What’s Working:
- Peer-to-Peer Connectivity: Gateways and peers can now successfully connect and communicate with each other. While there are still minor issues, the main structure is operational, and communication between nodes works as expected.
- Message Transmission: Messages can be sent between peers, and errors that do occur generally resolve themselves as the system retries connections.
- Unit Tests: Existing unit tests for peer connections are passing, indicating stability in fundamental network components.
- Telemetry & Logging: Improved logging and monitoring tools have made debugging easier, and these tools will help spot issues quickly as the network grows.
Remaining Tasks:
- Transport Layer Flakiness: There are occasional connection issues, especially when peers attempt to connect to gateways they are already connected to. This is being addressed and is considered an easy fix.
- Peer Connection Management: Some peers are making unnecessary connection requests to gateways even when they are already connected. This logic will be cleaned up.
- Version Management: A versioning system will ensure that peers running different versions of the software don’t connect, preventing compatibility issues as new versions are released.
- End-to-End Testing: Before release, more end-to-end tests and stress tests on live systems need to be performed to ensure reliability.
Next Steps:
- Alpha Release: Once the current bugs are squashed and peer connections are more stable, the team plans to release an alpha version of Freenet. This will allow developers and early adopters to start experimenting with the network.
- Network Stability: While the network will not be perfect, it will be stable enough for public testing. The team expects to update the software frequently in the early stages.
- Example Contracts: The initial release will include simple contracts, such as a static website or a group chat contract, to demonstrate how Freenet operates. These will help new users understand how to interact with the network.
Timeline:
- Alpha Release: Expected within the next few weeks, depending on the pace of bug fixes and testing. The goal is to have a functional group chat example available shortly after launch.
In summary, Freenet is close to launching a functional alpha version. Peer-to-peer connectivity and messaging are largely working, and the remaining issues are being actively resolved. With a few more weeks of development, the network will be ready for early user testing and feedback.