This is the first release of an Everest compatible node. This update is a major update from the previous Denali compatible release.
Networking updates:
- Introduced adaptive timeouts to learn what the current network delay is. This enables liveness during larger than normal network delays, without sacrificing performance during periods of synchrony.
- Added a message scheduler to in the chain handlers to prioritize messages more efficiently than FIFO.
- Rate limit inbound requests to reduce CPU based DoS vectors.
- Changed the sampling distribution to sample uniformly by stake. This ensures that validators are correctly sampled based on their stake amount. Previously the sampling would be biased when the staking distribution deviated from uniform.
- Drop connection if heartbeat messages aren't received.
- Updated the network sampling algorithm to be more performant.
PlatformVM updates:
- Converted from an Account based model to a UTXO based model to support pruning.
- Added transaction status lookups.
- Updated API to send transactions directly rather than requiring multiple calls for generating a transaction, signing it, and then issuing it.
AVM updates:
- Supported AVAX asset movement between all chains on the default subnet.
- Added NFT support to the AVM API.
Default subnet:
- Renamed AVA to AVAX to be consistent with the token ticker.
- Converted the address format from the Checksummed Base58 format to the Bech32 format.
- Added fixed transaction fees.
Core updates:
- Updated the shared memory abstraction to avoid potentially breaking failure isolation of the chains.
- Populate the VM context in the RPC VM to enable advanced chain functionality for chains running in a separate process.
- Added value prefixes to node IDs and private keys to be able to clearly distinguish them from addresses and chain IDs.
- Updated the Genesis format to include arbitrary text.
Other changes:
- Added support for the End-To-End testing suite to be able to be run during CI.
- Added additional metrics for database and network monitoring.