The Casper Developer Community Call on July 23 featured key updates from Mel Padden, Director of Developer Relations at Casper Association; Michael Steuer, CTO of Make; Pavel Burylichev from Casper Association's R&D team; and Pablo Arango from Pixys.
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Mel Padden emphasized the importance of the ongoing Condor rollout and the support being provided to developers. He introduced the newly created Condor Knowledge Base, a centralized resource for developers to ask questions and access detailed articles about various Condor features. Mel highlighted several key articles, including those on getting access to DevNet, native Casper events, and the smart contract migration guide, which is temporarily on hold.
Mel pointed out that the knowledge base has seen increased activity and engagement. "We saw a good uptick in activity after the first week or so," he noted, urging the community to engage with the knowledge base and contribute to its growth. He also mentioned the importance of the Telegram channels for real-time support and information sharing.
Mel noted that the JS-SDK is available for Condor right now and is located on the Condor branch of the GitHub repository. He also mentioned that there is a migration guide for the JS-SDK available for developers already using the old JS-SDK. This guide is intended to help with transitioning to the new version and should address any issues developers might face during the migration process
Mel encouraged developers to make use of the knowledge base and the Telegram channels for real-time support and information sharing. He mentioned, "It's alive, it's getting traction, and people are surfacing information and questions about Condor."
He provided a brief overview of the types of content available in the knowledge base, including knowledge base articles on getting access to DevNet, native Casper events, and the smart contract migration guide.
Visit Condor Knowledge Base.
Join the Telegram channel dedicated to Condor.
Mel mentioned that Dev Connect is confirmed to take place in Istanbul on the 28th and 29th of October. He encouraged participants to mark their calendars and expressed excitement about the planned activities while highlighting that it would be a great opportunity to engage with the community and explore the latest developments.
Michael Steuer, the CTO of MAKE, provided comprehensive updates on both the technical and business fronts. He began by discussing recent and upcoming releases for CSPR.Live and CSPR.Cloud, noting the addition of an accounts page to CSPR.Live that essentially functions as a rich list. "The interesting releases coming up are 1.25, which will have an accounts page that gives you access to all the accounts on the network," Michael explained.
Michael detailed the transition from the legacy middleware Clarity to the new CSPR.Cloud-based API. "We are continuing to churn out releases across the CSPR suite," he said, emphasizing the importance of these updates for enhancing user experience and functionality. The migration from Clarity to the CSPR.Cloud API is designed to provide a more robust and efficient infrastructure, improving data processing and request handling.
Michael further elaborated on how the integration updates with Ledger Live are expected to enhance user accessibility and security. "Ledger Live has been using CSPR.Cloud, and we've updated the private APIs to enhance their functionality," he noted.
Michael introduced the upcoming CSPR.Name service. This service will resolve public keys to user-friendly names, bridging the gap between Web2 and Web3.
"One of the cool features is that if you register “Joe.cspr”, it will work in both Web3 and Web2," Michael elaborated.
Michael announced the deprecation of Torus Wallet and Casper Signer, urging developers to migrate their applications to the Casper Wallet.
"Through Casper Click, we are warning Torus and Signer users that they have a limited time window to migrate out of those respective wallets," he said. He also mentioned the release of a new version of CSPR.Click that allows further customization of the theme for a more seamless integration.
Michael mentioned that the CSPR.Build console is getting some upgrades, including the first version of developer analytics. "The next release will include unique accounts per day and endpoint usage statistics," he said. These analytics will provide developers with insights into their applications and user interactions, helping them optimize their dApps.
Michael highlighted updates to CSPR.Studio, including the release of new versions of the Casper.NET SDK to support Condor. He explained, "We've released two versions of the Casper.NET SDK, one addressing a security fix and another supporting Condor." These updates are crucial for developers to ensure their applications remain secure and compatible with the latest network improvements.
He also talked about the updates to NCTL Docker, which now allows developers to simulate the upgrade path from 1.5.6 to 2.0.0. "This is crucial for end-to-end testing and ensuring a smooth upgrade process," Michael noted. Additionally, the Devnet Block Explorer has been enhanced to provide better visibility and interaction with the network.
Michael concluded his segment by announcing an upcoming webinar focused on building applications on the Casper blockchain using the suite of developer tools provided by MAKE. The webinar is scheduled for July 30th and can be registered here.
Pavel Burylichev from the Casper Association's R&D team introduced Litmus, a verification tool designed to enhance security when interacting with RPC nodes. He explained that Litmus consists of components written in Rust, compiled as a WASM model, and capable of verifying block hashes, signatures, and Merkle proofs. "Litmus is a verification mechanism to verify data that we usually receive from RPC," Pavel explained, highlighting its importance in ensuring the accuracy of data from RPC nodes.
Following Pavel, Pablo Arango from Pixys shared updates on the Casper Node in the Cloud project, an automation tool designed to simplify setting up and managing Casper nodes in a cloud environment, specifically AWS. "The main objective of this is to give the Casper dApp developers an easy way to create their own nodes for either testing or productive purposes," Pablo explained.
He introduced his team members, who provided a detailed walkthrough of the repository and explained how to use the automation tool. "Using Terraform and other tools, you can have a fully functional Casper node running on the cloud within minutes," one of his team members added. They also discussed future plans to expand support to other cloud providers based on community feedback. Pablo emphasized the tool's focus on security, high availability, and resiliency.
Join us on the next X (Twitter) Space community call in mid to late August (date to be confirmed) for more updates. Stay connected and actively participate in community discussions as the groundbreaking Condor release approaches.
