EOS-BIOS Boot Stage 15

As the launch of the EOS blockchain approaches, a group of Block Producers are testing the EOS BIOS sequence to work through the software to help ensure a successful and secure launch. The `eos-bios` tool allows for multiple stages to take place. Here is the report with the highlights and improvement of the Stage 15.

Block Producers that participated in Stage 15 (in alphabetical order): Aloha EOS, BlockEOS, Easypayx, EOSIO.SG, EOS 42, EOS Amsterdam, EOS Argentina, EOS Authority, EOS Bixin, EOS BlockSmith, EOS Cafe, EOS Canada, EOS Cannon, EOS Detroit, EOS Flare, EOS Germany, EOS India, EOS Laomao, EOS Metal, EOS Nation, EOS Network, EOS New York, EOS NodeOne, EOS ONO, EOS Romania, EOS Silicon Valley, EOSpace, EOSphere, EOS Store, EOSys, EOS Wancloud, EOS Worbli, EOS Vibes, GenerEOS, JEDA, MeetOne, Oracle Chain, HelloEOS, TokenPocket.

Visualisation of the 44 peers connected to Stage 15

Highlights

• Over 50 participants present on the call
• 33 participating infrastructures to the actual launch
• Tyee from EOSpace, and Winlin from EOS Bixin did a great job helping with translations.
• A special thank you to Craig at EOS BlockSmith for helping onboarding new BPs into this process over the past weeks.
• Denis from EOS Nation successfully launched the chain. Everyone successfully validated the chain. We wanted to keep this chain alive but we played with voting, and people not present in the launch were voted up. We busted the 15% threshold and the producer schedule started being updated, which got everyone thrilled. Unfortunately, at some point, those scheduled for production were not producing! This is a testnet, so it's all fine, but we will want a persistent and diversified stage network from which to launch mainnet. This is going to be a goal for the middle of the week.
• The group tested if the target launch block changed mid-flight. This was to test a fix brought into the latest release after we got bitten in the last launch.
• Within a single hour, this launch moved from a group of BPs reaching consensus on the contents of the chain, launching a 33 nodes swarm and meshing together, simulating votes, having new elected BPs and the first producer pay being claimed!
• Thanks to WinLin from EOS Bixin, an off-by-one error was identified by its validation tool! `eos-bios` was truncating at 1001 instead of the specified 1000 in the TESTNET_TRUNCATE_SNAPSHOT option. That's been fixed.

Next Steps:

• Add an option for BPs to opt in the random selection of the Boot node, allowing anyone to participate in the consensus and even launching as an ABP, even without using `eos-bios`. This way, the Boot node can load the chain as expected by everyone running `eos-bios`.
• Add support for a `none` value in `target_p2p_address`. This allows those who do not want to expose their host address to still participate. `none` will simply exclude the peer from the automatic meshing algorithm.
• Add support to export all actions produced by `eos-bios` for cross-checking and verification by third-party tools.
• EVERYONE PREPARING TO BE A BOOT NODE WILL NEED TO KNOW THIS:
• The boot node should NOT connect to the swarm until AFTER it has done its own validation. It should also NOT allow incoming connections during that time. After chain injection and validation is complete, it can then connect OUT to a random set of nodes as proposed by the `boot_node` hook. They will be provided commented by the `hook_boot_node.sh` parameters.
• The Boot node should also be mindful that his infrastructure needs to continue to run as it IS an appointed block producer, until after the 15% vote threshold. The BP that was elected can and should call `regproducer` on the side, and be ready to tweak its `config.ini` to set its real `producer-name` and `private-keys` the moment 15% bust. I'm sure we'll be forgiving even if he misses a few blocks during that handoff :)

We will be running the next Stage at 13:00 UTC of May 29. Please follow along with the EOS BIOS Telegram channel for updates. We encourage those who want to practice amongst themselves to continue to do so and provide further feedback to the community!

All BPs are invited to participate in the next launches.

For anyone who will be joining for the first time, we invite you to first go through the eos-bios YouTube playlist.