Node Public Interfaces Team Weekly Update - 2021-11-26

[frol]

The previous update is #5400. See more engineering updates posted on gov.near.org

Brief Summary

This week we have been mostly busy filling gaps around the ecosystem (RosettaRPC, near-cli-rs, near-jsonrpc-client-rs, Mutli-token standard, indexer and analytics databases maintenance).

A series of development workshops focused on writing Rust contracts (in Russian) has been given in Kharkiv (Ukraine) and recorded on YouTube (second part is coming).

Future plans

The new shiny things that we are working on are:

• TheStreamer (indexer-as-a-service which triggers user-defined webhooks)
• TheAnalytics (indexer-as-a-service which uses an alternative database implementation to what we use for indexer-for-explorer, which would allow people to actually run as complex queries as necessary and pay for what they use)
• NEAR Explorer is going to be revamped to be a better service for humans through much better UX

Blockers

None!

Result

(Acronyms: O - Objective, KR - Key Result)

• O1: Support success of DevConsole

  • KR1: Provide knowledge, experience and hands-on help with DevConsole bootstrap
    • Continued the discussion about near-cli-rs UX
      New commands layout near-cli-rs#75
  • KR2: Developer tools should support RPC-as-a-Service authorization mechanism
    • Dropped base64 api key support on the client
      near/near-jsonrpc-client-rs@dd7761b

• O2: Support success of custodial wallets

  • KR1: Provide expertise and quick fixes to RosettaRPC on demand
    • Helped to identify the root cause for an issue deleting an account through RosettaRPC, which turned out to hit the limitation of Delete Account action in NEAR Protocol, which won't create an implicit beneficiary account
      Rosetta RPC fails to delete an implicit account #5405
      pytest: add Rosetta RPC imilicit account deletion test #5441

• O3: Remove friction from building dApps

  • KR1: FT / NFT information is easily available for the developers

    • Moved the discussion on Multi-token standard forward
      feat: Multi Token Standard Contract [NEP] NEPs#245

  • KR3: Release near-jsonrpc-client-rs (while we have the published version on crates.io already, we need to finish some of the work for the future releases)

    • Mitigate the deserialization of the UnknownBlock variant on a number of method calls by defaulting to an empty error_message
      fix: mitigate deserialization of partially serialized error types near-jsonrpc-client-rs#29
    • Finalized automation, the system is up and running. We have already cut a new release v0.10.0 for all non-private crates
      re: chore: ready workspace for publishing #5130
      https://github.com/near/near-ops/pull/657

  • KR5: Maintain 99.(9)% uptime for Indexer for Explorer

    • Addressed two incidents on mainnet caused by data integrity (skipped a few receipts on mainnet to keep the rest of Indexer for Explorer going; we are working on a better solution)
      Incident on block 53434285 near-indexer-for-explorer#196

• O4: Give users better insights about the current and historical status of the network

  • KR2: Explorer enables efficient exploration of NEAR history (navigation through history & search improvements)
    • Drafted a proof-of-concept account activity for Account Details page
      test: Account Activity sketch near-explorer#784
    • Fixed several issues on Account Details page (viewing deleted accounts & count of incoming and outgoing transactions for just created accounts
      fix(backend): Fix viewing of deleted account near-explorer#782
    • Fixed default privileges for Analytics and Telemetry DBs
      Public access to the telemetry database returns permission denied near-explorer#775
    • Restored 5 missing indexes to indexer for explorer testnet database
      Missing indexes lead to timeouts. Please add. near-indexer-for-explorer#197