Contents
Release roundups are organized into a few categories spanning the breadth of the developer experience. From core protocol contributions all the way to the Hiro Platform in the cloud, let’s take a look at what we shipped in August and share some of our priorities in September:
Release Roundup
Hiro Platform
- In August, we shipped programmatic API access to Chainhook and devnet. With this new feature, you can programmatically create and update chainhooks as well as start/stop devnet, unlocking powerful automation opportunities in your code.
DevTools
Clarinet
- You can now view logs in your terminal if there is no configured dashboard. This is useful for debugging. If you’re using the default dashboard, the UI will indicate when there are problems. Previously, if you didn’t use the dashboard, you didn’t have access to some logs that might help debug issues when things went wrong. Now you do!
- We also updated some components and fixed a few bugs to update dependencies, offer better stability, introduce more realistic block times for testing, among other benefits.
API Services
Stacks Blockchain API
- We released v8.0.x of the Stacks Blockchain API, which introduces breaking changes to the API. Note: nothing is changing for existing API users. There are no changes to endpoints or database schemas that necessitate a full Stacks node event replay. You can safely upgrade to v8.0.0 from v7.x directly.
- Most importantly in this release, we migrated web frameworks from Express to Fastify, which was a large project that involved refactoring most endpoints and the event-server. This migration improves the scalability of the Stacks Blockchain API and makes it easier to maintain by allowing the auto-generation of its open API spec. This change is mostly internal and addresses technical debt.
- Alongside that migration, we added cursor-based pagination on the blocks endpoint, which fixes the performance issues we were encountering with off-set based pagination. You can learn more about the pros and cons of cursor-based vs offset-based pagination here.
- We also enabled you to export an events tsv directly to your Postgres instance that fixes a TSV export bug.
Token Metadata API
- We shipped v1.0.x of the Token Metadata API! Now this API service uses Chainhook to listen for on-chain events instead of using a direct Stacks Blockchain API connection. This change brings reorg-resistance to the Token Metadata API as well as better performance and dynamic monitoring of high volume events like NFT mints and FT supply changes.
- We also now store image files related to tokens in a CDN. This offers better performance and reliability. In addition, you can now also add a configurable delay for retrying jobs if you hit a rate limit from a metadata host. This way the same job doesn’t immediately requeue if you’re expecting to still be rate limited.
API Toolkit
- We ported the CPU profiler from the Stacks Blockchain API and migrated it from Express to Fastify. This makes the profiler available for use in other APIs and streamlines API profiling for all of our API services (and for anyone who uses the toolkit).
Blockchain
- We contributed to the public ecosystem blockchain working group, and supported work on the Nakamoto release. In August, we helped ship the Nakamoto binaries and the Nakamoto activation window began on 8/28. Final testing and optimizations are ongoing!
Blockchain Explorers
- In August, we launched several big changes in the Stacks Explorer. First, we upgraded search functionality in the Stacks Explorer by adding new filters to search results that let you hone in on specific transactions by adding filters for certain date windows, transactions sent by particular addresses, and more.
- Second, we launched a new holders page for tokens. These pages show the token distribution of fungible tokens in the Stacks ecosystem, so you can identify who the top token holders are and get a sense of how distributed and decentralized a particular token is (or not).
- In addition, we added post conditions when calling functions in the Stacks Explorer Sandbox. This is helpful for interacting with function calls in deny mode, which require users to supply post conditions in order to interact with them.
- Alongside these changes, we added a new block view for Naka 2 and 3 and added a warning bar for non-Hiro networks. We also fixed several bugs.
Documentation
- We shipped a brand new section in Hiro docs to help devs learn the smart contract programming language Clarity. These new guides break down Clarity functions and offer practical examples of how these functions are used in projects and help devs incorporate these functions into their own projects.
- We also launched API references for the new programmatic API access to Chainhook and devnet that are now offered by the Hiro Platform.
- Alongside those changes, we released a number of improvements to various guides and references.
Looking Ahead to September
Here are our biggest priorities in the coming month:
- Ship high quality mock sBTC support in Clarinet: We are planning to roll out sBTC support in Clarinet to help devs test and build with the upcoming Bitcoin asset that’s coming to Stacks this fall.
- Supporting Nakamoto: The Nakamoto activation window is open, and we are actively contributing to the blockchain public working group on debugging and performance optimizations as we prepare for testnet launch.
Beyond that we’ll of course have lots of work and upgrades to the suite of Hiro products, so keep an eye out for new updates.
Learn More
For a full list of releases and improvements by product, please view the following links:
