This week, the DeFiChain Labs team held their monthly Tech Sync, providing updates on the current projects and initiatives the team is tackling.

Here’s a summary of the updates:

Technical Updates

1. New Algorithm for Owner Rewards Calculation

One of the most significant updates is the development of a new algorithm designed to calculate owner rewards more efficiently. This enhancement addresses a notable hotspot during block processing, particularly within the Kol component. 

Although the development was initially delayed to avoid conflicts with other major updates, it is now complete and has been thoroughly tested.

The new calculations will introduce minor differences to improve precision and are not expected to cause concern among users. 

Performance metrics are still being collected, but the team anticipates a notable improvement. They plan to gather more data over the coming weeks and proceed with merging the new algorithm into the system.

2. Ocean API in Node

Another important update is the implementation of snapshots on each block. The recent pull request merges this functionality, allowing read-only RPCs to use snapshots to provide data from specific points in time. 

This change eliminates the need to lock for real-time data and enables the parallel processing of requests, which is highly beneficial for infrastructure-related projects.

Following the APR merge, further testing will be conducted before enabling the RPCs to utilize the snapshot function. This sets a strong foundation for future improvements, with the goal of having all read-only RPCs use snapshots instead of accessing the live, constantly changing database. 

The full integration of this feature is expected to proceed in the next few weeks, addressing a backlog of pending updates from the past couple of months.

3. EVM Trace Transaction

The team is also focused on resolving issues related to the EVM TraceTransaction feature. A persistent problem causing state mismatches between DVM and EVM has been identified. 

Efforts are underway to isolate the specific block range causing the problem. While progress has been made, the exact transaction causing the mismatch has not yet been pinpointed.

The team is diligently working on isolating the problem further and coding potential fixes. They hope to resolve the issue by the end of the week, though they acknowledge the complexity may extend the timeline. This work cannot be partially merged due to the risks it poses to the system’s state integrity.

Additionally, most of the Ocean API and indexing work has been merged into the Ocean Archive branch. This will be tested on a public VM, allowing the community to participate. The team expects to finalize the work by next week.

Operational Updates

1. Enable Future Swap Limits

Future swap limits are set to be enabled. The limits will be activated once the blockchain gathers the necessary data, which is expected to take about seven days. During this initial period, no limits will be in place. After this period, the limits will be activated as planned.

2. Adding IBIT Support

The team is also working on adding previously pending tokens after resolving infrastructure issues that prevented them from being listed. These additions are expected to occur over the next week.

3. Token Split

The tech call included an update on the first token split in over eight months. This split, involving NVIDIA tokens and some pending token codes, is set to occur on June 8th, following the closure of Friday’s market. Oracle data will be updated by this time, avoiding any weekend activities.

The process will begin Monday (Singapore time) before the U.S. market opens. Tokens will be in a frozen state for manual verification during the first 24 hours post-split, allowing only token transfers. Other token-related functions will be temporarily frozen.

The team expects to complete the verification early on June 11th. The precise block numbers will be shared in tech documents for those who plan on following.

• Date: June 8, 2024 (Saturday, after Friday market closure)
• On-Chain Events:
  • Lock: June 10, SGT (Monday, before market opening)
  • Split: June 10, SGT (~5-6 hours before market opening)
  • Unlock: Within ~24 hours after manual verification, scheduled to be June 11 early SGT.
  • Block numbers to be updated closer to date.

These updates reflect the ongoing efforts by the DeFiChain Labs team to enhance the functionality, performance, and user experience within the DeFiChain ecosystem. If you want, you can also check the engineering updates on our Trello board.