We’re excited to announce that on Saturday, July 16, Daml Hub added the capability for customers to provision ledgers on Canton blockchains with Daml v2.3. Below are some of the primary changes to Daml Hub as a result of this significant upgrade.
Canton
With Daml 2.0 we introduced our new blockchain, Canton. For those who are not familiar with Canton, you can learn more about it in the documentation here. We also have a video showcasing Canton’s features and the small changes it makes to working with Daml (access the video here).
Changes introduced by Daml 2.0 and Canton
Daml 2.0 and Canton add new capabilities to Daml, many of which are relevant in Daml Hub and will be exposed through the Daml Hub APIs and console over the coming months.
Customers should read the release notes for Daml 2.0 (here) and subsequent releases (here) to understand changes that may impact their applications, such as handling party IDs and the removal of implicit party allocation. However, Daml Hub’s administrative APIs and console remain largely unchanged, so Daml Hub users are not exposed to any of the changes to platform operations or administration introduced in Daml 2.0.
Some of the improvements introduced by Canton, such as flexible topologies will enable us to offer different service options in the future such as outward connections from Daml Hub to Daml networks hosted outside and connections into networks hosted in Daml Hub.
User Management, a Daml 2.0 feature which introduced the concept of ‘users’ into Daml, is not yet integrated into Daml Hub. Daml Hub already had the concept of ‘users’ with Daml Hub accounts, and we are working on converging the two ‘user’ concepts together.
Creating Daml 2.3 ledgers
Existing ledgers will remain unchanged, and until sometime in Q4, you will be able to create ledgers on Daml 1.18 and on Daml 2.3. By default, when you create a new ledger, Daml Hub will default to create a ledger on Daml 2.X as seen below.
To create a ledger on Daml 1.18, click on the ‘Deploy an older SDK Version’ link and click on the Daml 1.x option.
Migrating data
The option to create ledgers on both versions of Daml will give you a chance to try the new Daml 2.3 Canton ledgers, and, if you need to, migrate your data from your existing ledgers on 1.18 to your ledgers on 2.3. Due to the nature of the upgrade from Daml 1.x to Daml 2.x, data migration will not happen automatically. Enterprise customers are advised to contact their relationship managers to discuss migration options if desired.