Oxen Hardfork (10.1.0 Wistful Wagyu)

Oxen is announcing its next major hardfork today. Oxen 10.1.0 Wistful Wagyu will release on May 31 2022 with a 2 week mandatory upgrade period ending on the scheduled hardfork date, June 14 2022.

Here are some of the new features and improvements which will be included in the hardfork:

Core

• Service node reward batching (SN rewards will be paid on a per wallet basis every 3.5 days)

• Service node contributor changes

• Up to 10 people can stake to a service node (1 operator, up to 9 contributors)

• Contributors staking <25% of the total stake must wait minimum 30 day period before initiating unlock (which takes 15 days)

• Improve prepare_registration command, especially for shared contribution nodes

Storage server

• Batched requests

• Allow clients to make requests to multiple storage server endpoints in a single request

• Storage server inboxes

• Allow clients to store messages in multiple inboxes to better sort different message types (DMs, groups, config)

• Authentication and validation changes for DMs and closed groups

• Updating storage server dependencies

Lokinet

• Improved logic for SN-to-SN path builds

• Increased speed for SN-to-SN path builds

• Enforce Lokinet reachability testing

• Kick unreachable Lokinet service nodes

Some of the client-side changes which will be made possible by this hardfork are still in development and will roll out in the coming weeks and months. Included in this hardfork are upgrades not only for Oxen core, but also improvements which will benefit Session and Lokinet. 

Note that this hardfork also has a 2 week 'grace period' after the hardfork date. This is not a grace period for service nodes — all service nodes will need to be running Oxen 10.1.0 or higher before the hardfork date. Because of changes to inbox handling and message fetching contained in this upgrade, older Session clients will no longer be compatible with the network after the hardfork. These changes will not be enforced until the conclusion of the grace period to give Session users as much time as possible to update their clients.

The Oxen devs are currently conducting tests to ensure that the binaries will be ready for release on May 31. On that date, we will release further instructions on how to upgrade — so make sure you're following the latest announcements via our social media channels. 

Below is a timeline which outlines the mandatory upgrade period, the hardfork, and the grace period. Please keep in mind that these dates are subject to change pending any issues which may be encountered during testing. 

P.S. For Session users, it is important to upgrade your client as soon as possible, because this network upgrade may impact older Session clients.

Article Edit 1/06/22 - Update Available Following the release of the Oxen 10.1.0 - Wistful Wagyu Hardfork, operators are now able and required to update their service nodes. Being a mandatory update, your node can be upgraded using the following simple commands in your CLI:

  Syncing your repositories: 

 sudo apt update

Then installing updates using:

 sudo apt upgrade

 Easy peezy, right?

Please Note: this will install both updated Oxen packages and any available system updates (this is a good thing!).

During the upgrade, the running instance of oxend will be restarted to ensure that the updated oxend is now active.

If, for some reason, you want to install only updated Oxen package upgrades, but not other system packages, then instead of the above sudo apt upgrade you can use:

sudo apt install oxen-storage-server oxend lokinet-router

For more information on the 10.1.0 release click here.