Constellation Update – Product & Engineering News, Media Mentions & TechCrunch

Dear Constellation Community,

Our teams have been hard at work this week, and we’re all very excited for our sponsored panel and workshop at TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2018 next week. Read on for more about what's been going on...

Product Update

This week we found additional end user experience that required enhancements. This is in preparation for our community to earn points and convert those points into DAG. This week’s enhancements include MetaMask, Orion Portal, and Social account experience.

Added front end validation to the transaction approval process which lets transactions run more smoothly and reduces risks that a user inadvertently stakes more than DAG than intended.
We added the ability to link Medium accounts to your Orion profile, which will let you participate in bounty rewards related to marketing.
Updated transaction processing screens so that they auto-refresh to show transaction updates.
Fixed bugs that arose after Metamask released updates.
Small changes to copy and UI.

Engineering Update

New updates are on dev branch. Merged V1 batch downloader fixes. Finalized new edge schema for all chain data.
New flow uses a schema similar to GraphX but with batch signatures and hashes at raw edge level. Edges at a higher level are polymorphic with 3 type parameters, left vertex, right vertex, and optional edge data. Our basic primitive is that of an Observation Edge which tracks 2 ordered vertex hashes and an edge data hash. This is a requirement for signatures, the actual data is populated after resolving in a polymorphic Edge class which is encapsulated in each specific usage. Example being a transaction which is an Edge between 2 addresses with data corresponding to the amount. Observation edges are captured by Signed Observation.
Edges which hold witness signature data of an arbitrary number of participants. Checkpoint edges capture sequences of hashes, and validation edges capture collections of checkpoints.
Genesis flow has been updated to incorporate new schema. We’re adding a REST transport layer for more generic node peer communications and simplifying and unifying the network code.
Worked on finalizing resolver mechanics which require a notifier DAG for issuing processing updates to new data which has dependencies on other potentially unresolved data.
Fixed bug in address formatting. More refactoring around Futures handling to optimize code.
Working on on unifying and simplifying the networking code.

Media Mentions

COO Ben discusses Constellation's distributed ledger and consensus model with Markets Media.
VP of Engineering, Ryle, weighs in on whether or not blockchains can ever move beyond economic models with Finder.com.au, Australia’s premier crypto and financial outlet.
Head of Marketing, Zac, talks DAGs, Proof of Meme, and the future of the distributed ledger world with CoinCentral.

TC Disrupt Reminder
The countdown to TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2018 is on! If you’re attending, be sure to catch our sponsored panel and workshop on Friday, September 7th. Details are below:

Panel: Beyond the ICO: New approaches to fundraising and enterprise investment in blockchain.

Time: Friday September 7th, 1.30 -2.30

Workshop Room 1 (2nd Floor, Moscone West)

Moderator: TBA

Speakers: Ben Jorgensen (COO of Constellation), Jacob Mullins (Shasta Ventures), Erika Perez (Global Leader of IBM Blockchain Strategy & Ecosystem), and Jascha Kaykas-Wolff (CMO of Mozilla)

Constellation has been through an extraordinary period of fundraising and subsequent growth. Ben Jorgensen (COO) and team will share their experiences in this session exploring the complex and ever-changing fundraising models available, and what enterprise leaders look for in potential partners and projects.

Workshop: Running a Node on a Distributed Ledger: Live Demo

Time: Friday September 7th, 2.45 – 3.30

Workshop Room 1 (2nd Floor, Moscone West)

Speakers: Wyatt Meldman-Floch, Ryle Goehausen

Wyatt (CTO) and Ryle (VP of Engineering) will demystify the key components of distributed ledger technology, and provide a guide on how to set up a Constellation node. Participants will leave with the basic skills they need to contribute to an emerging 3rd-Gen protocol.

We look forward to seeing you there!

Sincerely,

The Constellation Team