by Colin Cantrell, April 26, 2023

Hey everyone, it's great to be here for this weekly recap, even if it's technically a week and a half recap. I've been working my butt off to get everything ready and fix all the bugs. We're compiling the wallets and have overcome all the hurdles. It's all ready to be packaged and released in about three hours.

One of the major issues we had was with the invoices API, but that's all cleaned up now. The desktop wallet was really slow with a large sigchain, but now it's much faster and more efficient. I've been working on optimizing it for the last few days, so the CPU usage is much lower now, regardless of the size of the sigchain.

All the client mode stuff has been piped in, but we did have an issue with the bootstrap last night because I changed the password on a node. We had to fix that, which meant I had to stay up all night to resync and test it. But everything's really smooth now and the main net nodes have been running on this for months, so it's pretty well-tested in most areas.

There were some issues with balances, but I fixed those a few hours ago, so Kendall is working on builds right now. We had to get the signing keys, but we have them now and we're all set. After this AMA, I'm going to merge into the master branch and tag for the release 5.1. We're on RC release candidate 20 right now, and then a build 20 point 220.3.

We had no merge conflicts, which is great news. In total, we've had 114,000 lines of new code, with 70,000 of it beefing up original functionality and another 40,000 with additional functionality.

There are around 3000-4000 active nodes and the transaction volume looks good. The team has been working hard on a code merge and it's finally done, which is a huge accomplishment. They are now working on the desktop builds and have a release schedule planned that includes a peer-to-peer marketplace and new functions for the query DSL.

One of the new functions is a "since" keyword that allows developers to search for transactions within a specific time range without having to figure out Unix timestamps. The API also includes functions for dates, usernames, reverse lookups, and regular resolvers. It's all built into the API and operators can use it to query the peer-to-peer market.

The team is also proud of the architecture they've developed. They've created a powerful subset of commands that can be used to do a variety of things, like getting the average difficulty over the last 24 hours. The Ledger API can be used to crunch the difficulty and run a mean calculation on it, and the "since" keyword can be used to specify the time range.

The team is still learning how to use all the different tools they've developed, but they're excited to highlight how to use the query DSL. They plan to tag the code for release soon and release it as a tritium-only mode. It works in client mode too, which takes up less disk space. There are a lot of APIs available, including the register API, the letter API, and the network API, but the team is moving towards one API with different sets of commands for different functionalities.

The tokens have been upgraded and integrated into the Finance API, and the team is working on documentation and a pitch document for exchanges and market makers.

The mobile wallet will likely be released after a hard fork, which will include features such as pooled staking, an important feature for people who don't have enough coins to stake. The team is also working on increasing synchronization speeds and integrating a constant time database into the core.

In addition, they're creating a database API for developers to easily stash data for their apps, making it a one-stop-shop for developers. The team is focused on making the technology advanced but easy to use, so that people don't even need to know that they're using blockchain. They're also looking to integrate Nexus with different types of movements, such as peer-to-peer marketplaces and NFT platforms.

I believe that Nexus can do anything that one might need on the web without the need for any additional software. In fact, Nexus is a step towards becoming an operating system, as it can provide all the necessary functions. To achieve this, we are working with the microkernel, which helps us run the operating system. We need to install the TAO framework and its prerequisites, which can provide the functionality to build the operating system.

The TAO operating system is driven by the TAO framework, and we can avoid writing a file system server by having a file system. We will only need to write the root task server and a few other things. I am also working on making it POSIX compliant, so it's backward compatible with a lot of other systems. I want to have all the Unix command line interfaces such as LS, Grab, and other commands to make it familiar.

Besides developing Nexus, I am working with a group of people to create a decentralized ATM network. Our aim is to create decentralized fiat on and off ramps that can handle regulatory scrutiny without any central entities exchanging anything. We want to build technology that provides tools for our freedom rather than our enslavement. I believe that this technology can help us overcome the world's problems.

While focusing on code, I am also working on taking care of myself and my health. Last year, I didn't take care of myself, and it affected me a lot. But now, I am healthier and learning to take care of myself better. Developing Nexus has been a challenging but fulfilling journey, and I am proud of what I have achieved.

My goal is to freely examine information, track its origin and know that it wasn't manipulated. We need to be able to search without any bias and without having any weighted algorithms telling us what to believe and what to see. We need good information to heal many of the planet's issues, and Nexus is the first step towards that. As roads fell out of service and bandits took over between the castles, information couldn't travel between people, and the Dark Ages began. But when it started to travel, there was a burst of art, innovation, and science, and that was what began the Renaissance.

In conclusion, I will continue to work on Nexus until it's done, and it is my goal to support you all. Although I haven't been active on Telegram, I plan to come back soon. However, I need to be disciplined and focus on coding as it takes a lot of time. At 6:33 PM, we set the release date and I merged the master. There were about 1766 commits and the version was dropped to release candidate 5.1, which we are going to rebuild. We decided to live stream the release process and posted it on our GitHub. After compiling the code, I pushed it to master and removed the release candidate versioning. I tagged it and created a release candidate. Kendall would wrap up the rest of the builds, and I would post a tweet on Twitter. If any bugs occur, we would post it on our GitHub and urge people to report issues in the issue trackers. 

I intended to take some time off, probably Friday and resume work on the next Friday. As we start the release process, we verified the versions, and it was time to rock and roll. The version 5.1 Tritium++ CL Live 510 was in release mode. We said commit tag for 5110, and it was officially out on the master branch. If anyone wanted to try it, they could get pull origin master. We planned to push out the binaries in a few hours and communicate the hashes. I planned to shift to 52 mode and focus on remote login. By the next Friday, I intended to start an internal private testing group for remote login. 

Until next time, let's rock and roll.

For more info about Nexus visit: https://www.nexus.io