Weekly Oxen Labs Update #254

03 July 2023 —Kee Jefferys

Dev

This week the Session dev team continued their focus on releasing user configuration, as i speak we are building a number of candidate releases for Desktop and Android for testing in the power user groups, this will give us a final chance to catch any issues before release. The Session team also worked on disappearing messages and adding the new “Message info” screen which already exists on Session iOS to Session Android. The Lokinet team kept pushing on libQUIC this week, they have now started the integration of libQUIC into liblokinet and Lokinet and initial results are looking very promising, watch this space!

Session

Session Android

Build message info/details screen using Compose UI framework https://github.com/oxen-io/session-android/pull/1261
Support usage of DNS over HTTPS for resolution of seed nodes https://github.com/oxen-io/session-android/pull/1259
Ongoing user configuration work https://github.com/oxen-io/session-android/pull/1096

Session iOS

Ongoing user configuration work https://github.com/oxen-io/session-ios/pull/751
Ongoing work to update disappearing messages to work with user config https://github.com/oxen-io/session-ios/pull/731

Session Desktop

New option to mark all conversations as read https://github.com/oxen-io/session-desktop/pull/2800
Support RTL typing in message box https://github.com/oxen-io/session-desktop/pull/2796
Fix regression with admin options https://github.com/oxen-io/session-desktop/pull/2799
Ongoing user configuration work https://github.com/oxen-io/session-desktop/pull/2620

Lokinet

LibQUIC

Add Ninja to build requirements https://github.com/oxen-io/oxen-libquic/pull/18
Work in progress to add ability to send datagrams https://github.com/oxen-io/oxen-libquic/pull/17
Refactor tests https://github.com/oxen-io/oxen-libquic/pull/15
Add drone CI for static and Windows builds https://github.com/oxen-io/oxen-libquic/pull/16
Add compilation warnings https://github.com/oxen-io/oxen-libquic/pull/14
Replace libuv with libevent https://github.com/oxen-io/oxen-libquic/pull/13

Marketing

This week was all about one number: 750,000. We crossed the 750k threshold for Session MAU, which is a significant milestone for Session, Oxen, and the overall project. We are quickly moving on to that 1 million mark, which will be a significant breakpoint for us and expected to hit relatively soon.

Here’s how we celebrated the milestone: Chris sat down and made a video with Tom, we put some coverage out on the Oxen and Session socials, as well as announcements across all of the usual channels.

Tom and Cam have been working on some YouTube planning for Q3, which is more or less wrapped up now. We are considering how we will proceed with the Session Tapes, and are likely to look into guest appearances soon — so let us know if you have requests for who you’d like to see on the show. Alex and Wes also sat down and recorded another privacy tips video, in line with content which has performed above average in the past.

We continued follow up on the Lokinet AMA, with some clips posted to Lokinet and Oxen socials, and this blog summary for those who don’t want to watch the video.

In line with the OPTF’s strategic goals for the second half of the year, we submitted a proposal for an event later in the year — once again spotlighting Session and Oxen. Alex also put together and published this blog summarising the recent events we attended, Monerotopia and DRAPAC.

We announced the winner for the SessionPhone™ giveaway. Somewhat controversially, the winner was kept anonymous (to protect their privacy). In the end, the winner revealed themselves with this hilarious Breaking Bad reference. Congratulations to them, and looking forward to future competitions. For everyone who didn’t get the phone, Cam organised a consolation prize in the form of a HD Session Wallpaper. Not everyone can be a winner — but early indications from the Promotional After Action Review suggest we will probably run more competitions in the future.

Last but not least, we had some meetings with partners about adding and improving strategic localisations for Session.

updates