Alonzo

Hey people!

Welcome to the pool update for epoch 259 and 260.

First of all, a big thank you to all the delegators and readers of the Pool Updates. From the statistics, I see that month after month more people read these posts and I am very happy about that. If you ever have any questions about one of my posts or any other questions about Cardano or the stakepool, just contact me. All contact details are linked in the footer of the website.

Upgrading Pool Infrastructure and Software

Over the past few days I did some upgrades to the server infrastructure as well as its software. The following has been done:

• Two relays were migrated to new more powerful servers to ensure their reliability even during network peaks and in sight of the upcoming more demanding smart contract features.
• The old backup producer retired and a new producer is in place with a new system for high availability using floating IPs.
• The Monitoring system was updated to reflect the changes made to the servers and the architecture
• Relays are now reachable within the Cardano network via their hostnames. This makes them more readable, easier recognizable and therefore aids future maintenance and upgrades
• Nodes were also updated to the latest Cardano-node version 1.26.1 which includes many fixes and improvements. Most importantly the 48h calculations are now distributed to a bigger time frame which means, that the network is no longer at a halt at the 48h mark and we won’t lose assigned blocks in this time frame anymore. Full details about the 1.26.1 can be found on GitHub: https://github.com/input-output-hk/cardano-node/releases/tag/1.26.1

Note: Block production was of course not affected by the maintenance work.

Latest IOHK Blog Posts

Plutus: what you need to know

Many participants in the Cardano network are already preparing for the release of Alonzo and thus the release of smart contracts. Currently, for example, the Plutus Pioneer Program is in progress, in which developers can gain their first experience with Plutus. Learn more about Plutus in this recent blog post: Plutus: what you need to know

Smart contracts – here we come

This blog post is a really precious one. It gives a lot of information about Plutus, smart contracts and how all of this will come together. It also includes a roadmap and many links to other related topics. Highly recommended to give it a read: Smart contracts – here we come

Thoughts about the Roadmap

And since we have already briefly touched on the roadmap, here is a video by Charles Hoskinson in which he shares some thoughts about the roadmap and the coming months and years.

Performance for 258

|======================================================================================|
| Leader | Ideal | Luck    | Adopted | Confirmed | Missed | Ghosted | Stolen | Invalid |
|======================================================================================|
| 65     | 56.66 | 114.72% | 62      | 62        | 0      | 0       | 3      | 0       |
|======================================================================================|

In 258 we had 65 assigned slots and produced all 65 blocks. Three blocks were stolen due to (not influenceable) slot battles which leaves us with 62 adopted blocks and a performance of ~111%.

Assigned Slots for 259

|=====================================================================================|
| Leader | Ideal | Luck   | Adopted | Confirmed | Missed | Ghosted | Stolen | Invalid |
|=====================================================================================|
| 57     | 58.17 | 97.99% | 0       | 0         | 0      | 0       | 0      | 0       |
|=====================================================================================

In 259 we are looking for 57 assigned slots, which leaves us at ~98% luck for this epoch. The statistics tell us that we will most likely lose some blocks due to slot & height battles which can’t be influenced by us. In the end 259 will be an underperforming epoch for us. Luck is always slightly fluctuating and we had some good epochs recently (with 102%, 107%, 116% and 111% luck) which level out the unluckier ones.

Assigned Slots for 260

|======================================================================================|
| Leader | Ideal | Luck    | Adopted | Confirmed | Missed | Ghosted | Stolen | Invalid |
|======================================================================================|
| 66     | 58.39 | 113.03% | 0       | 0         | 0      | 0       | 0      | 0       |
|======================================================================================

In Epoch 260 we were assigned 66 slots which means a maximum performance of around 113%. We are likely to lose some blocks due to slot and height battles but nevertheless, this will be again a good epoch for us.

That’s all I have for you today. Talk to you soon! 🙂