The ledger team enhanced the CDDL specification and improved safety by restricting certain protocol parameter types, introduced tools for controlling test case distribution, worked on UTXO predicate failure tests, enabled retrying of flaky tests in nightly CI, and made further improvements. The Lace team released v1.12, adding a fiat on-ramp with Banxa and enabling multi-delegation for supported hardware wallets. The Plutus team released version 1.29.0.0 of the Plutus libraries, which includes CIP-69 and CIP-117 implementations. The Mithril team improved the throughput of the prover route, transitioned to a chain point-based beacon for faster transaction signing, and prepared a threat modeling explainer for the documentation website. The ledger team continued testing the Conway era and fixed several bugs related to DRep expiry and committee voting thresholds. Intersect updates included interim constitutional committee elections and joining Hyperledger and the Linux Foundation. In Catalyst, town hall 165 shared updates, including the end of the community review period for LV0s and LV1s, and the start of LV2 moderation on June 13. The alternative voting mechanism achieved milestone 1 and was presented during town hall 165. The education team continued working on Mastering Cardano, supporting the DRep Pioneer Program, and preparing for the next Cardano Developer course.

The ledger team enhanced the CDDL specification and improved safety by restricting certain protocol parameter types, introduced tools for controlling test case distribution, worked on UTXO predicate failure tests, enabled retrying of flaky tests in nightly CI, and made further improvements. The Lace team released v1.12, adding a fiat on-ramp with Banxa and enabling multi-delegation for supported hardware wallets. The Plutus team released version 1.29.0.0 of the Plutus libraries, which includes CIP-69 and CIP-117 implementations. The Mithril team improved the throughput of the prover route, transitioned to a chain point-based beacon for faster transaction signing, and prepared a threat modeling explainer for the documentation website. The ledger team continued testing the Conway era and fixed several bugs related to DRep expiry and committee voting thresholds. Intersect updates included interim constitutional committee elections and joining Hyperledger and the Linux Foundation. In Catalyst, town hall 165 shared updates, including the end of the community review period for LV0s and LV1s, and the start of LV2 moderation on June 13. The alternative voting mechanism achieved milestone 1 and was presented during town hall 165. The education team continued working on Mastering Cardano, supporting the DRep Pioneer Program, and preparing for the next Cardano Developer course.

The consensus team advanced the UTXO-HD project using simple diffs, improving mempool benchmarks. They released quickcheck-state-machine library v0.10.0 and rebased UTXO-HD on node v8.11. Technical working groups under Intersect were established, with Plutus and consensus meetings set for early June. Updates on UTXO-HD and Ouroboros Peras were provided. The Hydra team released node v0.17.0, featuring new commit transaction mechanisms and networking upgrades. The Mithril team released a protocol insights dashboard, updated the explorer page, and improved transaction certification. SanchoNet invites community testing for on-chain governance as per CIP-1694, with updated documentation. Project Catalyst hosted town hall 164, with the community review stage ongoing and Fund12 voting registration open. The education team is preparing lectures for the Cardano Developer Course, supporting the DRep Pioneer program, and writing content for Mastering Cardano.

In May, the Mithril project released distribution 2418.1, which included critical updates like changes to the certificate chain structure and memory optimizations. Significant progress was made in Cardano transaction certification, achieving a 100x improvement in throughput and reducing storage requirements. The Hydra project released version 0.17.0 with breaking changes to the /commit endpoint, new HTTP endpoints, and focused on incremental decommits. Testing and optimization efforts continued, and several Hydra-related Catalyst proposals were discussed, exploring diverse use cases and alternative scaling approaches.

This week, the ledger team focused on conformance testing, completing tests for CERT and RATIFY rules and improving the constraint-generators framework. They also fixed the stake pool operator stake distribution calculation for voting. The Plutus team developed guardrail scripts for Conway governance actions, fine-tuned the PlutusV3 cost model, and collaborated with MLabs on new bitwise primitives. The Mithril team worked on Cardano transaction certification, scaling proof generation, low-latency certification, and a new explorer page for SPOs. They upgraded the testing network and removed deprecated commands. Work continued on SanchoNet documentation and the DRep Pioneer program with Intersect. Fund12 reached the proposal finalization stage, and development on Hermes and Catalyst voices progressed well. The education team is planning the next Cardano Developer course, advancing the Mastering Cardano series, and preparing an educational video about the constitutional committee.

This week, the consensus team released node v.8.11, improving Praos chain order, leader schedule statistics, and node robustness. They also updated on Ouroboros Genesis design and setup a consensus technical working group. The performance team completed UTXO-HD benchmarks, and the Lace team launched Lace v.1.11 with enhanced NFT functionality and Trezor T integration. The Hydra team upgraded node networking, fixed transaction parsing, and experimented with reliability layer changes. The Mithril team released distribution 2418.1, supported broader CPU use, improved memory allocation, and optimized signature generation. Voltaire & SanchoNet added CLI commands for hard forks, adjusted protocol versions, and tested CIP-1694. Catalyst Fund12 received 1,283 proposals, with community review starting May 23. The education team worked on Voltaire explainers and Mastering Cardano content.

This week, the performance team analyzed Conway era benchmarks with DReps, improved error reporting, and supported the new CLI command for testnet data. Node metrics were expanded, and UTXO scaling benchmarks were completed. The networking team enhanced peer-sharing, worked on Genesis APIs, resolved bootstrap peer issues, and synchronized churn with outbound governor. The Plutus team improved fixed point operators for efficiency. The Hydra team refactored network protocols and made workflow fixes. Voltaire & SanchoNet finalized Conway era features, updated Plutus CostModels, and improved CI setups. Fund12 in Catalyst is ongoing with approaching deadlines. The education team launched the DRep Pioneer Program, published Haskell Bootcamp lesson 19, and continued work on Mastering Cardano.

Ouroboros Genesis, the latest enhancement to Cardano’s consensus protocol, addresses the vulnerabilities of nodes joining or rejoining the network. It introduces concepts like ledger peers, lightweight checkpointing, limits on eagerness (LoE) and patience (LoP), and Genesis density disconnections (GDD). These measures prevent long-range and eclipse attacks, ensuring nodes can securely sync with the blockchain. The first Genesis-capable implementation is expected by Q3 2024, with ongoing optimizations to handle increased peer counts.

Over the past few weeks, the SRE team deployed Cardano node v.8.9.2 to various environments and v.8.10.1-pre to SanchoNet, rewriting the ouroboros-network-ops cluster. The consensus team reworked database arguments for UTXO-HD, reviewed the Peras innovation report, and supported networking work on big ledger peers. The Mithril team prepared distribution 2418.1-pre with broader CPU support, implemented transaction certification, and worked on signature and proof generation. They also started a global configuration file and investigated error logs. The node and CLI team released v.8.10.1-pre to SanchoNet, improved CI pipelines, and implemented build-estimate for transaction balancing. Fund12 entered the submissions phase with a deadline of May 13. The education team developed the DRep Pioneer program curriculum and attended the Cardano Buidler fest and Catalyst Fund12 launch.

In April, the Mithril project focused on increasing SPO participation, reaching 258 registered signers, representing 22% of Cardano’s active stake. Key updates included a pre-release of distribution 2418.1 and decentralization experiments for the signer registration process. The Hydra project updated its roadmap, emphasizing incremental commits and decommits, and introduced enhancements to the /commit endpoint. The Cardano Buidler Fest featured significant contributions, including the integration of Mithril into Cardano’s IBC protocol and Sundae Labs’ development of the Gummiworm fork for enhanced security in Hydra heads. Logo designs for both projects were also refreshed.