This is an internal release for special testing

iotex-core v0.4.3 is a patch release that contains the following bug fixes and improvements:

• Make evm SSTORE address varying with different contract
• Added network health check
• Fixed log display

iotex-core v0.4.2 is a patch release that contains the following bug fixes:

• Improving the block sync efficiency
• Improving the consensus block interval stability
• Fixing the nonce validating bug
• Fixing the error that the blockchain couldn't be restarted
• Fixing big int nil ptr when getting account balance

iotex-core v0.4.1 is a patch release that contains the following bug fixes:

• Improve the block sync logic to proactively ask for higher block if a not doesn't observe incoming blocks for a while;
• Fix action injector to be able to inject 1K+ tps workload;
• Fix nonce validation bug;
• Make block interval calculation always be based on the last block timestamp.

MainNet Preview (codename: Photon)

Photon (v0.4.0) is our last pre-release. IoTeX blockchain is almost feature complete. In this release, we added multi-chain feature, enhanced consensus, and improved overall performance and robustness. The full list of new features are as follows:

1. TBC (Transactions, Block & Chain)

• Sub-chain provisioning protocol
• Deposit to sub-chain
• Commit state root to the block header
• State storage pruning
• Gas fee collection

2. Consensus

• Performance improvement: consensus latency 10s -> 7s
• Security improvement: authenticating proposer and validators
• Time slot based proposer rotation
• Preliminary implementation of distributed key generation protocol

3. Testing & Deployment

• Scaling deployment to 101 nodes
• Load test of 1K+ TPS at peak
• Option to spin-off index data into separate RDBMS

4. Engineering excellence

• Action abstraction
• Action handling framework (native “smart contract” in golang)
• State working set to isolate uncommitted state change

5. Documentation

• Protocol (data schema, wire format, and so on)

Testnet Alpha (codename: Strive)

1. TBC (Transactions, Block & Chain)

• Bech32-encoded address
• Serialization and deserialize of messages on the wire
• Merkle tree
• Actions, transfers, votes, blocks and chain
• Fast and reliable blockchain storage and query using BoltDB
• Block sync from network peers
• Basic framework for script and VM
• Account/state layer built on top of Merkle Patricia tree
• Voting and unvoting for block producer candidates
• New account-based action pool

2. Network

• Efficient gossip protocol over TLS
• Broadcast & unicast semantics
• Seeding through network config
• Rate-limit requests per connection
• Peer discovery
• Large-scale simulation and load test

3. Consensus

• Framework for plugable consensus
• Standalone and NOOP schemes
• Full implementation of FSM-based Roll-DPoS
• Roll-DPoS simulator
• Initial implementation of random beacon

4. Clients

• JSON RPC support
• UI Design and backend implementation of explorer
• Command line console

5. Crypto

• libsect283 -- lightweight crypto library, with cgo binding
• libtblsmnt -- Intial BLS signature parameterization and implementation, with cgo binding

6. Testing & Integration & Deployment

• Unit test coverage > 60%
• Thorough integration tests
• Dockerization of IoTeX server
• Testnet deployment of 20+ block producer delegates in production
• Action injection and address generation tools
• Enhancement of existing features, performance improvement and code refactoring