NKN Bi-weekly Report Sept 10 — Sept 24, 2019

Posted on September 25, 2019

Highlights

Mainnet Token Swap Opens
NKN.org uses own technology for critical work
nCDN Outperforms Cloudflare in China
nsh: A More Secure and Convenient Remote Shell than SSH
d-FTP: High throughput file transfer using NKN client
Mainnet Mining Guide Updated
New Built-in Web UI for locally managing NKN node software
NKN multi-client SDK: Improving packet reliability and latency
D-chat updated to v4.0.1 for both Chrome and Firefox
3D Printed Raspberry Pi Miner

Mainnet technical development updates

Latest Mainnet Stats September 24th, 2019:

🌐 42 countries

🏭 205 ISPs or cloud providers

💻 13,601 full consensus nodes

📀 1 new release

NKN mainnet code development progress over the last two weeks is mainly reflected in nkn, nkn-sdk-go, tuna, nkn-wallet-js, nnet, nkn-multiclient-js, NKNDataPump, and nkn-shell-daemon repositories and different branches.

Pull Request: 12
Commits: 22

The latest stable release for mainnet is v1.1.0-beta.1

(https://github.com/nknorg/nkn/releases )

NKN Mainnet v1.1.0-beta.1

This release fixes a bug that might cause nknd to panic in a race condition. In addition, it reduces bandwidth usage by not sending blocks to client by default.

Development Community Mainnet Contributions

Since NKN began, we have seen waves upon waves on code contributions from our dedicated development community. Not only from our nkn repository (shown above), but from the many client and application repositories as well. Let’s continue the momentum to build the largest shared network in the world.

Mainnet Token Swap Opens

It’s finally here! On Sept 19th, NKN launched our official mainnet token swap web tool. This tool allows NKN token holders to swap between mainnet and ERC-20 tokens. Please be advised that all exchanges are currently supporting ERC-20 NKN token for trading purpose. The schedule for exchange support of NKN mainnet token will be announced at a later stage.

The complete guide to the NKN Mainnet Swap Tool can be found here.

NKN.org uses own technology for critical work

As a testament to the reliability and serviceability of our own technology, NKN uses our own solutions for every day work. This includes the following applications and services:

nCDN (New Kind of Content Delivery Network) serves content for both our website as well as the mainnet explorer api service.
d-chat instant messaging application based on Switchboard — NKN’s secure pub/sub messaging service is used for everyday team communication
nsh (New kind of Secure Shell) is used by our sysadmins to help manage servers.
TUNA is used for secure inter-office connection for a number of applications including video conferencing and more.

These products are critical for any enterprise working and collaborating in today’s on-line world.

nCDN Outperforms Cloudflare in China

Based on recent internal performance testing of our new nCDN (New Kind of Content Delivery Network) in China, we found nCDN to be 68% faster than Cloudflare. In addition, nCDN provided better performance in more provinces overall than that of Cloudflare as well. These early results show great promise for the platform and we look forward to getting nCDN in the hands of more enterprise customers soon. In addition, nCDN service can bring additional reward (in NKN tokens) for our miners who choose to run nCDN service.

nsh: A More Secure and Convenient Remote Shell than SSH

On September 19th, NKN CTO Yilun Zhang published the article “nsh: A More Secure and Convenient Remote Shell than SSH” on popular developer blog site Hackernoon. The interest has been overwhelming with more than 25,000 views to date. nsh offers system administrators a secure and convenient way to quickly execute a few commands on a remote server saving time and effort. In fact, nsh is also integrated into the d-chat instant messaging client, so that you can run commands from within a chat window, making it even easier to manage your remote machines.

d-FTP: High throughput file transfer using NKN client

On September 10th, NKN CTO Yilun Zhang published the article, “d-FTP: High throughput file transfer using NKN client”, which introduces d-FTP, a decentralized file transfer application. d-FTP offers the ability to securely send files with accelerated throughput between clients even when those files are sent across long-range global destinations. Any sensitive files that need to be sent securely without any centralized relay or server can take advantage of d-FTP today.

Mainnet Mining Guide Updated

With all the recent software changes since our Mainnet launch in July, it’s time to provide a comprehensive update to our mining guide. We did just that. We have published “NKN Mining Guide for Mainnet: wiki version”, which will serve as a community maintained wiki pulling together all the latest guides to run an NKN node on your favorite cloud or home platform.

New Web UI for locally managing NKN node software

Did you know that running NKN node software at home just got a bit easier in v1.1? A built-in Web-UI simplifies monitoring and configuration for miners. Here are the step by step guides.

Mac and Linux:

Web-UI for NKN mining nodes (Mac and Linux edition)

Windows

Web-UI for NKN mining nodes (Windows Edition)

NKN multi-client: Improving packet reliability and latency

In yet another technology advancement, we recently launched NKN multi-client. The NKN multi-client allows an application to open up multiple sub-clients that while using more resources and bandwidth serves to reduce the overall latency and improve the reliability of the data being transferred. The messaging application, d-chat, uses NKN Multi-Client to improve the latency and reliability of messaging between users. This is another example of the ways our development team are looking for ways to improve our network and offer tools for developers to build killer apps on our platform. Check out NKN multi-client on our github here.

Community contributions

D-chat updated to v4.0.2

D-chat has recently been updated to v4.0.2 which now supports image/video/audio upload capability as well as improved performance. In addition, Chrome and Firefox versions will now be released simultaneously so no need to wait to get the latest version. Add d-chat to your favorite browser and join the fun!

3d Printed Raspberry Pi Miner

Big thanks to community member Tom from the UK for sharing this picture of his 3D printed, Raspberry Pi based NKN Miner. Find out how you can setup your own Raspberry Pi miner here.

About NKN

NKN is the new kind of P2P network connectivity protocol & ecosystem powered by a novel public blockchain. We use economic incentives to motivate Internet users to share network connection and utilize unused bandwidth. NKN’s open, efficient, and robust networking infrastructure enables application developers to build the decentralized Internet so everyone can enjoy secure, low cost, and universally accessible connectivity.