Author: Marco González

Editor: Randall Roland

On January 31 Dan Larimer announced:

“The first milestone has been reached on schedule with the release of Mandel 3.0 RC1, the first community funded and developed hardfork of EOS.”

It was at this time that a schedule was agreed upon to begin deploying Mandel (now Antelope, formerly EOSIO)- the next phase in EOSIO’s evolution. While an official release date had yet to be determined, the deployment process would begin a few months later in May. The task would coincide with second term Chief Delegates taking office.

The ENF, Dan Larimer and core developers embarked on their Mandel (EOSIO) 3.0 journey together. It was the ENF that supported Dan back in December 2021. Notable and future upgrades were listed as such:

Maybe you’re aware of the in-development EOS EVM (dubbed The Trust Network). Did you know that back in December Dan said the following about the relationship between Mandel (Antelope) and BTC:

“With the latest Mandel road map and Contract Pays hard fork, it should be possible for EOS to mirror the Bitcoin RPC API and transaction structure and thereby open the world of BTC infrastructure and Lightning network to #EOS…”

The Trust Network expects to bring at least as much impact via Ethereum’s ecosystem.

On January 6, Yves La Rose discussed the rationale behind the new working groups (WG+) that would come to span all EOSIO chains:

“Doing what should have been done 3 years ago…”

On February 9, the ENF tweeted:

“Today a successful kickoff meeting was held for the #Mandel consensus upgrade which was coordinated by the @EOS_Nation team.

#EOS is taking its codebase into its own hands and away from @B1. #RoadToMandel”

Just a couple of days earlier on the 7th, Yves La Rose summed up the effort:

“…move from outmoded concepts of funding & development, to how we progress with leadership & decentralization while bringing together the teams and resources we need to thrive…”

To gauge the potential magnitude of initial impact, consider what Eden Capital said on that same day:

“#EOS is the Creed.

A large number of EOS ecosystem resources that disappeared in 2019, could be restarted in 2022!

https://freedomproxy.org”

Keep in mind that the name Mandel (now Antelope) has been deemed a placeholder for EOSIO 3.0. The process of rebranding EOS mainnet away from the Block.One is still being rolled out.

The first substantially organized effort undertaken by the ENF was to establish the Core+ working group. The team was formed to solve the following problems occurring within EOSIO networks:

Core+ solutions follow three phases:

In addition to ensuring that these three phases symbiotically overlap, the Core+ mission includes establishing an R&D team to maintain/update the codebase. The R&D team will also help keep EOSIO competitive on a global level. A Core+ blue paper was released on February 10.

The purpose of WG+ is to coordinate development for both the EOS public mainnet and the underlying core technology that can be adopted by other EOSIO public and private chains. In addition to standardized development, working groups like Coalition+ look to align development across the ecosystem. $8 million in support of ecosystem development emphasizes the coalition’s commitment.

Preceding Coalition+ was the EOSIO+ working group. Makes sense since EOSIO underlies the core technology used by all developers. Encouraging collaboration to infuse new life into the ecosystem begins with EOSIO+ (even if the core technology will eventually be rebranded). The statement of purpose for the EOSIO+ working group was delivered in early March with eleven key objectives:

The purpose of the ENF EOSIO+ Working Group is to define and create a functional and efficient entity that does the following:

1. Establish Organization Branding

2. Secure the Existing Codebase

3. Public Code Maintenance and Distribution

4. Provide a Public Roadmap

5. Support New Internal Code Development

6. Integrating Outside Developer Code

7. Form the Entity

8. Develop a Governance System

9. Fund the Entity

10. Determine Organization Staffing

11. Promote eosio codebase and “product”

Mandel core technology continues its development at an aggressive pace. D.U.N.E. is the name chosen for the new development environment that is live now.

Unlike Proof-of-Work (PoW) blockchains, EOSIO’s Delegated Proof-of-Stake (DPoS) requires consensus from block producers, and not a hard fork, to update the core code. For more about the difference between a hard fork and DPoS consensus, as well as the release date, view the May 11 Fireside Chat.

Friendly tools and resources are among the most highly criticized aspects of developing on core EOSIO tech. For example, community feedback illustrated the importance to instate a docker image in light of absent native Mac support. Mandel meetings #15 and #16 both discuss the new development environment D.U.N.E. Meeting #16 might be of special interest considering that eighteen leaders from the community attended. Weekly meetings discussing Mandel upgrades can be found on GitHub. Other ways to stay up to date include:

Weekly Fireside Chats (released via ENF twitter) are also a good place to get the latest news and have your questions answered.

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