This week, the core technology teams released node v.8.9.2, resolving a peer-sharing issue. The SRE team made various environment improvements, including re-spinning the Voltaire private chain and updating SanchoNet. The networking team advanced Genesis support, and the consensus team implemented a new diffusion pipelining criterion. The Hydra team fixed a bug, refactored network functions, and prepared a cardano-api branch. The Mithril team worked on transaction certification, memory leak investigation, and signer registration decentralization. Voltaire & SanchoNet updated documentation and tutorials. Fund12 launched in Barcelona on April 26, with proposal submissions starting April 30. The education team wrapped up the ABC Cardano Developer course and developed new Aiken content.

Over the past two weeks, the ledger team enhanced conformance tests and infrastructure, fixed node v.8.10 issues, and updated tooling. The Lace team released Lace v.1.10 with simpler onboarding, improved DApp-wallet interaction, and enhanced staking views. The Plutus team updated the Plutus Tx compiler for better short-circuiting, to be released in v1.26.0.0. The Hydra team released v.0.16.0, supporting cardano-node v.8.9.0, and updated Hydra clients. The Mithril team focused on transaction certification, scaling, and decentralizing signer registration. Voltaire & SanchoNet added Conway-related tests and ToJSON instances. Catalyst Fund12 launched in Barcelona on April 26. The education team supported Voltaire training and published Haskell Bootcamp Lesson 18.

This week, the consensus team improved LocalTxMonitor and HasTx functionalities, completed UTXO-HD tests, and addressed issues in the mempool-parallel test. They proposed a new testing framework for quickcheck-dynamic and prepared for node v.8.10 release. The Lace team released v.1.9 with multi-wallet and multi-account support. The Hydra team fixed a broken head situation, enhanced compatibility, and added decommits to the tutorial. The Mithril team worked on transaction certification, scaling, and a decentralized signer registration prototype. Catalyst Fund12 launches on April 26 in Barcelona. The education team continued the Cardano Developer course and prepared for constitutional committee training.

This week, the consensus team finalized integrating node v.8.10.0-pre for SanchoNet governance testing. The ledger team enhanced test frameworks and data quality, resolving issues and improving signal generation. The performance team conducted benchmarks for node v.8.9.1. The Lace team prepared for the release of Lace v.1.9. The Plutus team added a new guide on AsData functionality and optimized scripts. The Hydra team restored network test compatibility, fixed bugs, and prepared a new API format. The Mithril team released distribution 2412.0 with updates, continued transaction certification, and worked on a P2P network prototype. Voltaire & SanchoNet improved governance action handling and efficiency. Project Catalyst paused town halls until Fund12 launches on April 26 in Barcelona, introduced a formal cancellation policy, and planned for future accountability. The education team continued the Cardano Developer course and worked on Haskell Bootcamp Lesson 18.

Over the past few weeks, the SRE team deployed cardano-node v.8.9.0 across all environments and created a new profile-cardano-db-sync-snapshots nixosModule. The consensus team merged an alternative fs-api interface, implemented a new diffusion pipelining criterion, and released consensus packages for node v.8.9.1. The Plutus team optimized UPLC and improved documentation. The Hydra team aligned the specification with the incremental de-commit implementation, updated to cardano-api v.8.40, and tested against cardano-node v.8.9.0. The Mithril team focused on transaction certification, UI improvements, metadata provision, and low-latency transaction signing. SanchoNet resources were updated with compatible components. Project Catalyst shared results from the first non-funding vote and announced Fund12’s launch in Barcelona at the end of April. The education team resumed the Cardano Developer Course and supported Voltaire’s constitutional committee training plans.

This week, the core technology teams released node v.8.9.0, introducing Genesis Lite bootstrap peers and fixing a dynamic block forging bug. The Lace team started closed beta testing for DApp discovery. The Plutus team added Plutus contract blueprints in the 1.23.0.0 release. The Hydra team worked on the cardano-api-classy library, improved Hydra Head explorer UI, error reporting, and refactored protocol logic. The Mithril team certified Cardano transactions, improved the Mithril explorer UI, and optimized communications between Mithril and Cardano nodes. The ledger team focused on Conway functionality, testing, and code cleanup. Catalyst held a non-funding vote for Fund12’s launch location and conducted a retrospective on Fund11. The education team wrote content for Mastering Cardano and updated the Cardano Developer Course.

This week, the networking team published several packages, including ouroboros-network-0.12.0.0, and fixed syncing in bootstrap mode. The consensus team updated production libraries for UTXO-HD, measured sync times, fixed a snapshot interval bug, and added UTXO size analysis. The Plutus team advanced CIP-57 implementation for contract blueprints. The Hydra team prepared for the Conway switch, added a UI to the Hydra explorer, and made off-chain protocol changes. The Mithril team worked on transaction certification, improved the explorer, and implemented Prometheus monitoring. The SanchoNet team updated documentation. Catalyst continued onboarding Fund11 projects and began retrospective discussions for Fund12. The education team updated the Haskell Bootcamp and Cardano Developer courses.

This week, the ledger team added reference script support for Plutus V1 in Conway, addressed stake distribution inaccuracies, and improved tooling and tests. The Plutus team began implementing the contract blueprint for Plutus Tx and updated the quick start guide to recommend the IOGX Nix flake template. The Hydra team resolved the fanout bug, optimized fee estimation, and implemented transaction metadata. The Mithril team released distribution 2408.0 with significant updates, including improved stake distribution support, and continued developing transaction certification data types. The SanchoNet team launched a patch release, fixed BLS12-381 primitives issues, and brought the GovTool online with limited wallet support. Project Catalyst is onboarding 300 approved projects, emphasizing the Statement of Milestones for accountability, and preparing for a special voting event to decide Fund12's launch location. The education team updated advanced lessons in the Haskell Bootcamp course and practical scenarios in the Cardano Developer Course.

This week, the networking team integrated bootstrap peers with cardano-node for improved connectivity and enhanced the tx-submission logic. The consensus team addressed unnecessary block downloads, fixed a bug in the io-sim, and added support for configuring ledger state snapshots. The Hydra team advanced model-based testing, resolved validation issues, and integrated Haskell linting. The Mithril team developed a new data type for certifying Cardano transactions, enhanced browser verification with the WASM client, and deployed a new Mithril network on SanchoNet. SanchoNet focused on governance actions and tutorials. Project Catalyst announced a fun voting event to determine Fund12’s launch city and continued onboarding Fund11 projects. The education team delivered the Cardano Developer course and updated the Haskell Bootcamp course.

This week, the core technology teams released Cardano node v.8.8.0-pre, enabling Plutus V3 script testing on SanchoNet. DB-Sync began integration with the latest Cardano node version. The ledger team focused on fixes, testing, and developing the cuddle Haskell package for CDDL specification in Haskell. The Lace team addressed core API issues for an upcoming patch. The Plutus team improved the Plutus IR inliner, reducing script costs. The Hydra team worked on Conway support, deployed the Hydra explorer tool, and enhanced model-based testing. The Mithril team implemented a new data type for certifying transactions, upgraded the client library, and released a new Mithril network on SanchoNet. The release of Cardano node v.8.8.0-pre allows for experimentation with Plutus V3 on SanchoNet. Project Catalyst announced the results of Fund11, with 300 funded projects and a total of 1,647 projects in Catalyst history. The education team delivered the Cardano Developer Course with ABC and finalized the Marlowe Curriculum for Educators.