Chain of Events: July 2023

Introduction

Welcome to the inaugural edition of “Chain of Events” our monthly series designed to keep you connected with all the happenings at Avail. This first, “July Edition” is designed to keep our community informed about Avail’s latest developments, announcements, and even share some alpha. So without further ado, let’s take a look at the milestones from this month.

Highlights

This month has been exceptionally productive for us at Avail. Here’s a few of the key highlights:

• The recent introduction of the OpEVM SDK provides developers with a tool to build their own sovereign, EVM-compatible, optimistic rollups.
• The Avail network now has 71 external validators, with hundreds more in the queue.
• The development of Avail’s data attestation bridge enables secure Validiums, and Optimistic chains.
• The Avail team had the chance to participate at EthCC, Modular Summit, zkDay, StarknetCC and many other events in Paris, as well as Polkadot Decoded in Vietnam.
• A series of new Twitter Spaces discussions hosted by our team, with guests from across the modular blockchain space.

Technical Update

Avail is on the road to Mainnet. As a result, we're focused on making stability improvements, benchmarking performance, and finalizing network architecture and interface changes. This month, our engineering team has been able to make a number of significant improvements to Avail’s performance and capabilities.

• We have extended our validator network since the release of the Kate Testnet. The testnet is currently running with 71 active external validators. Objectives for battle testing, a new version of the Kate Testnet will be released soon.
• We have released a 1.6.2 version of the Avail node and performed a runtime upgrade on the network. Most of the network participants are now running the latest version. As part of this release, we have also shipped a new, 1.4.4 version of the light client compatible with the newest node version.
• A large milestone in our development is the release of a new release candidate of the light client, 1.5.0. This version contains many changes, performance improvements, and a separation of the bootstrap and relay nodes. The release candidate is currently being tested and we encourage everyone to give it a try.
• We started using GitHub discussions as RFCs for upcoming changes with the first RFC published on a new Light client API. We invite everyone to contribute and provide input while we implement the changes.

Blog Posts and Twitter Spaces

We've shared several blog posts and announcements this month. Here's a brief overview:

Blog Posts

• Avail's Kate Testnet Brings the Modular Base Layer a Step Closer to Mainnet Launch
• Avail’s Data Attestation Bridge: Enabling Secure Validiums and Optimistic Chains
• The Avail Vision: Reshaping the Blockchain Landscape
• Rethinking Rollups with OpEVM: An Open-Source SDK to Build Optimistic Rollups

Twitter Spaces

• Kate Testnet Release
• The Avail Vision
• Data Attestation Bridge: Enabling Secure Validiums and L3s

Events

The Avail team was active in Paris and beyond this month. We had the chance to introduce Avail, engage with the community, and share our vision for the future of the modular blockchain space, both 1:1 and on stage.

• EthCC: Our team had the chance to attend EthCC, one of the biggest Ethereum conferences in the world for the blockchain community and beyond.
• Modular Summit: We also participated in the Modular Summit, where Anurag had the opportunity to speak on the main stage, where he gave a talk titled, “Avail: Architecture and Use Cases”. You can find a recording of Anurag’s talk here.
• Anurag presented “Avail: Architecture & Why We Use Substrate As Part Of Our Stack" at Polkadot Decoded 2023 Satellite Event in Vietnam.

Throughout the events we attended, we were excited to see the developments in the modular space. The number of developers building out the modular stack itself has picked up significantly in the past several months, which has led to an explosion in the number of developers building on the modular stack.

Our Favorite Tweets

Over the past month, the Avail team has worked tirelessly to achieve our mission. While we have all contributed to these achievements, we'd like to acknowledge the specific team members who spoke at EthCC, the Modular Summit, and online, sharing their expertise and our vision for a more scalable, developer-friendly blockchain ecosystem with the wider community. Here are links to some of what the team’s written and been up to this month.

Next Month

We’re excited to share some of the developments that are coming down the pipeline. In the coming weeks, we plan to continue working on the Kate Testnet as we progress toward our next, incentivized Testnet release. We hope to see the development community pick up the open-source OpEVM SDK, and continue development as well as adoption.

And lastly, we’re just excited to interact with the community more. We have a number of technical updates, partnership announcements, and new content series on the horizon. The Avail team would like to express our appreciation for your support in Avail. We’re excited about the journey ahead and look forward to sharing more in the coming months.