Author: Marco González
Editor: Randall Roland

Node operators, Antelope core developers, and community members get together each week to discuss the captivating questions of the day. The primary objective of each Node Operator Roundtable is:

Roundtables occur every Wednesday. Visit the Telegram channel for information about joining. The EOS Network Foundation provides tutorials and documentation for those wishing to learn the basics of operating an EOS node (and more).

Below is a list of the roundtables contained within this bi-monthly summary:

Look for additional meeting notes and comments on GitHub. Videos reside on the ENF’s YT.

The August 2 roundtable was not recorded. What follows is an open conversation on what to expect in the weeks leading up to the Antelope Leap 5.0 consensus upgrade. Given the critical nature and desired timeline, expect the roundtable to become more formal (as conducted under 3.0 versions).

Planning for a consensus upgrade was touched upon in recent weeks. The next roundtable expects to introduce the launch schedule.

The Leap 5.0 launch schedule will highlight essential and non-essential items. Some features appear ready, while questions remain of others. Only a couple of items might warrant delaying the launch. Instant finality (IF) is a critical launch item. It remains the focus of roundtable discussions during the early phase.

Community discussions should also focus on:

While awaiting the scheduling announcement, the community identified a few standout items. Leading the feedback was Michael from EOSUSA:

Some other concerns include:

While the ENF has done a superb job in refining core documentation on docs.eosnetwork.com, Leap 5.0 offers a unique opportunity. Consensus upgrades are challenging because of the immense effort to coordinate with all (active) parties. BPs must act together within an agreed-upon timeframe to complete a multisig. Configuring devices is a concern of both BPs and node operators.

Maintaining a secure and smooth running network is the ultimate goal. Another initiative for v5.0 is to set a new standard for the consensus upgrade process. New documentation is integral to the effort. Some suggestions for the new documentation include configuration changes across versions and introducing new features (e.g. an Optimizing Compiler). Also suggested were notifications about configurations specific to pre-existing changes (for 4.0 versions) that ease the transition to v5.0 transition.

Again, expect the next roundtable to take on a more formal setting akin to the months developing and launching version 3.0, the ENFs breakout product. The combined speed-and-quality of the foundation’s recent products (from several 4.0 versions to now 5.0) is simply awe-inspiring.

The August 9 roundtable was recorded and is available. The ENF shared its plan to launch Leap v5.0.

Key topics discussed in the August 9 roundtable include:

While dates may change, the schedule presented at the August 9 roundtable represents the order of operations for launching Leap v5.0.

The first, major milestone is planned for mid-September with the release candidate (5.0.0-rc1). Several tasks need completion before getting the go/no-go call from the BPs. That includes:

The go/no-go call relies on activation by the BPs. That call is (tentatively) scheduled for the end-of-November / beginning-of-December. The system contract needs to upgrade before enabling instant finality. From activation through deploying IF expects to take about a week. Hopefully, IF will be up and running on EOS by early December.

The community expects to lead future scheduling discussions. Peer discovery and read-only transactions will unlikely delay Leap v5.0. By September, the team expects to have a firm, semi-firm launch date.

Beyond IF, replay testing is the other feature that could significantly alter the launch plan (see August 2 roundtable).

A topic of interest occurs around the 7-minute mark. The discussion centered around cutting a release candidate and replay testing. A key determinant will be comparing the integrity hashes of successive snapshots-plus-block-replays. Note that upgrading to Leap v5.0 will not need a resync of the blocks log.

Issues remain over conducting a full-Genesis replay. Micheal of EOSUSA brought up (the now fixed) regression problems and the time until completion. The development team maintains a focus on launching v5.0 with a blocks-log replay. Investigating Genesis replays is something the team has kept in mind for a future upgrade.

Another energetic discussion began when the Kylin testnet was mentioned. Mathew from EOS Nation recommended that Kylin not be run in parallel with the Jungle testnet. What followed was a scheduling change that maintained target dates to include a Kylin run by mid-October. Testing needs to complete before the planned stable release of Leap v5.0.0 before November.

Deferred transactions are now deprecated. Ideally, they’d be removed for v5.0. If deferred transactions remain in v5.0, they may persist for another year. It's unknown if any contracts depend on them.

Two decisions are being considered to remove deferred transactions. The first solution allows for backpedaling. However, it would take substantial time to implement. The other, more reasonable, option has BPs running a test that briefly disables the feature. Then feedback from the community could determine the fate of deferred transactions. No projects are known to rely on deferred transactions.

For next week, expect the discussion again to center around launching Antelope Leap v5.0.