Nikolas Sargeant
The EOS Network Foundation (ENF) has revealed that a major consensus upgrade, Antelope Leap 5.0, is slated for launch in Q4 2023.
In a press release shared with Cryptowisser, the ENF said Antelope 5.0 is the second significant upgrade in less than eighteen months, showcasing the flexibility of EOS and the dedication of its community in coordinating a cycle of continuous improvements to the underlying protocol.
The upgrade is expected to usher in a wide range of innovative features that will redefine the network’s capabilities and further distinguish EOS layer-1 protocols.
Some of the features that would be included in Antelope 5.0 include; Instant Finality, Integration of the HotStuff consensus algorithm, and peer-to-peer protocol enhancements.
The upgrade will usher in a new set of features for the EOS blockchain and other Antelope-based chains.
Key Technical Features of Leap 5.0
Leap comes with n major technical innovations that would boost the network’s capabilities. Here are some of the upgrade’s technical features;
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Instant Finality:
This feature will ensure instant finality. According to ENF, a key part of achieving instant finality is the introduction of aggregate BLS signatures to support the HotStuff consensus algorithm, where multiple signatures and multiple public keys can be combined into a single signature and verified as a single operation. The move enables dramatic improvements in scalability and time to finality, with most transactions reaching finality in a few seconds. By improving the finality time, the network efficiency will improve, allowing dApp to approach a user experience on par with Web2 applications.
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HotStuff Consensus Algorithm:
According to the ENF, HotStuff greatly enhances the capabilities available on EOS and all Antelope chains.
Adding aggregate BLS signatures in HotStuff presents an additional opportunity to derive more abstract cryptographic building blocks from which to construct additional ZK-proof systems.
It would also help implement these cryptographic primitives into the native tooling on Antelope. This has opened the door for previously unavailable features, such as confidential transactions, and additional privacy mechanisms, such as using private addresses in place of accounts.
These features would help EOS and all Antelope-based blockchains to verify ZK proofs at a lightning-fast 1.1ms, which opens up massive opportunities for all Antelope chains. With Leap 5.0, Antelope chains will have native ZK-proof enabled smart contracts at their core.
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Peer-to-peer Protocol Improvements
In partnership with the Antelope Coalition, a team from the University of Fudan has been working on improvements to the peer node discovery and synchronization process within the peer-to-peer (P2P) protocol of the nodeos service.
Leap 5 Opens New Possibilities
The ENF team pointed out that in the last major consensus upgrade, dubbed EOS Independence Day, the network transitioned from EOSIO to Antelope. The upgrade to Antelope 5.0 offers the EOS network an opportunity to replace DPoS with an alternative consensus mechanism, which would be a monumental shift from the original EOS Network vision to a truly community-led endeavor.
Within the DPoS consensus, the responsibilities of the Block Producer within the current consensus mechanism can be categorized into three separate roles. They are;
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Block Proposer: A Block Proposer organizes transactions into a proposed block.
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Consensus Leader: A Consensus Leader coordinates Block Finalizers to generate Quorum Certificates that prove a proposed block is final.
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Block Finalizer: Block Finalizers send signatures on block proposals to the Consensus Leader to aggregate into Quorum Certificates.
However, with Leap 5.0, Block Producer will fulfil all three roles. In the new consensus algorithm, the foundation can decouple these roles into separate entities in the future.
The Antelope 5.0 took a lot of work from the ENF team, with significant contributions from Matthias Schoenebeck of ZEOS, ENF Senior Engineer, Yarkin Who, ENF Director of Engineering, Areg Hayrapetian, and ENF Principal Engineer, Matt Witherspoon.
Other names to have contributed to this upgrade include Guillaume Babin-Tremblay of UX Network and ENF’s Areg Hayrapetian.
Antelope 5.0 To Launch In November Or December 2023
The ENF team has informed infrastructure providers, technical partners and the broader Antelope Ecosystems that the Antelope 5.0 upgrade will take place between late November and early December 2023.
This upgrade will involve a coordinated effort from contributors across the ecosystem. The ENF will provide more precise timelines prior to the upgrade date.
The EOS Network is a 3rd generation blockchain platform powered by the EOS VM, a low-latency, highly performant, and extensible WebAssembly engine for deterministic execution of near feeless transactions; purpose-built for enabling optimal Web3 user and developer experiences.
The EOS EVM is an emulation of the Ethereum EVM, housed within an EOS smart contract. It offers feature parity to other EVMs in the space but with unmatched speed, performance and compatibility.
Meanwhile, the EOS Network Foundation (ENF) was forged through a vision for a prosperous and decentralized future. Founded in 2021, the ENF is the hub for EOS Network, a leading open-source platform with a suite of stable frameworks, tools, and libraries for blockchain deployments.
