Update Wed, Sept 30th 2020
Apologies for the long delay between updates, but the month has been hectic. I think I’m on iteration number 5 of late-locked or mostly-lock free transactions, and turns out it’s a rabbit hole with a lot more considerations than I’d originally thought. I have a large chunk of code that I hope to be presenting sometime soon, but just want to spend a bit more time getting a few considerations right. Since the workflow for late-locked and lock-free transactions is mostly the same, I’m hoping to be able to introduce it experimentally, i.e. you’ll need to explicitly choose lock-free transactions, but the wallet will default to ‘lockful’, (or whatever you want to call them) transactions. This is a bit of functionality that we’ll have the luxury of experimenting with in this manner, since it doesn’t affect consensus, doesn’t produce any legacy we’ll need to maintain if it doesn’t work out, etc.
As I mentioned in yesterday’s meeting, I’m leaving the full-time Grin payroll for the time being, so this will be my last of these updates for a while at least. I’m not actually going anywhere as far as Grin’s concerned; I have no intention of disappearing and will continue to be contributing in my corner back on a more hobby-part time basis (like most people who contribute to Grin).
I’ve been working on Grin for about three years, about 2.5 of those on a full-time basis, and it has been without question one of the greatest experiences of my professional life, from the people to technological innovation and freedom to help build something meaningful via whatever contributions you see fit. It is also unique in that it allows you to switch gears; when you leave a company you can hardly go do something else while contributing part-time to the original project. With Grin you can. And that’s one of the reasons why I think this project will endure for a very long time, even if it sometimes feels like a slow-burner compared to other projects.
In terms of what I’m doing next; I’m still a few weeks away from being able to freely talk about my next full-time project, but rest assured I wouldn’t be working on it if I didn’t think it was genuinely worthwhile and at least had the potential to change the world in a positive way. It’s related to the background interest I’ve had in Shamir Secret Sharing Schemes, and should be of interest to a wide audience including anyone who’s ever written down a recovery phrase somewhere and wondered what to do with it (i.e everyone in crypto :D). I’ll be able to disclose more details about the project in the coming weeks, but it’s fully backed and is well on its way to becoming a thing. And want to ensure the thing it’s becoming is one that addresses a large set of shared problems while respecting security and privacy as well as it can.
Anyhow, this is not a teary goodbye. I’ve put the development meetings into the ridiculously capable hands of Antioch, (who has a far better holistic view of everything that’s going on in the project than I do at the moment, so this is a good thing). But other than that, I’ll be in the usual places, look forward to the upcoming virtual Grin Amsterdam, look forward to helping us steer to HF4 and beyond, and I look forward to more PRs around the bits of the code I know best, including the late locking I’ve been promising for a while.