Jon’s Lisk Update — October 2019

Since I received some donations from the Lisk community for the month of October, I wanted to give a quick update on my progress for that month.

Note that I was on holidays for 2 weeks this month so my time was limited.

Tutorials

• Lisk P2P + Custom Modules Tutorial

Lisk DEX

• Finished writing the full Lisk DEX blockchain protocol: https://github.com/jondubois/lisk-dex#dex-protocol
• Created some slides to help visualize Lisk Interchain scalability (the mechanism which will used by ‘sidechains’ connected via the DEX): https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1W33uutGt-hsPDAWlhVzIL_BJvfqMRh1yidiFVPHtR4g/edit?usp=sharing
• Began partnership discussions with a well known cryptocurrency trading platform to integrate with DEXs (to provide a UI for price history/charts and trading). I will mention more details about this partnership once the details have settled but so far things are going well.
• Based on partnership discussions and for ease of integration with existing front end charting libraries, we decided that the DEX HTTP API should follow GDAX formats and conventions. A new module was created for this purpose: https://github.com/jondubois/lisk-dex-http-api
• To get around a known Lisk multisignature queue/spam issue, the DEX now implements its own multisignature queue and signature propagation mechanism. Signatures will only propagate to nodes which belong to the same DEX subnet so it doesn’t slow down regular Lisk nodes, sidechain nodes or nodes which belong to a different DEX. Transactions are only submitted to a blockchain once the DEX nodes have gathered all the necessary signatures (transactions are fully signed so they bypass the Lisk pending queue).
• Continued to test trading using DEX PoC which is currently on testnet.
• Identified and fixed a bug related to order expiry and the associated refund mechanism.
• Automatically backup multiple order book snapshots so that a DEX node can easily recover and re-sync from an earlier state if necessary.
• Added a new ‘passive mode’ so that anyone can participate in a DEX (run a node) without being a member of that DEX; this allows anyone to sync with the decentralized order book, assist in propagating signatures and make the DEX subnet resilient to DoS attacks by increasing the node count.

Goals for November 2019

• Publish tutorial about how to use the DEX to trade between mainchain and sidechain tokens using only Lisk Hub (also how to browse the sidechain using Lisk Hub).
• Publish tutorial about how to setup and operate a DEX node.
• Finish DEX HTTP API module (MVP — Support browsing the order book).
• Continue testing PoC DEX on testnet.
• Finalize details for DEX partnership.