Jon’s Lisk Update — January 2020

Here is my update for the month of January 2020.

Lisk DEX

• Improved signature and transaction propagation for faster cross-chain order processing.
• In HTTP API, show which DEX members addresses have signed each transaction.
• Rewrote the core order book/matching engine to optimize for the DEX use case and to provide better performance— Published two new open source libraries as part of this work: https://www.npmjs.com/package/proper-order-book and https://www.npmjs.com/package/proper-skip-list
• Tested lisk-dex with 7 nodes as part of Leasehold testnet. Identified and resolved new issues which caused some DEX nodes to fork occasionally. No new forks have been identified since Leasehold testnet was updated to v5.1.5.
• Expose a new /status endpoint which shows info about the DEX such as the lisk-dex version number, the current processed heights and a hash of the order book.
• Made a PR to Jax’s https://github.com/Jaxkr/lisk-dex-ui project to account for HTTP API changes related to the new lisk-dex order book engine.

Other work

This month, I’ve been focused on testing lisk-dex for the upcoming Leasehold sidechain launch — I can’t give an official launch date yet; all I can say is that significant progress has been made; we want to be very thorough with our preparations. This month was the first time that the Lisk DEX was operated in a fully decentralized way with 7 distinct members independently signing cross-chain trades. Jax’s lisk-dex-ui application is also working (you can run it yourself from source) but we want to polish up the UI/UX a bit and make it more configurable before we launch a web hosted version for convenience.

This month, I’ve completed the migration of SocketCluster (the WebSocket framework/libraries which Lisk and Leasehold use) to version 15: https://socketcluster.io/ — This new version offers support for the async/await feature of JavaScript which helps developers to write more more readable and more reliable code.

I also started working on a lightweight open source tool/framework called LDEM (Lisk Decentralized Exchange Manager) https://github.com/jondubois/ldem — It aims to provide an alternative way to run a DEX node. Currently the DEX must be run as a lisk-core module on a Lisk node. LDEM aims to provide better performance when running many different sidechains on multi-core CPUs; it will be optimized specifically for the DEX use case. LDEM aims to be compatible with LIP5.

Special thanks

Thanks to Coinigy.com for supporting SocketCluster for many years and inspiring me to join the blockchain movement.

Thanks to carolina delegate for making multiple very generous donations last month and also in the past.

Thanks to savetheworld delegate and other Leasehold project members for participating and providing valuable feedback while launching the first fully decentralized DEX on Lisk testnet.

Thanks to Jax (from Moracle project) for collaborating with us on the DEX and making lisk-dex-ui; it has already become an important part of the DEX strategy.

Thanks to Michael Tomasik (Ex-LiskHQ/Lightcurve developer) for taking part in Leasehold and making great progress on the website.

Please vote for jong

I’m currently putting all my focus on Lisk DEX and Leasehold so if you’re interested in supporting my ongoing work, please vote for jong (10081147774228851351L) as a Lisk delegate or make a donation. Thank you.