Stacks Tech Update 11/7/24

Hey Stackers 👋

Exciting times are ahead for Stacks as core devs work on tenure improvements, network efficiencies, and the rollout of sBTC, beginning with sBTC Deposits. To stay informed and engaged, follow the Stacks Foundation on Twitter at @StacksOrg and the Stacks Status account at @stacksstatus for the latest updates and developments.

The Latest

Following the Nakamoto hard fork, several partners and node operators have run into issues with nodes either stalling or struggling to keep up with the network. These issues are being investigated, along with reports of some regressions on one of the API endpoints.

This week, the core devs have focused their efforts on the timely release of version 3.0.0.0.1 point release, that focuses on ironing out the issues encountered by node operators.

Highlights + notes:

• This change adds a new index to speed up some database lookups. We profiled a node before this change and it was spending ~20% time in this code path. With this change we’re seeing significantly better performance — it should help the nodes that were struggling to keep up, and help miners with more consistent block production.

• This change removes an unnecessary panic when the code detects a database deadlock. Deadlocks will still be logged but the node will continue to run instead of crashing.

• There’s a public node still running Stacks 2.5 that’s interacting with 3.0 nodes in a suboptimal way. While devs test a proper fix, a workaround is to add the following under the [node] section of your Stacks config: deny_nodes = "84.32.186.15:20444"

What’s Ahead

• Another point release will fast follow with this change which fixes a few bugs and adds some optimizations to the P2P stack, including handling “unhealthy” peers. This is the fix to the temporary resolution re deny_nodes.

• Following work on current issues, devs will be focused on tenure extend and cost functions. Updates on this work will be communicated in these updates.