Weekly Oxen Labs Update #265

Dev

This week was another week of tackling closed groups and disappearing messages, with most of the Session team working on these two tasks. We also released bugfix releases on Session Desktop and Session iOS. The Oxen core team continued building out the necessary calls required to get information from the EVM enabled chain into the Oxen workchain and discussed a number of important design decisions about how snapshots could be taken from the workchain and validated on the EVM chain. The Lokinet team continued their focus on libQUIC making more of the changes required to integrate with Lokinet in the future –we are getting closer and closer to something which we can test internally 🤞

Session

Session Android

• Fix unresolved theming attributes exception https://github.com/oxen-io/session-android/pull/1323

• Make play debug version default build variant https://github.com/oxen-io/session-android/pull/1322

• Ongoing work on overhaul of disappearing messages https://github.com/oxen-io/session-android/pull/1313

• Ongoing work on overhaul of closed groups https://github.com/oxen-io/session-android/pull/1033

Session Desktop

• Update electron version to v25.8.1 to fix CVE https://github.com/oxen-io/session-desktop/pull/2923 

• Add ability to download all attachments from a message (thanks to community contributor RubenGarcia) https://github.com/oxen-io/session-desktop/pull/2928

• Ongoing work on overhaul of closed groups https://github.com/oxen-io/session-desktop/pull/2873 

• Ongoing work on overhaul of disappearing messages https://github.com/oxen-io/session-desktop/pull/2660 

• Ongoing libSession integration work https://github.com/oxen-io/libsession-util-nodejs/pull/12 

Session iOS 

• Add Ukrainian translations from Crowdin (Thanks to community contributor vlzuykov) https://github.com/oxen-io/session-ios/pull/905

• Fix issue where link previews were not correctly displayed on iOS recipient devices https://github.com/oxen-io/session-ios/pull/904

• Ongoing work on overhaul of closed groups https://github.com/oxen-io/session-ios/pull/894 

libSession-util

• Add debug_dump() to ConfigBase and Keys classes https://github.com/oxen-io/libsession-util/pull/56

• Onion request helper functions https://github.com/oxen-io/libsession-util/pull/54

• Fix issue with decryptions of still pending keys https://github.com/oxen-io/libsession-util/pull/55

• Fix plaintext size calculations https://github.com/oxen-io/libsession-util/pull/53

Session push notification Service 

• Improve multi threading to handle more push notifications  https://github.com/oxen-io/session-push-notification-server/pull/33 

Oxen Core  

• Continue work to make information on the EVM network available to Oxen workchain https://github.com/oxen-io/ethyl/commits/master

• Participate in discussions around most efficient snapshot methods to prove Service Node balances

Oxen MQ

• epoll: always retrieve events from triggered sockets https://github.com/oxen-io/oxen-mq/pull/88 

• Add epoll support for Linux to reduce CPU usage https://github.com/oxen-io/oxen-mq/pull/87 

Lokinet

libQUIC

• Additional work on connection logic for libquic https://github.com/oxen-io/oxen-libquic/pull/40

• Add closure methods added required for Lokinet integration https://github.com/oxen-io/oxen-libquic/pull/43

• Fix warning issue in logs https://github.com/oxen-io/oxen-libquic/pull/42

• Bump version number https://github.com/oxen-io/oxen-libquic/pull/41

Marketing: 

Howdy folks. Last week in marketing it was all things content, with the team splitting their time between both strategy and production.

On Tuesday we dropped an ORC 8 update video to the Oxen YouTube channel. Featuring both Chris and Kee, the video aimed to touch base with you guys and answer some of the bigger questions still found in the ORC that were not covered in the recent AMA. At nearly 21 minutes, the video offered us a chance to really dive into the direction for the project.

Speaking of video content, we were also hard at work editing plenty of new content set to drop across our social media channels in the next couple weeks. Wes was hard at work finishing off a new Session video which breaks down why all private messaging apps aren't created equal (and which ones you should maybe steer clear of). 

Additionally we worked on some fresh tutorial content, highlighting Sessions recent release feature (toggle enabled DM permissions from communities), producing assets that can be repurposed across a variety of formats. 

Session has developed a reputation as a thought leader in the privacy tech space, and we plan to capitalise on this more by increasing our production of blogs. We have two new blogs slated for release this month, with Cam finishing up a new piece recently which explores some troubling trends which suggest that Gen Z and Millennials are far more accepting of mass surveillance than older generations.

On the strategy side of things, the team continued building out our campaign planning for on-going marketing activities in Q4. Last week we were particularly focused on Twitter and Mastodon, and have now finalised our Q4 strategies for those platforms. 

Planning for the Session Token rebrand is ongoing, with much of our work last week focussed on the visual identity of the brand and core messaging hierarchy.  

That's all for this week, thanks for swinging by.