Hi Nembers!
Welcome back to the NEM Foundation Technology Department Update! We are pleased to share with you, some of the ongoing discussions and updates in the technology department team.
Contributions Period: July 2019
Add your opinion and feedback to our discussions.
Credits for the Image go to @nembear, who posted it on Twitter here.
Summary
July Tech Update
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Core devs released the second iteration of Catapult, codenamed Elephant release. The update comes with Metadata implementation and Mosaic/Account restrictions.
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NEM Foundation is pushing forward contributions on Clients integrations like our experimental Desktop Wallet and Block/Network Explorer (Super Explorer Framework).
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Software Development Kits have been updated to Elephant compatibility.
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Standardization working group (WG) has peer-reviewed the Catapult
catbufferproject. -
Catapult public chain release working group (WG) is doing progress with a rewrite of NIP#8 to better define datasets and add information about fork schemes and legal implications.
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NEM Foundation Testnet for Catapult is running Elephant milestone.
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Security Tokens working group (WG) have started to draft the NIP#9: NEM Security Token Standard document.
Protocol Updates
The Elephant 2 release is the second iteration of the elephant milestone.
The latest release introduces the implementation of Metadata for Accounts/Mosaics/Namespaces - which acts as a key-value store for any of accounts, mosaics or namespaces.
On top of being able to configure restrictions for accounts specifically, it is now also possible to configure restrictions for mosaics. An example of this would be to restrict the usage of a mosaic to users that have gone through a KYC process or any other second layer delegated business or legal guidelines. Features like Mosaic Restrictions open the doors to many opportunities for working with financial instruments - out-of-the-box with the Catapult technology.
Other features that have been released include support for outgoing account restrictions and minor improvements in the namespace life-cycle.
Client Integrations
NEM Foundation members have been working on a first Desktop Wallet.
This wallet initiative was initially worked on to become a browser extension. The flow of features implemented in this wallet has made us decide to shift the scope of the build for this project to become a fully-featured desktop wallet.
The feature set available is compatible with Catapult Dragon milestone:
- Transfers & Custom Transactions
- Namespaces management
- Mosaics management
- Transaction URIs creation / signing
- QR Codes for Account Backups
- Invoices
- Contacts
At this moment, we are focusing on providing an improved user interface and user experience.
We have also been working on a network & block explorer project, codenamed Super Explorer Framework. You can find a build of this project by following this link.
We are constantly working to improve our client integrations of Catapult. With the latest protocol release, we have observed the addition of many features to the protocol, which our team will work to integrate during the month of August.
Join our discussions on Slack and give us your feedback about client applications.
Software Development Kits
More work has been done on the Typescript/Javascript Software Development Kit with its version nem2-sdk@0.13.1. The NEM Studios team is managing this software development kit and working on the integration of catbuffer generators with an open pull request adding a Typescript generator.
NEM Foundation team and NEM Studios have also cooperated on the release of the latest Java SDK version nem2-sdk-java@v0.13.0 which is also compatible with the Elephant milestone. We are working on the publication of artifacts on the Maven public repository.
Peer Review of catbuffer
Multiple projects have been worked on over the course of the Catapult development project. The standardization working group aims to improve the consistency and quality of the Catapult technology source code.
The first planned effort has been peer-reviewing the consistency of catbuffer project source code. The analysis has been done publicly during the month of July, concluding in a series of recommendations that might be applied to the serialization library.
Different entities in the NEM Community and individuals participated in the revisions to ensure that the catapult project as a whole is reviewed before Release Candidate (RC). The next planned standardization is peer-reviewing MongoDB Schemas during the month of August.
New to this initiative? Introduce yourself 
and read more about what we are trying to achieve here: Standardization Working Group
Join this initiative and work with us to improve Catapult.
Working Group for Public Release Migration
With the upcoming network migration, decisions must be made about the elected fork scheme and network upgrade type as well as about the datasets that will be migrated. The working group for public Release migration is comprised of members of NEM Ventures, NEM Studios, and NEM Foundation. We meet weekly to discuss options analysis documents and network upgrade collaterals.
We are discussing and contributing to the public release on Github and will be focussing on making decisions with regards to the upgrade of NEM features to the Catapult technology.
One example of a guide that has been published is a Guide for Migrating from NIS1 to Catapult. This guide helps companies running on NIS1 to detect which features behave differently with the newly available Catapult technology.
More progress will be announced during the month of August as we are still researching possibilities of an upgrade for specific datasets, such as multi-signature account configurations.
It is important for us to hear your thoughts on this topic - Join our discussions on Slack!
Experimental Testnet for Catapult
Last week, the NEM Foundation Testnet for Catapult was updated to the latest protocol milestone version. We are working closely with the core developers to test Catapult networks and integrate features as they are released. In this optic, it is important for us to maintain multiple nodes with different protocol versions.
The currently available test network is still experimental and will require a network reset when new milestones are released.
Participate in our discussions, we are happy for any feedback!
Security Tokens Working Group
The latest released Catapult protocol upgrade introduces features that improve the capacities of Catapult networks to work with specific financial instruments such as security tokens, securities or commodities.
Security Tokens can be managed easily with Catapult features such as multi-signature accounts, metadata, and restrictions (mosaics + accounts). Our aim with this working group is to facilitate issuance and management of multiple financial instruments with Catapult technology. For this, we have started to draft a NIP#9: NEM Security Token Standard that will be the base for financial instruments definition with Catapult technology.
This NIP is still in the early phase and needs more work from our working group in order to correctly define guidelines and feature sets that our NEM Security Token Standards should provide with. Expect more updates soon!
Conclusion
During the month of July, our NEM Foundation Technology Department has focussed efforts around client applications and the upcoming public network migration of Catapult. We will be making progress on these topics, also during the month of August.
Some of our client applications are nearing feature readiness and are currently being scoped for user interface and experience improvements.
We would love to read your feedback in the comments section below!
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Russian translation is here:
