, so stay tuned for updates in the coming weeks.

Alex gave a talk on usability and scalability at IBM’s Blockchain Developer Summit [https://blockchain-developer-summit.splashthat.com/]
By the time this goes out, Max will have given a talk on using Rust to build smart contracts at RustLab in Florence, Italy
Illia presented a workshop to the Denver blockchain community 
Illia is back from China, and will be back in China again presenting at a Proof of Stake conference on July 10th 
WRITING AND CONTENT
We had a relatively light couple of weeks publishing content. You can check out these new whiteboard series videos and a tour of the economics model we’re implementing.

Augur whiteboard:https://youtu.be/kpW08CiSK9g
NEAR economics design:https://youtu.be/65CKc39lNTw
FOAM whiteboard:https://youtu.be/5L-XbpC4kY0
ENGINEERING HIGHLIGHTS

We’ve had 39 PRs across 10 repos and 10 authors in the last two weeks. Featured repos: nearcore, nearlib, near-shell, and near-wallet. Don’t forget, it’s all open source.

Recently streamlined our release process
App Layer
Updates across all libraries for Nightshade merge
Added advanced access keys in core
near-shell
Updated syntax
Wallet
Bug fixes and UI improvements
Blockchain
First version of staking is complete and currently being tested
Deployed test version Nightshade, our new model consensus
Chunks for sharding are underway in a ~1800 line PR
Proper validators tracking and rotation between epochs (commit).
Shard chunks proper signature and merkle proofs validation (commit)
Tests for cross-shard transactions (commit)
HOW YOU CAN GET INVOLVED
Join us! If you want to work with one of the most talented teams in the world right now to solve incredibly hard problems, check out our careers page for openings. And tell your friends ?

Learn more about NEAR in The Beginner’s Guide to NEAR Protocol. Stay up to date with what we’re building by following us on Twitter for updates, joining the conversation on Discord and subscribing to our newsletter to receive updates right to your inbox.

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