Aragon Chain Development Update

Authored by Colin Schwarz

Ethermint updates and additions complete

Much of the early work on Aragon Chain consisted of updating Ethermint as well as adding additional functionality that enabled the software to support Aragon's current apps and contracts. This included core Cosmos upgrades, SDK upgrades and adding simulations for SDK modules. We also implemented the Ethereum JSON-RPC filter functionality into Ethermint, which is needed in tooling used by Aragon.

Private test environment launched

Our next step was to launch an internal test environment to make sure that Aragon contracts and applications can function on Ethermint as they do on Ethereum. As part of the testing environment, we have created a faucet which can be used to receive testnet tokens as soon as a public testnet is launched. We also added aragonOS to the genesis state, as well as logic to allow for exporting the current state as a genesis file.

Initial testing revealed several dependency issues, most of which have now been resolved. We also discovered that we would need to implement websockets to allow all of the Aragon apps to function correctly.

Public testnet coming soon!

We are now getting very close to the release of a public testnet that will allow the community to begin experimenting with Aragon Chain. The first testnet released will behave as Aragon does on Ethereum but without the economics layer. Because Aragon Chain will feature Tendermint proof of stake consensus, the economics of securing the chain will be quite different than on the current Ethereum proof of work chain. For this reason, we will release a second testnet that includes the economic layer after users have had some time to experiment with the first testnet. This second testnet should behave exactly as Aragon Chain will after mainnet launch, and will include the bonding curve for converting ANT into ARA as well as a connection to ChainBridge, which will enable the transfer of value and information between Aragon Chain and Aragon on Ethereum.

Next Steps

There are only a few tasks that remain before we can launch a public testnet for Aragon Chain:

• Enable Aragon app contracts to be loaded at genesis

• Launch bootnodes

• Configure network for Aragon specific functions

We believe we can finish these tasks in the next few weeks and will keep you all posted as soon as the testnet is ready to go live. We are as excited as everyone else to allow the community to begin experimenting with this software and look forward to your participation and feedback!