Chainflip Development Update — October 9th 2023

Dear readers of the Chainflip Development Update,

We are getting closer and closer to the launch date. Like a runner towards the end of a marathon, that means we have to ignore the urge to rest and keep going. Of course the race is not over once we are live, but it is going to be a huge milestone for us.

We are now focusing on the necessary things for a successful launch and on doing a few improvements based on the extensive data we have gathered as part of testing the system in the Perseverance test net.

Progress

• We are preparing everything for the next audit, preparing the timeline and prioritising the most critical parts of the codebase, as well as the ones that have changed significantly since the last audit
• We improved the way in which deposit channels for swaps or liquidity providers expire. Previously, they would be active for a certain amount of time, however that would make it difficult to predict expiration. A better way is to expire them based on the block number of the chain that the deposit is made on. That way, users know that if their transaction is included in a chain on or before a certain block, then the deposit would be accepted by Chainflip. This is especially helpful for chains like Bitcoin, where the time between blocks can fluctuate quite a bit.
• We significantly improved the performance of our APIs for brokers and liquidity providers.
• We also performed various tests not only against test chains, but against the real Bitcoin, Ethereum and Polkadot chains, ensuring that there are no unexpected differences between the testnet and mainnet implementations that we might have missed.
• Our product team is growing and two new members have joined the company.

Outlook

We will continue to closely monitor Perseverance and develop fixes and improvements for any issues that we might observe. We will also finalise the configuration parameters for mainnet, which include the exact fee and reward structure, slashing rates and expiry and epoch times.

Looking ahead, we are also working on various features that won’t be part of the mainnet release, but will improve the user experience going forward.

Vibe Check

It is clear that we are all excited this close to the release. To offset the mental workload, a selection of the Chainflip team joined the “Berlin Golden Cup” beach volleyball tournament, competing against various other tech companies from Berlin. We are happy to report that the Chainflip team won the first price and brought home the “Golden Cup”!

Until next time,

Martin