Building a Better Session Experience 👷

Recent efforts to optimize performance and stability on Sessions for Android are making a major impact! Crash and ANR rates have significantly decreased in November, marking a major milestone in Session’s mission to deliver the best user experience possible. Crash rates in particular have reached and consistently remained at their lowest rate in the last three years.

Session is on a mission to show the world what crypto is capable of by delivering a seamless UX with a user-powered decentralised network under the hood. This kind of progress is key to achieving that mission, and these improvements are just the beginning, as efforts to refine Session’s reliability across all platforms continue.

A Backend Overhaul 🏗️

Session Token’s Staking Portal is the gateway to the network. With TGE approaching, much work is focused on optimising this key touch point for stakers and operators to ensure that it’s intuitive and effortlessly functional. This month, attention turned to the backend to tackle common bugs faced by operators at their source. The current Staking Portal backend faced issues due to poor state management and race conditions, primarily stemming from independent timers managing various processes that lead to data inconsistency. The solution involves building a shared database, a dedicated data fetcher and a dedicated API. These three key components are now undergoing testing, while other additional components of the overhauled ‘Backend v2’ are being finalised, and nearing readiness for user testing on the canary site.

New and Improved Node Registration 🆕

A revamped registration process is on the way, designed to be more transparent, and user-friendly. This step-by-step, wizard-style flow will guide users through setting up both single-contributor and multi-contributor nodes with greater ease. Thanks to community feedback, the new flow eliminates confusion around node types and staking options by offering intuitive choices, clear instructions, and improved guardrails to prevent avoidable errors.

The update also addresses technical challenges by streamlining data validation and ensuring accurate contract interactions. Additionally, users will gain more insights during the process, with better visibility into what's happening while their nodes join the network. This enhanced design ensures the registration experience is not only simpler but also more informative and reliable for everyone.

Laying Groundwork For Token Migration 🦅

Important steps are currently being taken to prepare for the migration to the new Session Network following TGE. This preparation is of extreme significance because over one million people are using Session to connect and communicate—for some, it may be the only safe and secure channel of communication available to them. The stakes are high, and it is essential that the migration causes minimal disruption to users.

November saw extensive testing of the necessary code for the Anchor hardfork. You can learn more about the hardfork here, in the Session Token Launch Plan. Alongside this work, final testing has continued for the transition of staked $OXEN to the new network to ensure a seamless automatic swap of $OXEN to Session Token.

Building Partnerships At Devcon 🇹🇭

All of the brightest minds in crypto were in Bangkok in recent weeks, rubbing shoulders and sharing ideas at Devcon 2024. Among them were Session co-founders Kee and Chris, continuing a global tour undertaken in recent months to promote Session and develop key strategic partnerships. Significant steps forward were taken in Bangkok to build those partnerships, which will help to be essential in ensuring a successful launch for Session Token.

A highlight of the event was of course the Ethereum Cypherpunk Congress hosted by Web3Privacy Now, an event dedicated to exploring the intersection of crypto and digital privacy as well as how crypto can be a tool to build secure tech—which Session is a prime example of.

Lokinet Rewrite Nears Completion 🌐

The Lokinet rewrite is reaching an exciting phase, with all core communicational primitives fully developed and functional. These foundational elements include everything from simple relay-to-relay connections to complex client-to-client sessions. By combining these primitives—such as relay paths and aligned client paths—Lokinet now has the essential building blocks to create robust, private, and efficient pathways for communication. This iterative process of refining and optimizing these primitives has set the stage for seamless and secure client-to-client functionality.

In performance testing, the results are already impressive. A raw, unconfigured client in debug mode can complete the entire process—from startup and configuration to path-building and initiating a secure session with another client—in under two seconds. These advancements showcase the speed and efficiency of Lokinet’s new architecture, offering a glimpse of what’s possible as the rewrite continues to evolve.

The focus now shifts to platform-specific adaptations, including updates to libquic and oxen-encoding for compatibility with libc++-19 types. DNS functionality, iOS testing, and integration with Session are also on the horizon. With Lokinet on track to support the Session Network and Token at TGE, these milestones mark significant progress in the journey to revolutionize secure, decentralized communication.

Keep an eye out in December for a detailed blog which will dive deeper into these breakthroughs and the next steps for Lokinet!