TESTING, TESTING… IS THIS THING ON? 🎤
It looks like my microphone is on, but something else we’ll be turning on very soon which is way more exciting is the Session Token testnet! We’ve got our boots on and we're currently deep in the weeds with this project, weed wacking as Jason puts it — as an Australian I prefer to call it whipper snipping but that’s another story for another time.
Most of our work is currently focused on the Oxen Core codebase, making sure that we properly handle various edge cases so that nobody runs into any “game-breaking” bugs, and everyone can break bricks and collect coins to their heart's content. We’re also working on managing the requirements for running a node by limiting how often our testnet requests data from the Arbitrum testnet so that we can reduce RPC bills for operators.
There will still be some known issues on launch, but the work we have been doing will ensure that when stuff breaks, it’s just part of the game. Prepare your protective eyewear and a blunt object of some sort, because we’ll be launching the testnet and a bug bounty in a few weeks. If you haven’t already, you can check out the full launch plan here.
STEAKING PORTAL 🥩
Originally, I thought that we were working on a steaking portal. It sounded delicious yet misguided, since our primary focus at the moment is the launch of Session Token. Luckily, it turns out that it’s actually a staking portal.
The staking portal represents a paradigm shift in terms of how simple and easy it will be to join the Session Node Network and earn rewards following the migration. A process which currently requires some time and tech know-how is being upgraded into a quick process that your grandma could follow, all without leaving her browser.
We’ve been working on the backend as we approach testnet launch, and you’ll be able to get some hands-on experience with the portal using your testnet tokens in a few weeks! The next steps on our end will be focussed on interfacing with the Session Token smart contracts, and node registration logic.
YEP… ITS AUDIT TIME (AGAIN) ⏲️
Session is all about security, and we are pulling out all the stops to make sure that the smart contracts which will govern our new supercharged ecosystem are watertight.
We’ve collaborated with an additional auditor, and are currently working through deliverables from their preliminary report. The team spent this month focussing on various cryptographic primitives required to validate our new signature types (BLS) making sure that their cryptographic implementations in our smart contracts match their cryptographic specifications.This work was finalised late last week and has been sent back to the auditor for re-review, with initial results looking promising.
PULLING THE RIGHT STRINGS 🧵
How long is a piece of string? Pretty long actually, if we’re talking about the text strings in Session. Every piece of text in the app is currently being reviewed and changed in order to consolidate behaviour. This will make the experience of using the app more seamless, and create total cross-platform parity. By sharing translations across platforms, a community member who translates the app to Swedish for iOS can have over 90% of their translations reused for the Android version.
We will have finalised this process soon, and be ready to call on our loyal network of Session superheroes to help us translate the new strings into their local language on CrowdIn, making sure that anyone anywhere who wants to protect themselves from online surveillance and tracking with Session is empowered to do so.
ALL ABOARD 🚆
Grab your ticket, the onboarding train is about to leave the station. Our major upgrade to Sessions onboarding has moved ahead swiftly, with iOS in its third round of QA already and only a few minor issues left to polish up. Android has entered its first round of QA, and Desktop will probably have followed suit by the time you’re reading this.
This project has been a major one, with extensive user testing and research informing a totally new interface and user experience, all brought together seamlessly by our talented developers. The new user flow will pay major dividends, and you will have a much easier time with onboarding your friends and family once it goes live 👪
HIT REFRESH ♻️
Have you tried turning it off and on again?
A tried and true tech support maxim which we have been employing in order to debug and improve the logic around startup and shutdown, the service layer, and the client layer for Lokinet. The team also built a repeater implementation to manage various Lokinet tasks and events and their life cycles within the libquic event loop.
HOME IS WHERE THE HTML IS 💻
If you enjoy browsing the world wide web, this one’s for you: a pre-launch version of the Session Token website is now live, inclusive of a new home page, a staking page, and a roadmap.
This sleek and responsive site is the result of a lot of painstaking design, copy-writing and webdev work, and so far you guys have been just as happy with how it looks and feels as we are. Hold onto your hats though, because the site will continue to get better and better — we still have a lot of tricks up our sleeves and the site is going to evolve a lot between now and launch. Keep your eyes peeled for some new 3D animations that will be integrated on the site very soon 👀
EXTRA, EXTRA 🗞️
Session is a real product with real users that solves a real problem. It’s a one-of-a-kind application which is revolutionising what is possible in crypto, and many key people in the industry already know about and use Session. As we approach the release of Onboarding V2 and Groups V2, we are getting ready to shout from the rooftops and open the floodgates.
We’re now working alongside an additional PR firm, building on the success that we have been having in this arena over the last two months and further widening the top of our marketing funnel. You’ll be seeing more of us in major crypto publications in the near future, and the appetite that we’ve seen for our project’s story thus far has made it very clear to us that people care about what we have built and the problems that we are solving.