Work on the block explorer has started. The first step is building out a gRPC interface for the base node and the first set of calls are already in place. Of course gRPC is not only for block explorers. The goal is to decouple the wallet and CLI from the base node and have them run as separate processes.

Work on the Tari smart contract platform has started picking up. If you’re interested in joining the conversation, #tari-vn-dev is where discussions are taking place. For a broad overview of the community discussions on this topic, head over to https://rfc.tari.com.

Node stability is still being addressed on a few fronts: Several changes to the base node message propagation strategy have been merged in already, but the biggest change – a rewrite of the peer connection manager – is still in progress. Wallet messaging has also been improved. These changes should make it into the next set of mobile releases.

Have you ever wondered how phones receive Tari messages when they come back online without there being a central server to deliver them? This is done via Store and Forward.

Basically, some of your peers on the network will keep a message on behalf of your device and then deliver it when you comes back online. But there’s a fine line. Lean too heavily on guaranteeing that messages get delivered, and you can drown the network in traffic. Move too far in the other direction and messages get lost.

We’re still trying to find that balance, and the next Aurora release will carry some tweaks that we hope will get the tuning a lot better.