1 of 22

Sebastian Nagel | sebastian.nagel@iohk.io

23 August 2023

Monthly review meeting

August 2023

​

Report | Recording

HYDRA

HYDRA | August 2023 |

2 of 22

Agenda

  • Demo

​

  • Release 0.12.0

​

  • Roadmap update

​

  • Delivered & next features�
  • Community updates

2

HYDRA | August 2023 |

3 of 22

Demo

​

​

  • Updated tutorial -

Open a Head in 5 minutes

3

HYDRA | August 2023 |

4 of 22

Release 0.12.0

  • Support cardano-node 8.1.2
    • Updated client and plutus versions

​

  • Layer 2 protocol changes
    • Authenticated messages
    • Removed redundancy�
  • Event-sourced persistence

​

​

​

4

  • New API endpoints�
  • Removal of “internal commit” endpoint

​

  • Improved off-chain tx processing performance�
  • Security fixes

​

HYDRA | August 2023 |

5 of 22

Themes for 2023

Resilience of development and decentralized governance

​

Enable collaboration and engage collaborators in the ecosystem

​

Transition Hydra to a community owned, treasury funded open source project

Sustainable open-source development

​

​

Showcase value via benchmarks and lighthouse projects

​

Reduce friction to use Hydra in selected use cases

​

Ensure interoperability through open standards

Increase adoption

Use the protocol on mainnet ourselves

​

Mature enough to lock some ADA in a Hydra Head using a reference DApp

​

Dogfood features with the reference DApp

A mainnet mature application

5

1

2

3

HYDRA | August 2023 |

6 of 22

Roadmap Current - ex ideas

6

https://github.com/orgs/input-output-hk/projects/21/views/7

​

HYDRA | August 2023 |

7 of 22

Roadmap Current

7

https://github.com/orgs/input-output-hk/projects/21/views/7

​

UPDATE

HYDRA | August 2023 |

8 of 22

Roadmap Current - ex ideas

8

https://github.com/orgs/input-output-hk/projects/21/views/7

​

HYDRA | August 2023 |

9 of 22

Roadmap Current

9

https://github.com/orgs/input-output-hk/projects/21/views/7

​

HYDRA | August 2023 |

10 of 22

Delivered features

  • Event source persistence #913
    • First spike confirmed performance improvements (master ~300ms → spike ~6ms)
    • Also opens up interesting possibilities for state observation in clients
    • Needed to refactor in between
    • Currently carefully porting protocol logic to be event sourced�
  • Submit L1 transactions through hydra-node #966
    • API improvement to not need a tx submission server / cardano-node on client side

​

  • Ability to read protocol parameters via API #735
    • Also small story to increase developer experience�
    • Should cover everything but current time + conversion (projection possible)

10

HYDRA | August 2023 |

11 of 22

Delivered & Current features

  • Remove commit from internal wallet
    • No “fuel marking” anymore
    • Simplifies setup

​

  • Update tutorial and include Mithril #997
    • Make tutorial work with latest version of hydra-node
    • Support a wide range of platforms
    • Ensure it’s kept up-to-date (using continuous integration)
    • Preparation for Hydra master-class at RareEvo

11

HYDRA | August 2023 |

12 of 22

Next features

  • Hydra network resilience #118
    • Improves liveness of an open head
    • Allows for more robust operation
    • Likely done via a configurable message re-submission mechanism
    • May need to switch the layer two network protocol
      • should do that earlier than later

​

  • Hydra node software & protocol updates #191
    • Ensures upgrade paths for Hydra components exist
    • No accidental break of interfaces
    • Versioning and reporting incompatibility
    • Requires some further grooming
      • Golden tests of hydra-plutus was the first step

12

HYDRA | August 2023 |

13 of 22

Community - Hydra master-class

  • Saturday, August 26

9:30-12:30 MDT / 15:30-18:30 UTC�

  • About 40 registered for on-site event

​

  • Planning to stream it on #hydra-live + support people on #ask-hydra

-> on the IOG Discord: https://discord.gg/Qq5vNTg9PT

​

  • Preparation still on-going and maybe some network connectivity challenges..

13

HYDRA | August 2023 |

14 of 22

Community - Catalyst Fund10

  • Screened all proposals mentioning Hydra and Mithril�
  • Submitted 11 community reviews

14

HYDRA | August 2023 |

15 of 22

Community - Catalyst Fund10 - Hydra related proposals

  • Ledger-as-a-Service mode
    • https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/102138
    • Hydra node will only receive and validate transactions, and maintain a ledger state
    • Allows many useful scenarios:
      • Run the ledger validation as a component in a larger layer-2 protocol
      • Scenario testing frameworks
      • Speculative execution
    • ADR Under review: https://github.com/input-output-hk/hydra/pull/1012
  • Hydra event stream
    • https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/102200
    • Expose internal hydra event stream to external consumers
    • Allows:
      • Custom Persistence formats
      • Chain-explorers
      • Chain indexing integration with existing ecosystem tools

15

HYDRA | August 2023 |

16 of 22

Community - Catalyst Fund10 - Hydra/Mithril related proposals

  • Hydra as a B2B layer for DeFi - a white paper and a MVP

​

  • Decentralized Demeter.run - Federated Frontend Hosting

​

  • Mithril - Open-source contributor

16

HYDRA | August 2023 |

17 of 22

18 of 22

19 of 22

20 of 22

Repository status

20

Number of commits is still not a good metric

HYDRA | August 2023 |

21 of 22

Repository status

21

Number of commits is still not a good metric

HYDRA | August 2023 |

22 of 22

Sebastian Nagel | sebastian.nagel@iohk.io

Questions & Feedback

​

Report | Recording

HYDRA

HYDRA | August 2023 |