v1.14.0

Bee v1.14.0 is here!

We've been working hard to bring retrieval protocol improvements, a brand new debugging protocol, increased visibility of the network, and a long list of hardenings.

We've introduced a new skip-list mechanism in retrieval protocol so that on retry attempts, requests reach a wider range of peers to improve the success rate of retrieved chunks.

The release features a brand new protocol that acquires from connected peers important information like their storage radius and reserve size. This will bring new visibility to the network and lays the foundation for future features.

The health ping and chainsync requests are now less frequent to reduce network stream count.

The team has also identified and fixed the issue of failing stewardship checks of encryped content.

For fresh nodes, the intensitivity of the initial syncing phase has been reduced by delaying the syncing of "out of depth" peers to 24 hours after running.

The minimum funds (xDAI) required to participate in the storage incentives has been raised to combat the recent increasing number of pending transactions. The minumum amount can be found on-demand using the existing /redistributionstate API.

IMPORTANT NOTE:
The handshake protocol has been bumped as there has bee a new redistribution contract release. It's important that all node operators upgrade to the new version. All bootnodes will be upgraded to the new version on 14:00 CET, April 11.

For questions, comments, and feedback, reach out on discord.

Breaking changes

• The handshake protocol has been bumped as there is a new redistribution contract release.

New Features

• Added a new global "sticky" skiplist to the retrieval protocol, similar to the pushsync, so that different peers across the network can be requested on retries (#3921)
• Added a new debugging "status" protocol which acquires all connected peers' storage radius, reserve size, and other information. Can be requested on-demand using the new debug /status and /status/peers endpoints.

Hardening

• Added new retrieval metrics. (#3904)
• Made the pullsync and the puller more resillient to errors. (#3926 #3988)
• Increase the mimumum required funds for a node to participate in the storage incentives. (#3940)
• Persist the state of the storage incentives phases to statestore to make the agent resilient to restarts. (#3943)
• Added extra checks like zero and invalid length address checks to the retrieval protocol before handling the request. (#3954 #3987)
• Improved the receipt check of the pusher for full nodes so that shallow receipts below the storage radius are rejected. (#3994)

Bugfixes

• The traversal package was broken as we did not handle encrypted references. Encrypted reference handling is now fixed. As a side effect, the issue of failing stewardship checks on encrypted references is now resolved. (#3991)

Perfomance Improvements

• The health ping and chainsync requests fire less regurlary to reduce the rate of opened streams. (#3872)

For a full PR rundown please consult the v1.14.0 diff.