Community Update - October 2020
WOW. This sure has been a busy month in the world of Daml. We've got a ton of new docs, some bug fixes, and an assortment of blogs and posts. Check it all out below.
What's New in the Ecosystem
Update: 1.6.0 has been released and you can read the full release notes here.
We'll be holding two community open door sessions for the 1.6.0 RC, one for US-based timezones and one for APAC.
Bugs and Rewards and What Even Is a Blockchain?
So first off some shoutouts to all our lovely community members who helped us find and fix bugs! They've all received the coveted Squidly Devourer of Bugs badge for these!
- Huge thanks to György for discovering that DA.Date.date overflows and to Sofia for fixing it (#7393)! There are more details on this bug in the release notes.
- And another thanks to György for discovering an issue in qualified name handling (#7544)
- Thanks to Rocky for pointing out that we didn't document setting environment variables in Windows (#106)
Bart Cant won our second Community Recognition Ceremony. We've shipped him a hoodie and are producing his bobblehead which he'll hopefully be able to show off in a few weeks.
We're also diving deep on how we think about blockchains/distributed ledgers as a class of technology. Have your own thoughts? Chime in on the forum.
Hackathons
We’ll be participating in two hackathons in November!
- YHack from November 7th-14th where students will be using Daml to create their vision of a social network
- Odyssey where teams will be working to outcompete destructive systems from November 13th-15th.
Corporate News
ISDA will be using Daml to pilot their Common Domain Model (CDM) for clearing of interest rates. Read the full press release here.
Omid Mogharian recently wrote a post about improving data distribution using Natix EdgeDrive, a solution that’s partially powered by Daml. ⚙️
Daml is now on Chainstack! which is a platform for deploying applications across multiple different networks. Currently they support Daml on Corda and plan to add more soon.
And lots more news in Digital Asset’s latest version of inter/connected.
Blogs and Posts
Confused about public and private ledgers and blockchains? Want to explain them to your family and friends? Check out Anthony’s write-up on the key difference. Or hop into our in-depth discussion over on the forum.
Phoebe showed us how to run Daml applications across multiple ledgers using Canton. ⛓⛓
KC Tam took the time to walk us through Daml’s Propose-Accept workflow, you can read more of his thoughts here.
As I'm sure you've heard the Tokyo Stock Exchange recently had a day long outage during trading hours . We were subsequently inspired to write a blog post about how distributed ledgers solve for this class of operational issues.
György published his second part of his series on Daml’s Finance Library. In this one he shows how to have a dynamic set of signatories, and advanced ledger updating techniques.
Zohar Hod gave a webinar on data control and monetization, view the recording here.
Sofus did some more work on his Business Process DSL.
Other Fun
Listen to Tim talk about Daml on Block, stock, and barrel. Easily one of the best names ever for a podcasts .
Yuval started a new Damler Strava club so go get your exercise ♀️ on with a bunch of us at DA! We've already ballooned from 9 to 28 members.
Richard adapted a song to be about Daml which instantly makes it better.
Release Candidate for Daml SDK 1.6.0
The preliminary release notes and installation instructions for Daml SDK 1.6.0 RC can be found here.
1.6.0 RC Highlights
- Scope, Status, Compatibility, and Evolution of core Daml technology are now comprehensively documented.
- The stream query features in the JavaScript client libraries have been improved to support multiple queries at the same time.
- The Introduction to Daml documentation has gained new chapters on Dependencies, Functional Programming, The Daml Standard Library, and Testing and Debugging.
What’s Coming
We are continuing to work on performance of the Daml integration components and improving production readiness of Daml Ledgers, but there are exciting features and improvements in the pipeline for the next few releases as well.
- The Trigger Service will reach feature completion and move into Beta
- The authentication framework for Daml client applications (like the Trigger Service) is being revisited to make it more flexible (and secure!)
- The build process for Daml client applications using the JavaScript/TypeScript tooling is being improved to remove the most common error scenarios
- Daml's error and execution semantics are being tidied up with a view towards improving exception handling in Daml
- Daml will get a generic Map type as part of Daml-LF 1.9