Great progress continues to be made on the dev front as blockchain devs continue to implement updates that enable successful scaling and testing. In addition, storage layer testing continues to reveal good progress while adding features to 0Box, and 0Wallet that improve user experience. Make sure to stay tuned for more info coming soon for our AMA with Züs CEO Saswata Basu! First off we hear from Sculptex about NFT Functionality.
Sculptex’s Use Case of The Week: NFT Functionality
“This week I’m going to give some insight into some of the provision that has been put in place for us to be able to manage NFTs
You may have heard about some of the stories about NFTs stored on IPFS disappearing. IPFS nodes aren’t structured or organized properly for this purpose and lack an incentive layer or appropriate auditability. Many supposed ‘solutions’ have popped up — to verify and/or duplicate the content. This is like putting a band-aid on the underlying problem.
A knee-jerk reaction to this is ‘Permanent Storage’!!! Arweave has seen a significant surge recently, most likely due to this. But storage is only Permanent if you can access it and Arweave has already experienced scaling issues. (As I anticipated many months ago). And this was before they broke through the Total ‘weave’ storage level of 20TB. This can easily fit on a single Modern HDD! Now they are scrambling to shift over to HDDs instead of SSDs which have been heavily favored up to now. But even this is kicking the can down the road and I anticipate that they will hit more scaling issues before they reach Petabyte scale storage.
Flaws
Both IPFS and Arweave share one common flaw in regard to NFT Functionality: they duplicate data. This is incredibly inefficient compared to Erasure Coding as discussed previously.
So what is the alternative to ‘Permanent Storage’? How about a storage layer that is far more efficient in terms of data, highly configurable, and easily audited. Then add in an easy renewal of storage (including by 3rd parties) and we have a complete solution for the storage layer.
Allow me to expand on these a little further on how this relates to NFT Functionality:
- Efficiency — By using Erasure Coding instead of duplication, typically several times more efficient (e.g. EC 10/20 = 5 times more efficient than 10x duplication with similar failure tolerance).
- Highly Configurable — Storage Nodes (Blobbers) can be filtered or specified Geographically etc.
- Easily Audited — Complete Transparency Available including Blobber ‘health’ through miner challenges. The remaining duration for a particular allocation can be queried at any time, ensuring adequate time in case of transfer of ownership.
- Easy Renewal — Storage Allocations can be extended at any time including by a 3rd party, so the user has complete control of this or responsibility can be delegated. In the case that the EC Redundancy level does drop below the desired threshold from under-performing Blobbers, there will be an option to select new Blobbers instead.
This is what Züs is offering regarding the storage layer. I know that I’d rather this open an auditable route rather than the opaque uncertainty offered by other platforms. But that’s not all! We also have Encryption with Private Sharing which can further enhance the NFT process and NFT functionality plus transfer of ownership protocols that also align with the NFT protocols but perhaps I will go into that in detail another time.”
Non-Dev Updates
We will be hosting an AMA with Züs CEO Saswata Basu over the coming weeks. Make sure to submit your questions via Twitter or Telegram. Stay tuned for more info coming soon!
0Box and 0Wallet UI Updates
The biggest developments this week are related to app development. Our UI/UX design team provided the initial home page and file page wireframes for the storage app, as well as the general design layout for the app. The primary focus right now is to build out the best possible flow into the app in order to optimize NFT usage and general usage of the storage app immediately upon launch. The website wireframes and animations have also gone through the first round of feedback.
Improving the app flow with new/modified features is important because it leads to the retention of app users. Also, it generates more file activity on the Züs network. This can be meticulous, however, as there are several features and concepts that must be thoroughly vetted prior to introducing them into the app. This vetting process is to ensure that new bugs aren’t created as a result. Also, that extensive development isn’t needed to roll out a new feature. (As it’s a priority to have the MVP version ready at mainnet). Ultimately, there is, fortunately, a lot of optimization that can already be done to the app flow without running into these problems.
Development Team Updates
Over the course of the past week, the team has continued to make multiple mainnet-related fixes. This has moved the code to the ‘review stage’ following successful internal testing. Features, including those for our NFT functionality, API, 0Box, and 0Wallet platforms, have been merged into the core code. This reflects improvements made over the past several weeks. With the new code merges, the team continues to not only test for the introduction of new bugs pushed by code updates but to also scan for the reproduction of old issues during this time ensuring new implementations have addressed the issues.
All of these updates to the underlying code are focused on improving the user experience and performance of our platform. Many of the feature improvements have been the result of deploying our system testing. Through system testing, which aims to comprehensively test the project from the perspective of an end user, we are able to automate these tests to perform hundreds of user operations in just a few minutes. Watch this space for a demo in the coming weeks!
0Box & 0Wallet
The team continues to perform UI regression tests while reviewing proposed updates to address a few minor bugs. At this time, the majority of iOS and Android bugs have been reviewed and are undergoing additional testing prior to being pushed to the main code base. Small updates and optimizations continue to be made to ultimately improve user experience. Notable integration and progress have occurred on our ETH/ZCN payment methods and USD-ZCN conversion. The payment methods have undergone updates to ensure enhanced user experience while paying with crypto options; these new updates are currently undergoing further testing. The USDC-ZCN conversion, powered by the Circle payment engine, has undergone some testing at this time and will continue to do so throughout this week. These features will enable users to easily purchase ZCN from a debit/credit card. Making it easy to get started on our platform via our applications.
Blockchain
Noted in the updates last week, the blockchain team has pushed fixes for block finalization issues and some other pending issues (if you want to see more 1, 2, 3). As a result of the new implementations, the team had successfully scaled to a network of 25 miners the previous week. Over the course of the past week and following further updates, the team has further scaled the network to add more miners and sharders with the chain remaining stable and efficient. Throughout the week, the team will continue to perform testing, review and audit updates. As testing scales, the team will continue to stress test the network and look for edge bugs.
About Züs
Züs is a high-performance storage platform that powers limitless applications. It’s a new way to earn passive income from storage.
