From Holochain Beta to Holo's Network-RC, we reflect on the year and highlight some of our favorite moments.
2023 Year in Review Looking Back with WonderHolochain started the year with the release of Holochain Beta 0.1.0 and it’s been an avalanche of development and achievements since then. We can’t talk about everything here, but want to share some highlights with you. As we bundle up for winter in the northern hemisphere (and rejoice at summer in the southern hemisphere), let’s walk through the year together to remember where we have been.
Spring: Holochain BetaThe Holochain beta release continued through the spring with dev tooling, updates to the 0.1.x series, and even an early release of 0.2.x. Paul d’Aoust started work on our dev documentation and refreshed Dev Portal, and the team could feel the excitement as we continued to improve on a stable codebase.
Taking Holochain back out on the road, we attended EthDenver, hosting a series of satellite events where we gave blockchain devs a hands-on opportunity to feel what Holochain can do, and collectively we imagined the future of the web.
In March, we had our first of two online Dev Trainings. The course was taught by Marcus Phillips, co-founder of the immersive software engineering school Hack Reactor, and community developer Guillem Cordoba (check out his work at Dark Soil). The cohort of eighteen students learned how to work with Holochain’s backend code, preparing them to build custom distributed applications.
This spring we felt Holochain really become viable.
Summer: DWeb CampSummer took us to DWeb Camp. For those that don’t know it, DWeb Camp is a sort of Mecca for the distributed web community. Getting to think, work, talk, and present alongside and with all of the other projects building the next web (from Filecoin and OpenAI to Secure Scuttlebutt and Spritely) was truly an honor. But we might have learned the most from the DWeb fellows who brought their openness, honesty, situated need, and greatly innovative ideas to the gathering.
As a co-sponsor of the event, Holochain showed up in force, with dozens of team and community members attending. In addition to presentations, workshops, and panels, we developed a custom app for the event. We decided to create an app for scheduling and managing emergent sessions across the event. But this app had to work in the woods, and on people’s phones. In the end, we stumbled and learned.
The need for mobile on Holochain has pushed us to develop a deep relationship with smartphone manufacturer Volla as a first test case for a mobile native Holochain. In May, community devs Hedayat Abedijoo and Nick Stebbings showcased a small Holochain application at the Volla community event. Since then we have been in a collaborative process of application design and testing to get Holochain apps running on their privacy-first OS.
Fall: Connecting to Web3Fall took the team from conference, to podcast, to conference, including a number of appearances as speakers and moderators. Check out a few of the opportunities we had to talk to the world about Holochain throughout the year.
This fall also saw Holochain used in Web3 and blockchain contexts in new ways. Nor, is a Web3 gaming platform using Holo and Holochain for a variety of systems, such as identity and login. Nor is creating new models of skill based gaming and reward in Web3.
Similarly Fractal Tribute, developed by Josh Hardy of the Rain Protocol, in partnership with our Executive Director Mary Camacho showed that it was possible to secure NFT assets on a Holochain app. The app is a live play, distributed art game, inspired by r/place, where players collaboratively make art which they can mint into NFTs. We showcased this game at events from Zebu Live in London, to DevConnect in Istanbul, and we even hosted our own event spinning off from NFT SF when the conference was sadly put on hold. Fractal Tribute acts as a proof of concept for new ways to augment NFTs using Holochain.
In October we also held our second online Dev Training. Check out these clips from the demos:
Winter: Holo Feature CompleteThe end of this year brings the next big leap for Holochain as we step into 2024. The Holo network is built on the Holochain framework to provide distributed hosting to hApps. With the release of the Holo Network-RC and the upcoming Holo Launch, we have a real case study showing a performant Holochain used for a commercial application. This will spur development of Holochain apps, and we expect an increase in both apps hosted on the Holo network and operating directly in peer networks as a result. Read Holo’s Lead/Org announcement to learn more.
As we enter into 2024, we are excited for what is to come: New and developing collaborations like those with Nor and Volla; the growth of ecosystem projects like Neighbourhoods’ pilot program with the Green Climate Fund in Sri Lanka; and continued application development as Holochain apps become more accessible through Holo’s hosting network. This is just the beginning. Welcome to a New Year.
Looking to Catch Up?We’ve been catching up on reading over the holidays and wanted to recommend a few articles from this last year.
From Holochain: From Fellow Travelers: ]]>We are thrilled to announce Holo’s Network Release Candidate (Network-RC), which will be live in December.
Holo Delivers Network Release Candidate in December!
We are thrilled to announce Holo’s Network Release Candidate (Network-RC), which will be live in December. This is a significant moment in our journey marking the completion of crucial work that enables effective hosting of Holochain applications across the network.
Holo’s release candidate is the first version of the product that’s feature complete. During the next three to four months the code base will go through a third party security audit in preparation for our launch. In this period the Network-RC code will be hardened and made more resilient.
Key Highlights of Network-RC:1. Completion of Critical Work: The Holo Network has matured into a feature complete large-scale peer-to-peer cloud network built on Holochain. This achievement is a testament to the trust we received from our supporters and hosts which enabled our dedicated team to deliver on our long term commitment to innovation and excellence.
2. Application Hosting: The Holo alpha network has already been hosting applications like Fractal Tribute and Mewsfeed. The network release candidate will bring a full suite of features and documentation to app managers so they can clearly understand what it is like to host an application in the network. There are also various performance, reliability, and stability improvements that make for a complete product experience.
"The maturing of the Holochain code base and deployment of Holo enables ventures like Neighbourhoods to reshape the way we coordinate and build better communities — online and offline.” —Siddhart Sthalekar, Neighbourhoods founder
3. Roadmap and Security Measures: It is important to understand Network-RC is not a launch of the Holo network or HoloFuel. The upcoming months include: engaging with a third party auditor for a security audit of HoloFuel, harding security of our hosting components, and a complete end-to-end test of the core functionality of applications with user feedback from our Alpha group. The code base will be audited by Least Authority, the same company that audited both the Ethereum code base and Holochain.
4. Core Features of HoloFuel: At Network-RC, the code base for HoloFuel is audit-ready. This means all the features necessary for HoloFuel to be functional and tested are complete. HoloFuel is the micro-transaction, mutual credit currency used for payments in the hosting network. During Network-RC, the HoloFuel app will be transacting with Test Fuel. Following the audit of Network-RC and other security hardening measures, HoloFuel will go live with the launch of the Holo hosting network, which is expected in Q2 2024. It will be upon the launch of the Holo network that the swap period of HOT to HoloFuel will also begin.
5. Current State and Future Prospects: During the Network-RC period, multiple Holochain applications will be hosted on the Holo network. Following our security audit and resilience work, the Holo dev team will continue to build and integrate new features, infrastructure expansions, and improvements — some of which are planned and others of which will be responsive to customers’ needs.
"As a former team member I'm super excited and proud about Holo reaching this important milestone and here at Coasys we're stoked to get our ADAM runtimes hosted on HoloPorts ASAP! This means ADAM users won't have to keep an ADAM launcher running on their desktop. Instead they can use ADAM apps from anywhere while still being in full control of their digital identity and data." —Nicolas Luck Coasys’ founder
6. Making Network-RC Public: In December, the Holo release candidate will be deployed to our Alpha Test network. In January, we will transition this into a public environment. This transition will involve significant updates and upgrades for many HoloPort owners. Hosts and hApp managers will receive details about what can be expected in the days ahead.
“It’s really thrilling to hear the deployment news! Holo’s potential to bring back a sense of community to the internet all the while keeping all the benefits of Web 2 is phenomenal!! Looking forward to hosting apps in it!” —Tatsuya Sato, founder of Nagare Dev Shop
Looking Ahead:Check out the roadmap at holo.host/roadmap
This year has been monumental for us. We began the year with a strong foundation delivering Holochain beta. We then moved into the development of our showcase apps, Fractal Tribute, KanDo, Talking Stickies, and Mewsfeed. Now, the Holo Network Release Candidate wraps the year with yet another leap forward.
Stay tuned for more updates and get ready to witness a new era in decentralized application hosting!
Holo Roadmap and Progress - Holo Alpha Network — current state and upcoming changes - Holochain Beta 0.2.0 Release Dates - Growth: Dev Education & Holochain Events
Holo Network Updated to Holochain Beta
Over the past months we focused on launching and testing the Beta 0.1.x version of Holochain. We have also progressed Holo development and want to share that with you now. We updated the roadmap and you can see that we marked three milestones as complete.
All of the dev work is complete for these milestones. This has been integrated and released together and our QA and delivery teams are busy testing all of it. This includes a lot more than might be obvious given the names of the milestones. Some of the features and required testing for this integrated release include the following:
These updates are not all available yet to the folks using the Alpha network. When we moved Holo hosting into the Alpha network, we mentioned that from time to time we would need to clear it and redeploy everything newly. We will be doing exactly that in the next week or two after we finish our integrated testing. At that point all the changes we’ve completed as part of the last few milestones will become visible to Alpha hosts and publishers.
Holo Alpha NetworkBut let’s talk about what has been going on in the current version of the Alpha network. For months now, distributed Holochain applications have been running successfully in pre-Holochain Beta versions on the Holo Alpha network. They are still running. Mewsfeed (previously Clutter) is one of those applications. This application in particular has been an awesome demo tool that we’ve even been using to introduce more and more developers to Holochain at build events.
Hundreds of people have signed up and used the Mewsfeed application. It has been hosted on all of the active HoloPorts in the Alpha network and continues to perform reliably. If you haven’t seen it — it is a Twitter-like app where cats mew, with basic functionality enabled that lets you follow people, see connections, and send direct messages. This has been a great test of a long-lived application running on Holochain and Holo.
When we deploy all the new updates to the Holo Alpha network, Mewsfeed and all the other applications that are still running on the Alpha network will be deprecated and their publishers will need to republish new versions that have been updated to Holochain Beta.
Holochain Beta 0.2.0 - Release DatesIn January we launched Holochain Beta 0.1.0. We’re now preparing the next major release of Holochain where we are introducing key features to enhance the security and reliability of the Holochain framework. This includes advanced network security, warrants, user experience improvements that provide better network information, and improved system validation to make networking more secure and reliable.
Holochain Beta 0.1.x will continue to be supported for the full six months promised, including necessary bootstrap and proxy services. This will provide time for developers to update to Beta 0.2.0 without facing a break in support.
We’ll be following the same pattern we did for the first release by doing a release candidate in advance of the actual release. Below are the dates the team has established for the final RC and Beta 0.2.0.
13 April, 2023 — Holochain 0.2.0-beta-rc
27 April, 2023 — Holochain Beta 0.2.0
The toolchain updates, including an updated version of the Holochain launcher, will be released in early May. This will include a fully tested version of the scaffolding tool and initial applications available in the launcher.
You can check out the Holochain roadmap which has minor updates to see progress.
Growth: DevEducation & Holochain EventsRounding out this post is our update on the product marketing launch of Holochain which has been underway since early February when the tooling for the first beta release of Holochain became available.
Our growth strategy includes developer first activities and business development activities. Using the scaffolding tool in the latest versions of Holochain, it is now possible to build a distributed peer-to-peer application in a day. This has enabled a new type of in person event for us. These “dApp in a day“ events have let us interact directly with new developers and iterate on the best ways to quickly have folks wrap their heads around the innovation of designing for agent centricity and serverless tech.
We have also iterated on the Developer Education program based on the physical training intensive we offered in Austria last summer. Just last weekend, we hosted a project demo call where the cohort of devs that attended the recent online 4 day Online Developer Training shared the apps and architecture patterns they have been designing. To say it was spectacular would be an understatement. The clarity participants demonstrated for how Holochain can be used in all manner of new implementations for social media, digital identity, and distributed finance is breathtaking.
In the coming weeks and months we’ll begin offering more and more self-paced and online developer events. We are also attending conferences like GDC 2023, MozFest, and others; and we had a presence at GeoWeek 2023 as well as the AWSF Open Source Forum for motion picture development earlier in the year. In June our team will also be sponsoring and attending DWeb Camp 2023. Follow us on your favorite social channel to stay connected to where we’ll be and how you can meet with us on the ground as we take Holochain Beta into the world.
]]>Beta Sequence Complete
Holochain Dev Tools Released Beta Sequence Complete
Two weeks ago we published Holochain Beta 0.1.0, an app-stable beta release, which is the next significant leap for Holochain development.
Today we’ve released a powerful bag of developer tools designed to make it easy to develop a wide variety of P2P apps. With Holochain at their core, these apps will have the capacity to scale up and deliver experiences similar to the Web2 paradigms we’re familiar with.
Remember when Rails came out with its scaffolding and what that did for building Web2 apps? It only took ten minutes to scaffold an app and have it running. The Holochain CLI scaffolding is just as powerful, but for the Web3 world.
Now that Holochain Beta 0.1.0 is fully functional and the multiple components and developer tools have been updated to this version, it is time to start building — easily and with confidence.
Install and try out the updated developer experience with our Quick Start Guide. And for the deep details check out the Holochain GitHub org.
What this means for developersThe alpha releases of Holochain have seen a lot of API churn, with both our team and app devs constantly updating code. While this is great, because it’s been driven by the needs of real Holochain app (hApp) developers, it’s made things challenging for those same developers who often found themselves needing to rework their code instead of working on new features.
The entire Holochain 0.1.x release series will not have any breaking changes in the HDK and conductor APIs — only bug fixes and potentially new features. The database format and networking protocols may change between releases, but these will be handled automatically if users update their Launcher (see below).
Essentially this means that the hApp you write now will still work in half a year, no matter what 0.1.x Holochain version your hApp’s users have installed.
Dev Portal updateIn addition to new tools, we are releasing a refreshed Dev Portal. One of the Holochain Foundation’s primary missions is to ensure that information about our technology is open and accessible. As the new Dev Portal comes online, we invite you to jump in and check out the new knowledge base.
New and improved developer toolsTo support your goal of rapidly prototyping, testing, maturing, and distributing your hApps, we’ve been working hard on a collection of tools. These are the kinds of tools you’d expect from a Web2 stack, and now Holochain’s peer-to-peer software stack has them too. The key tools include:
Over the coming weeks we’ll be dropping blogs detailing each of the new tools so you have clear guides on how to integrate them into your work.
Dev training opportunityIn March we have a unique education opportunity for Rust devs to learn Holochain, led by the Co-founder of HackReactor. With a stable beta, now is the time to learn and grow with the ecosystem.
What now?Holochain Beta 0.1.0 has been a huge leap forward for our team and community, and we appreciate your commitment to being on this journey with us. But this is just the start. To support our growing community, we are finishing an updated white paper and already working on a beta 0.2.0 with enhancements to network security and performance, along with any breaking API, SDK, or protocol changes that are discovered to be necessary or useful.
Beta 0.1.0 will be supported for the next six months, so whatever advancements come alongside it, we are providing a stable release and the opportunity to build in earnest. We are excited for what you will create.
]]>Holochain Dev Tools Released
Today's Update Holochain Dev Tools Released
After Holochain Beta 0.1.0 was completed many on the team shifted focus to updating and releasing various components, libraries, and dev environments that are necessary for new developers. Those all became available late last Friday—and there have already been a few refinements since then. As part of this release, we also unveiled a new and improved version of our Developer Portal at developer.holochain.org. Check it out—and if you're a dev don't hesitate to take the survey! We'll be actively refining the experience there over the coming weeks.
Though it isn't news, it's worth repeating that Holochain Beta is also a huge milestone for the Holo platform, both because Holo is built on Holochain and also because Holo requires devs to build the Holochain apps that will be hosted. Holo feature and infrastructure development continues including Purchasing Test HoloFuel at the Reserve and other HoloFuel improvements.
If you're at #ETHDenver be sure to check out one of our four community events happening offsite. The Signup links for the three BUIDL dApps developer events and an exploratory session around the future of the Web are listed below.
Imagining Web 2030: https://resources.holochain.org/ethdenver-openspace
BUIDL a dApp in One Day: https://resources.holochain.org/ethdenver-buidl-days
]]>Holochain Beta Released
Today's Update Holochain Beta Released
Holochain Beta 0.1.0 was released last week! What does this mean? It is a major milestone for Holochain and importantly means that devs will be able to have versions of their apps running consistently as they iterate towards fully fledged apps. Next up in our release sequence is the release of components, and libraries, as well as documentation and support for more development environments. These are necessary for new developers to easily get started developing Holochain apps. More on those as they're released over the coming days leading up to 9 February.
Together with this release, we also announced the successful completion of the second security audit of Holochain by the security firm, Least Authority. This audit focused on Holochain Deterministic Integrity (HDI) a crucial part of what makes Holochain so powerful. The HDI allows devs to write rules ensuring all nodes make the same conclusions and ultimately reach the same data state. No small feat in a distributed system. You can read the full report at leastauthority.com.
The Holo dev teams continue to stay quietly focused on multiple milestones including HoloFuel testing, and the Purchase of Test HoloFuel at a Reserve. As part of their work they are updating hApps and infrastructure to the latest versions of Holochain and providing critical feedback into the Holochain core team.
]]>Dev Tools on the Way
Holochain Beta Released Dev Tools on the Way
Today we published Holochain Beta 0.1.0, an app-stable beta release, the next step of our Holochain Beta release sequence.
This is a major leap in the Holochain development roadmap, and it is one we have been diligently preparing since our first Release Candidate published in December.
Let’s walk through what this means.
What does app stability mean for devs?Over the past years of development as a rapidly iterating project we have introduced new fixes, features, and optimization to our code. In our weekly Holochain alpha releases we have typically pushed new features, structural changes, fixes, and updates, many of which would break functionality in existing applications. App developers frequently had to change their app code to access the new fixes and features. Not an easy environment to develop a fully fledged app in.
With Holochain Beta, the days of us regularly breaking your code are behind us.
Now we will be updating a beta 0.1.0 branch of Holochain with non-breaking fixes and features for six months. So you know you won’t have to make changes to your app code to keep it running. We’ll also keep the 0.1.x-compatible bootstrap and proxy services running for that entire time, so people using your hApps will be able to find and connect with each other.
Holochain’s second security audit is completeLeast Authority, a respected security firm that focuses on decentralized tech recently completed another audit for Holochain. Their first audit, completed in December 2022, was of the Lair Keystore. In this second security audit, the Holochain Deterministic Integrity library was reviewed.
Holochain Deterministic Integrity (HDI) is a hApp developer’s interface with the Holochain framework’s consistency and security model and is crucial in allowing devs to write rules that ensure all nodes make the same conclusions and ultimately reach the same state. This required the auditors to go deep into Holochain itself, analyzing the assumptions embedded in the integrity engine and networking protocol.
Here is what the Least Authority team published today:
“Our team performed a comprehensive design review and audit of the Holochain Deterministic Integrity (HDI) crate, a critical component of the Holochain system. Overall, we found the HDI crate to be highly modular and organized in a logical, compartmentalized manner.”
The report identified one issue, related to a lack of up to date design specifications, which we resolved. If you’re interested to read the findings, the full report is now available.
Dev tools coming soonWhile Holochain Beta 0.1.0 is fully functional, we now need to update the multiple components and developer tools that are affected by the breaking changes introduced by Beta. We expect to have those complete by 9 February. Once that is announced you will be able to start building more easily and with the confidence that will come with our full, integrated dev stack!
Preview of new CLI scaffolding toolIn preparation for you being able to run stable apps, we’re making it much easier to build and maintain them. One of the new dev tools is a refreshed scaffolder built on feedback from the developer community. It’s useful for both new and experienced hApp devs, offering a command-line-driven process for rapidly creating boilerplate code. This isn’t just back-end DNA code, but also front-end client code (in vanilla, Vue, Svelte, and Lit flavors), tests, and a dev environment setup that keeps all your project dependencies in sync. It also supports custom templates, and we expect that the dev community will come up with all sorts of creative uses for this: templates that target that favorite front-end framework of yours, or NodeJS, or Electron or Rust; templates that bundle popular and maturing hApp libraries; and more.
Eric Harris-Braun, Holochain co-creator and a prolific hApp developer himself, has this to say about the scaffolder:
"For people who have been in the web app development world for a while, you might remember when Rails came out with its scaffolding, how much of a game changer that was for building Web2 apps—the way you could scaffold an app that runs in literally ten minutes. And what we’ve got coming out will be, I believe, just as powerful for Web3 apps. That gives developers a super powerful ability to just get started."
What can you do now?With Beta released now and dev tools targeted to be live by 9 February, we encourage you to start developing fully fledged apps on Holochain. We know that there are many projects who have come to love Holochain over the past years but have been waiting for a beta release before they put significant investment of effort into their app development. Now is the time. Let’s show the world what real Web3 apps look like.
Dev Training opportunityDo you know Rust? In March we have a unique education opportunity led by the Co-founder of HackReactor. It is synchronous, online Holochain developer training. Please apply!
If you’re not a developer consider sending folks to start building your developer team, or help us create direct hiring opportunities for our next crop of alumni. With a stable beta, now is the time to learn and grow with the ecosystem.
What’s next?Three key pieces:
Holochain Beta Release Sequence
Today's Update Holochain Beta Release Sequence
Since our last post here, all of the developer tooling for the Holochain Beta Release Candidate have been updated to the 0.1.0-beta-rc.2 release. What this means is that multiple relevant libraries and developer environments necessary to easily get started developing Holochain apps are now functioning with the Release Candidate. Thanks to all those folks in the ecosystem for your feedback that helped align the rc release with dev needs.
Release candidates are a standard practice for open source projects and they allow the dev team to learn as quickly as possible about not just the software but all the intricacies of the release itself. And now we have. For the Holochain Beta 0.1.0 release, there will be a three step sequence over the course of a multiple days that includes:
We'll share details as well as dates about these in multiple ways over the next several weeks including in blog posts, social media, etc. Watch for the Dev Pulse later this week if you want to follow along with all the technical details. What can be done now with the Release Candidate:
The Launcher is currently working on 0.1.0-beta-rc.2 but is still being tested internally.
]]>Happy New Year from Holochain & Holo
2022 in Review Happy New Year from Holochain & Holo
In 2022 Holochain ticked off some important milestones. Most notable was the release of Holochain 0.1.0-beta-rc. But the year was also marked with other great achievements. Here’s a look at what Holochain and Holo were up to this past year.
1. The release before the releaseHolochain delivered the Holochain Beta Release Candidate in December, leading up to Holochain Beta, in January.
With this release candidate, the Holochain conductor and SDKs are now feature-complete for building applications. All devs with Holochain apps can now update their code to the Beta Release Candidate.
2. Milestones & achievementsBoth the Holo Roadmap and Holochain Roadmap show progress across many milestones. For the play-by-play of the year check out the archive of our regular “Today’s Update” reports.
3. Excellent results for Holochain’s first security auditThe Lair Keystore at the core of Holochain’s cryptographic code was audited and found to be secure by Least Authority, a leading decentralized security consulting and audit firm.
4. Dev education offeringsThe Holochain Developer Education Initiative launched in 2022 to build and foster an ecosystem of developers. The initial event in Austria was a success with a new, flexible curriculum delivered. The next event will be announced soon.
5. Holo’s Alpha hosting ecosystem is working end-to-endPartner devs are publishing their Holochain test apps to the Holo Alpha network, which has approx. 800 HoloPort nodes in 50 countries. Test users for the community created hApps can access them via web browsers.
6. Dev community growthOur developer community continues to grow quietly, building full-fledged apps, proofs-of-concept, and end-user tools, all while contributing code and testing to the dev toolchain.
Holochain downloads on crates.io have grown by over 110% during Alpha stage.
If you’re a dev, join our Dev.HC Discord or get started building on Holochain
7. Community and Holochain storiesWe made it easier for the Holochain community to find stories about hApps. Check out the hApp spotlight with hREA.
In addition to Dev Pulse, we’ve published 18 Holochain blog posts where we aim to showcase why people choose Holochain.
Looking back in gratitude and moving forwardA great big thank you goes out to our team and community for all the contributions and engagement this past year. 2023 will bring the excitement and energy of launches along with a concerted shift to connect with projects and people and to grow the ecosystem. We hope to see you all at events online and IRL. Happy New Year!
]]>Developer Environments with Holochain Beta RC.
Today's Update - 30th December Developer Environments with Holochain Beta RC
We've been working hard on the developer tooling for Holochain to get all the relevant libraries and developer environments running smoothly and updated to the latest beta release candidate.
Though there were a lot of changes in the release candidate, the tool chain for developing Holochain applications is mostly working. That said, the team is still making changes to many of the downstream components that devs need to get started easily. We're getting the right feedback from the developers in the ecosystem who are testing things out with us - and this is exactly what is needed to have a solid beta release next month.
What is so right now:
Final testing of the Launcher, which allows developers to deploy their hApps for end users, is still in process and so far, internal testing shows much improved performance over the last version. Watch for updates on that, and also for details about the expanded capacities of the Scaffolding Tool and Launcher, next week.
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