Contents
Release roundups are organized into 4 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 January and a preview of what we’ll be working on in February:
Release Roundup
Hiro Platform
- We shipped a new self-service portal in the Hiro Platform that enables you to generate and manage your API keys. No approvals, no delays.
DevTools
Clarinet
- We released v2.2.0 of Clarinet, which upgrades the Clarity VM to include the Nakamoto preview (including epoch 2.5 and epoch 3.0). This means you can now begin testing your contracts in devnet ahead of the upcoming Nakamoto release. We will be sharing instructions on how to test your contracts with the Nakamoto Preview, as well as rolling out Nakamoto Preview in the Hiro Platform, in the coming days.
- This release also separates Clarity WASM in <code-rich-text>clarinet console<code-rich-text>, which enables you to run 2 VMs side by side (the WASM VM and the original interpreter). This is great for debugging and catching different behaviors in the 2 VMs.
Stacks.js
- We handled some housekeeping in Stacks.js in January, including version packaging, updating some legacy endpoints, and fixing a bug related to Nakamoto compatibility.
Chainhook
- We released a number of changes to Chainhook, including support for bad requests, support for transaction indexing via wallet descriptors (simplifying chainhook configuration for public keys and multi-sig wallets), and several bug fixes. We also made some CPU/memory optimizations, so that Chainhook can run reliably and securely at scale in the Hiro Platform.
API Services
Stacks Blockchain API
- For the Stacks Blockchain API, we added a new endpoint that retrieves the deployment status of multiple smart contracts at once, improved block processing by running inserts in batch and in parallel, and fixed several bugs. We also benchmarked the block ingestion work we released in December and found that we improved block ingestion time by 85-95%.
Ordinals API
- The Ordinals API now supports transfers by ordinal number instead of inscription ID, a backend change that means our API now supports the transfer of sats that have been re-inscribed (inscribed more than once).
Blockchain
- Supporting the ecosystem working group, we made significant contributions to the upcoming Nakamoto Release. The next major release is codenamed Argon and is scheduled for code completion at the end of February, and public testnet will follow shortly after in early March. This work includes contributions on PoX-4 Clarity features, testing in the Clarity WASM, the DKG, Signer binary, block proposals, block validation, and the network state machine.
Blockchain Explorers
- After shipping a few big features in December for the Stacks Explorer, including transaction fee stats and the ability to filter mempool transactions, we focused on several performance and style improvements in January.
Looking Ahead to February
Here are our biggest priorities in February:
- Supporting work towards Argon: We plan to continue supporting the blockchain public working group and upgrade Neon’s controlled Nakamoto testnets with Argon features, including signers and the new PoX-4 contract.
- Optimizing the Clarity VM: We will also support the public working group on the Clarity VM, implementing a number of cost optimizations and updating the read count settings to improve the current throughput. You can follow along here.
- Create and validate designs for the Hiro Platform: A priority for us in 2024 is rethinking the first principles behind the Hiro Platform and understanding what developers actually want from the platform. If there’s features you’d like to see in the Hiro Platform, please let us know. In February, we will be creating and validating some initial designs for changes to onboarding and the development experience inside of the platform to better delight and retain developers.
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:
