ETC Core 2020 Roadmap Announcement

Introduction

The ETC Core development team is pleased to announce our 2020 roadmap! Our 2019 deliverables were a strong focus on original infrastructure projects to help streamline our software development process with high-quality standardization and automation as well as tools specifically for building on EVM.

The ETC Core development team is a leading Ethereum Classic core development team focused on building and supporting ecosystem tooling, protocol, and EVM development. Some of our original projects include; OpenRPC, Pristine, Jade, Signatory, Expedition, and many more projects that are all open-source and discoverable on our Github organization. Our team is proudly supported by ETC Labs which advocates investment and development throughout the ETC ecosystem.

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EVM/ Compiler Team

The EVM/ Compiler team is lead by Alan Li, ETC Core’s lead compiler engineer who is also the lead maintainer of the EVM-LLVM backend project. The EVM-LLVM alpha version and project website with initial documentation are now available at https://llvm.etccore.io/.

Q1 — Q2:

• SOLL and Vyper compiler integration
• Implementation: Global stack allocation and performance optimizations

Q2 — Q3:

• (Community-driven) new smart contract language support and integration
• Implementation: Instruction scheduler and performance optimizations

Q3 — Q4:

• Official beta release
• (Community-driven) new smart contract language support and integrations
• Implementation: Embedded assembly and exception handling

Q1 — Q4:

• 1.0 Candidate
• Continuous community development, new language support
• Continuous implementation on optimizations and debugging
• Continuous EVM runtime support

Second State, Vyperlang, and other teams are implementing or experimenting in bringing LLVM infrastructure to the EthereumStack. There is an Ethereum LLVM Developers channel on Telegram if you’d like to connect with developers with shared interests.

Tooling Team

The tooling team is represented by Zachary Belford, Shane Jonas, and Zane Star while co-lead by Zach & Shane.

Q1:

• Signatory released: Signatory is an offline transaction and message signer for the EthereumStack compatible with any EVM-based network. The tool can be deployed as a standalone server, integrated into nodejs projects, and use-cases limited to one’s imagination. For example, Signatory can power wallet back-ends or run on a small computer (censor) to sign events in a supply chain and other IoT implementations.
• Getting started
• API documentation

Q1 — Q2:

• Tooling improvements: We’ll be doing some regular maintenance, performance, and optimization to OpenRPC, JSON-RPC schema, and including Python lang support in OpenRPC.
• Expedition.dev updates: Expedition is an open-source explorer for the EthereumStack supporting Ethereum Classic, Ethereum, and related testnets. Hitting as high as 1 million API calls, we want to ensure this explorer is as usable as possible while providing a good experience to multiple EVM communities.
• Signatory Desktop: Will be an open-source desktop application utilizing the Signatory module with a simple and easily customizable material-ui interface for users to sign messages and transactions on the EthereumStack.

Q3 — Q4:

• Major Jade service runner refactoring: Improvements and refactoring to the service runner specification and overall creating a better package. We want to make it easier to modularize services and easier for users to include a JSON-RPC-based service in the CLI and Desktop application.
• Smart contract deploy tool: We want to make an open-source minimal tool to deploy chaincode to any EVM-based network. This project is undergoing planning and we’ll have more clear updates throughout the coming months.

Q1 — Q4:

• Continuous community development: So many projects on our Github can provide a lot of value to blockchain and general software development. For example, OpenRPC helps software developers build JSON-RPC APIs and JSON-RPC is already a well established RPC protocol throughout the software industry. Pristine grew from a development philosophy to a whole suite of templates and tools to automate and accelerate software projects.
• Sit down with us: Is your blockchain network or traditional software solution utilizing JSON-RPC? Well, we’d love to sit down with you and see how OpenRPC can be of value. Let’s take your JSON-RPC-based service to documentation driven JSON-RPC API with all the side-kick OpenRPC tools to help you!
• More community events: Stay tuned for webinars, meetups, and more publicly accessible events to engage with us and learn more about Ethereum Classic and our open-source projects.
• Continuous documentation releases: We’re committed to documentation driven projects and readability. We’ll continue to produce documentation, educational material, and instructions for the broader community to contribute.

Protocol Provider Team

The protocol provider team is led by Meowbits. ETC Core, is now maintaining the new Core-Geth client which will be a differentiating version of the Multi-Geth client. We maintained Multi-Geth for that past year implementing OpenRPC, fork preparedness, and bringing the client to a point of no longer being a near direct copy of upstream branches. However, we’re excited to continue innovating the Core-Geth client and ensuring a sustainable client for ETC node operators.

Q1:

https://core-geth.org/

• github.com/etclabscore/core-geth is born! Core-Geth is a distribution of go-etheruem with many flavors. Core-geth v1.11.0 is the first client to support the next Ethereum Clasic “Pheonix” hard-fork. Please upgrade. Multi-geth users recommended migrating to at-least Core-geth v1.11.0 https://github.com/etclabscore/core-geth/releases/tag/v1.11.0
• Istanbul equivalent (ie Aztlan/Phoenix fork) fork specification process, evaluation, implementation, and testing.
• ETC cross-client fork tests filled and passing
• Test network (Mordor, Kotti) management and maintenance.
• eth/64 ETC protocol specification anticipated to reach `Final` status
• eth/65 protocol to be implemented by etclabscore/core-geth enabling lower-bandwidth transaction pool messaging
• ECIP1043 DAG Limit implementation and possible push for Acceptance
• ETC Discv4 DNS Discovery mechanisms (infrastructure: schedule and maintain automatic DNS records via crawler, docs: provide automatically updated node lists reflecting the DNS records)

Q1-Q3:

• Ethereum Protocol Provider Chain Configuration Standard and translational tooling
• etclabscore/core-geth Chain Configuration JSON-RPC API
• etclabscore/core-geth Infrastructure and CI integrations: Docker images and releases at least
• etclabscore/core-geth discv4 DNS Discovery lists (infrastructure) and provider support
• SHA3 consensus algo research review
• Move ETC discv4 DNS records from blockd.info -> etcdisco.net

Q2- Q4:

• Pluggable chain database support, with potential interfaces to include message-brokered databases (eg. Kafka) as well as standard static remotes and local options.
• Buildtime/Runtime JSON-RPC API discovery for ethereum/go-ethereum/rpc, enabling code -> descriptive document generation (supplementing the existing opposite pattern).
• EVM Account Versioning /+ Versionless EVM and Ungas research and implementations.

Q2 — Q3:

• ETL: x-chain transform+tranfer (tests(nets), et al?)
• JSON-RPC devp2p Wire protocol specification and reference implementation research and possible design

Q3- Q4:

• ETL Tooling patterns and research into providing support for cross-chain transaction transforms

Q1 — Q4:

• Readable documentation and code design is an ongoing and pervasive attitude and priority.

EVM61 Podcast

• We launched the EVM61 Podcast brought to you by ETC Core and ETC Labs which is hosted on our YouTube channel and Soundcloud. This podcast will focus on general ETC news, projects, interviews, blockchain developments, and overall EthereumStack. If you’d like to come on the show and talk about your project or dive deep into blockchain topics, then please fill out the get on the show form.
• WATCH: EVM61 #2 — James Wo https://youtu.be/Rk7ZifoVTcA
• WATCH: EVM61 #1 — ETC Updates https://youtu.be/r1-SKPurPsA

About ETC Core

ETC Core is a leading Ethereum Classic core development team. We deliver infrastructure tooling, specifications, and resources to the Ethereum Classic ecosystem. We strongly believe in high-quality software, readability, and cross-chain compatibility. We maintain the Core-Geth client and actively participate in protocol research, upgrades, and events. We maintain the EVM-LLVM backend project and committed to maximizing EVM capabilities and innovating smart contract development. Check out our projects: https://etccore.io/projects

Follow ETC Core

• Team website: https://etccore.io
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/etc_core
• Chat on Discord: https://discord.gg/5KwEAdZ
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYpIe3I2bljQsXgVv7wioYA
• Github: https://github.com/etclabscore

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