Dev Release-201

This release provides a comprehensive overview of the latest technical improvements, bug fixes, and new features introduced across the BlockDAG ecosystem. It reflects our ongoing commitment to transparency, innovation, and community engagement. Key updates in this release include enhancements to network stability, optimizations in our mining infrastructure, and significant upgrades to the blockchain explorer, ensuring faster access to data and smoother performance.

We’ve also rolled out important improvements to our hardware miner applications, focusing on reliability, performance, and user experience. These developments are part of our broader roadmap to build a more robust, scalable, and user-friendly ecosystem for our contributors, developers, miners, and early adopters.

By sharing these updates, we aim to keep our community informed, aligned, and excited about the progress we're making as we continue to evolve and push the boundaries of what’s possible with BlockDAG technology.

• Fixed a critical bug affecting DAG traversal and confirmation counts
• Implemented a foundational version of the Stratum mining server
• Major UI and backend updates to the Explorer, including contract analytics and NFT module planning
• Leaderboard support and UI refinements for X1 and X10 mining devices

These improvements reflect our deep commitment to building a scalable, modular, and user-friendly decentralized ecosystem. From stabilizing consensus-level APIs to advancing mining infrastructure and enhancing user tools, we’re laying down a strong and resilient foundation ahead of mainnet and public engagement.

1. Transaction Confirmation Stability Fix

As part of our ongoing efforts to strengthen the reliability of the BlockDAG network, we’ve successfully identified and resolved a critical issue affecting the GetConfirmations API, which is responsible for tracking transaction confirmations during DAG traversal. This occurred because certain block IDs were being re-enqueued repeatedly without proper state tracking, preventing the traversal from completing as expected.

To address this, our dev team implemented enhanced state management within the traversal mechanism. This ensures each block is visited only once and appropriately marked, eliminating the possibility of infinite loops, even under the most complex network conditions.

This fix significantly improves the confirmation logic’s stability and efficiency, especially as the BlockDAG network scales. It also marks a key step toward ensuring the robustness of our confirmation APIs, which are foundational to building trust and consistency across all connected dApps and services.

What Was Done:

• Introduced a visited map, keyed by block ID, inside the confirmation loop
• Ensured each block is only processed once per traversal instance
• Prevented infinite queue expansion and guaranteed that the confirmation count would resolve correctly
• This fix is live and functional on the Primordial testnet and has passed rigorous internal tests.

2. Stratum Server (Initial Integration)

We’ve taken a major step forward in building a truly decentralized mining infrastructure for the BlockDAG network. At the heart of this progress is the implementation of our Stratum server, which plays a crucial role in connecting individual miners to full nodes across the network.

The Stratum server acts as a communication bridge, allowing miners to receive real-time block templates, submit their proof-of-work solutions, and sync with the current state of the DAG, all with minimal latency and maximum efficiency. This not only streamlines the mining process but also makes it scalable and more resilient as the network grows.

By enabling decentralized participation in mining, we’re moving closer to our vision of a trustless, open, and high-performance consensus layer. This early-stage infrastructure will serve as the backbone for future mining tools, pool integrations, and incentives, empowering more users to contribute to the network’s security and growth from anywhere in the world.

Current Capabilities:

• Fetches valid block templates from the full node
• Relays those templates to miners in real time
• Receives solved nonces and validates them under the network difficulty
• Submits proofs-of-work back to the node for inclusion into the DAG

Current Challenge:
We’ve observed that while the mining loop works end-to-end, the txroot and stateroot values, which represent Merkle roots of the transaction and state trie, are arriving incorrectly when transmitted via the miner’s payload. 
This is likely due to:

• Incorrect root calculation at the template generation level
• Improper mapping when serializing the miner submission

We’re actively debugging this layer and expect resolution in an upcoming patch.

1. Bug Fix: Batch Operation Errors on Verified Contracts
   Users performing batch transfers or batch minting on verified smart contracts were encountering an "Invalid Array Value" error. This was caused by improper parameter validation in the backend smart contract engine, particularly when handling complex or nested data types.

• The bug has been fully resolved
• Batch operations are now seamless, and error rates have dropped to zero since deployment

2. Contract Analytics Section
To provide deeper visibility into smart contract performance, we’ve added an Analytics Section to each verified contract’s detail page. Metrics include:

• Transaction activity over time
• Unique wallet interactions
• Token distribution charts
• Gas cost breakdown
• Event emissions and custom logs

These insights empower developers, investors, and users to make better decisions and track performance in a decentralized yet transparent environment.

3. NFT Module Design Underway
Our design team has completed a set of detailed Figma mockups for the upcoming NFT module. Core features planned include:

• NFT explorer with advanced filters and sorting
• Collection overviews and creator profiles
• Real-time metadata display (e.g., attributes, rarity, token URI previews)
• Minting interfaces and ownership history

This module is aimed at making NFT creation and discovery on BlockDAG as seamless as possible.

4. UI and UX Enhancements
Numerous frontend improvements have been rolled out:

• Optimized search queries for better speed and relevance
• Added accessibility features, including high contrast support and ARIA labels
• Unified styling across block, transaction, and address pages
• Laid groundwork for internationalization (i18n) support

1. Leaderboard Integration
   We’re excited to announce the rollout of the Leaderboard Feature for miners. 
   This feature enables:

• Real-time leaderboard access for X1 application and X10 hardware miners
• Toggle between device types to view top contributors separately
• Ranking based on hashes submitted, uptime, and valid blocks found

This feature gamifies mining and encourages competitive and consistent participation.
 

2. Bug Fixes and Animation Improvements
Several visual and performance issues were reported in the X1/X10 applications, particularly involving:

• Laggy animations during dashboard updates
• Overlapping elements in the miner stats view on small-screen devices
• Data flickering due to race conditions when receiving frequent updates

We’ve optimized animation frames, added throttling to data updates, and cleaned up CSS logic for responsive layouts. The apps are now smoother, more stable, and visually more cohesive.
 

3. Hardware Sync Improvements
X10 hardware integration has been aligned with the X1 software stack, enabling both devices to share backend logic. This simplifies maintenance and allows the leaderboard, wallet, and stats modules to work uniformly across hardware types.

• Fixed DAG traversal infinite loop in GetConfirmations
• Resolved smart contract batch operation errors
• Patched visual glitches and transition bugs in miner UIs
• Established a reliable block template relay in Stratum (minus root calculation bug)

• txroot and stateroot in miner submission payloads are incorrect
• Some lingering UI inconsistencies during fast state changes in the X1/X10 app
• NFT module implementation pending backend integration
• Analytics charts in Explorer may lag under high-traffic contracts

• Complete and verify Merkle root handling in Stratum submissions
• Begin backend development for the NFT module based on finalized UI designs
• Launch the public leaderboard dashboard with real-time mining data
• Continue optimizing DAG APIs and improve logging for error traceability
• Expand internal test coverage and release updated dev documentation for community contributors

We value your input!
If you encounter issues, have feature requests, or want to get involved in testing or development, please contact us at: [email protected]
Our team is active and responsive; your feedback directly shapes our roadmap and helps prioritize what matters most to the community.

This release marks a milestone in the evolution of the BlockDAG ecosystem. By addressing critical bugs in our consensus APIs, laying the groundwork for miner decentralization via Stratum, improving contract visibility, and enriching the user experience across the board, we continue moving confidently toward mainnet readiness.

Thank you for building with us. Together, we’re redefining what’s possible with scalable DAG infrastructure.