Humanode Biweekly vol.80
Finality incident fix incoming, BotBasher UX update, Supra becomes official oracle provider, Intract integration, 1250+ validators milestone, BotBasher now protects 600+ Discord servers from Sybils, ZK KYC vs Cryptobiometrics analysis, Founders' Talk, and new website localizations!
TL;DR
Hey, human nodes! It’s that time again—our biweekly recap is here, marking our 80th issue. The last two weeks were pretty fruitful for the team, so let’s point out some of the key updates. Let’s jump right in!
First up, for those who missed it, we recently encountered a finality stall. But don’t worry—we’ve already implemented a fix and a workaround. The issue stemmed from a delay in block production, leading to a chain reorganization. We’ve enhanced our alert systems and thoroughly examined the Grandpa logic to prevent future issues. The fix will be deployed to the mainnet this week. Stay tuned!
Furthermore, our Discord integration BotBasher has received a UX upgrade. Previously, users faced issues with incorrect bioverifications due to multiple accounts. Now, our app prompts users to verify their account names and IDs after a private biometric session, ensuring accuracy.
Behind the scenes, the dev team is tirelessly working on various fronts. We’ve been working with the Rustwasm team to resolve Web WASM/Rust infrastructure issues, leading to upcoming fixes in the wasm-bindgen crate. Plus, great progress has been made in localizing the Humanode website. Russian and Japanese locales have been shipped, while others are on the way. Check them out!
In an exciting new collaboration, Supra is now our official decentralized oracle provider! This partnership brings real-time data feeds and blockchain interoperability to the Humanode chain, making our dApps even more powerful. With access to data from 85 blockchains, Supra’s oracle price feeds will enhance DeFi apps by providing accurate asset prices and exchange rates, as well as supporting decentralized lending and borrowing. Additionally, we’re developing a cross-chain Biomapper with Supra, enabling users to handle fees from different blockchains and L2 solutions seamlessly. Delve into the documentation to integrate Supra oracles into your dApps. Check out ELI5 on how Supra decentralized oracles work and why they stand out.
Moreover, Intract, a leading Web3 community engagement platform, is now integrated with Humanode! This means projects can now reward users with HMND or other tokens and NFTs for participating in campaigns. With over $1 billion in on-chain transactions and a stellar satisfaction score, Intract is a powerful tool for optimizing reward distribution. Check out Intract’s platform and join our community hub there.
Love seeing the stats and watching the numbers grow. Humanode is celebrating a milestone with over 1250 validators now part of the network! This is a testament to our decentralized approach, supported by unique, real humans around the world. We’re aiming to reach 10,000 validators, pushing the limits of decentralization even further. Want to join the ranks of human nodes? It’s straightforward and doesn’t require heavy investment. Find out how. And that’s not all. BotBasher now protects 601 Discord servers from Sybil attacks. Yay! Want to add BotBasher to your server? Get started here.
Curious about ZK-KYC versus Humanode’s cryptobiometrics? Our latest blog post clears things up. In a nutshell, ZK-KYC requires sharing plaintext data to get an encrypted credential, while cryptobiometrics proves you’re a unique human without sharing any plaintext data. Read the full comparison in the article on our blog.
Lastly, last Friday, Humanode co-founders Victor and Dato held a casual Founders' Talk to share updates and engage with the community. They went live across multiple platforms this time including YouTube, Telegram, X, Discord, Instagram, and TikTok, broadening the ways you can engage with Humanode. Be sure to join us next time on your preferred platform—we’re looking forward to connecting with you!
That’s a wrap! Stay tuned for more updates and exciting news in the weeks ahead. Keep in the loop!
Main News
🔺1250+ validators milestone
Over a thousand unique humans are in consensus and growing!
Last week, Humanode crossed the milestone of 1250+ validators. Unlike traditional networks relying on capital and computational power, Humanode is secured by real, unique humans across the globe, making it the most decentralized network.
While this is a major achievement within two years of the mainnet launch, the goal is to expand to the technical limit of 10,000 validators.
If you’re not a human node yet, join us! Becoming a human node doesn’t require heavy investment or capital. You can find the details here.
🔺Supra is now Humanode’s official decentralized oracle provider
Supra, a leading provider of real-time data feeds and blockchain interoperability, has launched its oracle price feeds on the Humanode chain. This integration enhances dApp functionality on Humanode with reliable off-chain and cross-chain data from 85 blockchains.
Supra oracle price feeds will improve DeFi apps on Humanode by providing accurate asset prices and exchange rates as well as allowing decentralized lending, borrowing, and other Web3 applications.
Apart from that, Humanode will develop a cross-chain Biomapper using Supra, allowing users to pay fees from other blockchains and L2 solutions without holding HMND or buying from CEXs.
- Learn more about the integration.
- Delve into the documentation to integrate Supra oracles into your dApps
Check out ELI5 on how Supra decentralized oracles work and why they stand out:
How Supra oracles, now live on our mainnet, work and why they stand out?
— HUMANODE (@humanode_io) August 7, 2024
Supra built something called the Distributed Oracle Agreement (DORA). We’ll ELI5 below 👇 pic.twitter.com/ZL6XNXZOXs
🚨Update for the Human nodes
As you know, we recently encountered two incidents related to finality stalls (an occurrence when the consensus process fails to decide on the final state of the block within a specified period). As a quick response, we have implemented a workaround that is now deployed.
👉What you need to do:
Please update your node to the latest version! If you are running the node using Humanode Launcher, go to Settings and Click on Check for Peer Updates.
And to check what's new in the latest update, open the release notes.
Development
🔺 Finality incident analysis and fix
We finished investigating the finalization incident, made a fix, and are now releasing it. Stay tuned for more details in the coming days!
For those who missed it, long story short:
Last month, we faced a finality stall, which was quickly resolved, and the chain is back to normal. Our incident analysis confirmed the root cause. The node responsible for the primary slot (A1) took unusually long to produce its block. Consequently, the chain continued with the block produced by the secondary slot node (B1), which produced two more blocks (B2, B3). Nodes began voting to finalize B1 on the fork (B1, B2, B3). Meanwhile, A1 continued producing blocks on the best chain (A1, A2, A3, etc.), leading to a chain reorganization. Finalization on B1 remained in progress but couldn't be finished since B1 was not part of the best chain. The Parity team acknowledged the complexity of this issue.
Since then, we have improved our internal alert systems to promptly respond to potential finalization lags. The code related to Grandpa logic has been deeply studied, and we issued a fix for the Grandpa RPC endpoint in mainnet 119 runtime.
The Parity team has actively engaged in resolving the problem, and our research has been instrumental, in leading to a proposed fix from their side. The regression test, which checks the logic for block finalization after chain reorganization, was used to validate the fix.
However, the fix was not rolled out immediately due to potential unknown impacts on certain modules. It was decided to first reproduce the problem and then observe network behavior with the fix. To mitigate the issue, a workaround was implemented, which selected a block for the finalization vote that is no closer than seven blocks to the current best_block. On top of that, we successfully reproduced the block finalization stop within the dev environment.
This week, we are rolling out the fix to the mainnet. Stay tuned!
🔺Gossip fix
Additionally, we rolled back an update to improve the state of gossip. For more detailed information, visit the Humanode GitHub.
🔺Update to the UX of BotBasher, our Discord integration
In order to achieve maximum Sybil-resistance and privacy in BotBasher re-registration of accounts is impossible for a 6 months period. There was a popular issue for users with multiple accounts: they bonded a Discord account they had in the browser, which is different from their account in the app. On a scale of 10k-100k people coming simultaneously for a few days, many bioverified the wrong account.
Now after a private biometric session, our app asks users to check and verify their account names and user IDs once again.
🔺 Exploring CVM attestation
We've collaborated with the Rustwasm team to address some Web WASM/Rust infrastructure issues. Stay tuned for the new version of the `wasm-bindgen` crate, which will include fixes for API generation and the async `fn` bindgen definitions.
🔺 Mainnet website localization
Great progress has been made in localizing the Humanode website. Russian and Japanese locales have been shipped already, while others are in progress. Check them out!
Integrations
🤝 Chain integrations
🔺 Intract integrates the Humanode chain
Intract, a Web3 community engagement platform, is now integrated with the Humanode chain. This integration allows projects to reward users with HMND or any token or NFT rewards from Humanode for engaging in their Intract campaigns, making Humanode accessible to a vast user base of 12 million users.
Intract has established its credibility in the Web3 community, with over $1 billion in on-chain transactions and a 98.4% customer satisfaction score. Their advanced analytics for on-chain and social tasks provide valuable insights, helping to optimize reward distribution and improve engagement strategies. This collaboration also means that projects on Intract can now offer rewards in HMND and NFTs on Humanode for the completion of social and onchain tasks.
Apart from that, Humanode community hub was set up by Intract on its platform.
🤝 BotBaher integrations
🔺 BotBasher is now protecting 601 Discord server communities.
Integrate BotBasher to your server: https://botbasher.humanode.io/
Publications
🔺ZK KYC vs Cryptobiometrics – A detailed comparison
People tend to confuse ZK-KYC and Humanode’s tech - cryptobiometrics. If you want to understand it on a technical level, read the article on our blog here.
TL;DR
KYC = Know Your Customer. Even in ZK-KYC, to get an encrypted credential, you have to give out data in plaintext to verify your legal identity.
Cryptobiometrics only prove you’re a unique and real human without knowing who you are with zero data shared in plaintext from your device - it’s always encrypted.
Roadmap
Check out Humanode’s roadmap for the year 2024, outlining a comprehensive plan of action. The roadmap not only details the current initiatives but also leaves room for the incorporation of novel ideas, features, and applications throughout the year.
Awareness & Events
🎙️ Founders Talk
Last Friday, we hosted Founders' Talk—nothing formal, just a casual hangout where we caught up, shared what we’ve been working on, and got your thoughts.
📍This time we hosted it on various several platforms:
Join us next time on whichever platform suits you best—we’re excited to connect with you!
MISC
- With a Nakamoto Coefficient of 341, Humanode is the most decentralized network, far surpassing others like Mina (151), Polkadot (92), Solana (18), and Binance (7).
- Humanode Dev Content Preference Survey: The team is running a quick survey to learn what kind of content the community developers love and how they can improve it.
- Humanode invites all of you to join the official Humanode Dev group in Telegram. This group is your hub for connecting with like-minded developers, builders, coders, and innovators, sharing your ideas, and contributing to the world of Humanode’s crypto-biometric technology.
- Scam alert: there is a Humanode Hub named group with a different handle. Check humanode.io for links.
For more information check out Humanode’s:
▲ Website
▲ GitHub
▲ Discord