A New Era Begins! Community-Run Framework Antelope Leaps Ahead!
The EOS Network Foundation (ENF), Telos, Wax, and UX Network have combined resources into a coalition of blockchains with a shared codebase. With talented coalition engineers working alongside Object Computing and other contributors throughout the ecosystem, these tireless efforts are bearing fruit. For our many stakeholders, this is a major accomplishment that is foundational for growth. A new era of community-led development is upon us.
Today we are excited to announce Antelope! The story of how we got here is just the beginning, and the journey ahead will be even more rewarding. If you’ve been part of this remarkable community every step of the way, you may wish to read ahead, but the history of what brought us here is informative. Here is a cursory overview.
A Brief History of Antelope—from the ENF to a Coalition with a Shared Vision
In mid-2021, Block.one ceased supporting EOSIO development, which put the future of EOS and all other EOSIO-based blockchains in jeopardy. These blockchains had always shared a common codebase, but each were pursuing increasingly separate evolutionary paths without any notable interchain collaboration. In August 2021, the EOS Network took its first steps towards independence when its block producers reached consensus to fund the EOS Network Foundation and empower it to deploy resources on behalf of the network itself. Upon its inception, the ENF launched a number of urgent initiatives, breathing life back into the EOS ecosystem.
In November of 2021, the ENF began directing resources to various working groups led by key network stakeholders. Leveraging the talent, intelligence, and passion of the developer community, these working groups produced a series of Blue Papers; research documents that outlined areas for improvement and specific recommendations that formed the building blocks for a series of RFPs (Request For Proposals). One such working group, EOSIO+, was formed to explore the possibilities of coordination among EOSIO-based blockchains, to preserve and advance the codebase that they all share in common. The EOSIO+ working group began outreach to all of the existing EOSIO blockchains in an effort to form a broad coalition.
In parallel with these efforts, the ENF had contracted Dan Larimer and Fractally to fork EOSIO to initiate a community-led independent codebase known as “Mandel”. This initiative was then handed over to the ENF engineering team and its technical partners to continue adding new features and improvements while working towards a formal consensus upgrade for the EOS Network. The Mandel Upgrade Launch Group was formed to coordinate these efforts and began meeting regularly to synchronize the manpower, communications, and testing that would be needed to undertake a consensus upgrade for the EOS Network. The codename, Mandel, came to be a placeholder for the yet to be decided new brand that would replace EOSIO.
Over several weeks of EOSIO+ meetings, the various teams discussed models for cooperation, decision making, financial support and development priorities. On March 23rd of 2022, the EOSIO+ working group drafted a statement of purpose, highlighting the need for a “system that allows parties that depend on EOSIO to help fund, organize, and prioritize the future of that software”, and laid out an eleven point roadmap for such a system to follow. On March 24th, EOS and Telos agreed to join the EOSIO+ coalition. On March 31st, WAX and UX Network also joined.
In April 2022, EOS, Telos, UX Network, and WAX voted to pool their resources and assume the development of the EOSIO code upon which nearly all EOSIO-based blockchains rely. With an initial budgetary commitment for core development and developer outreach the coalition was born.
In the intervening months, The EOSIO+ coalition retained a professional branding agency to assist in developing the new name and visual identity to replace EOSIO. In parallel, the group selected a handful of RFPs from a longer list of the top 22 priority items needed to improve the core protocol. They introduced weekly recorded meetings and set the tone for openness, collaboration and transparency.
The Leap Ahead!
Today, we embark on a new journey unlike any other in blockchain history. Introducing Antelope!
Antelope demonstrates how a community-led program with aligned goals and common visions can pool resources together to make a difference. The Antelope coalition is composed of four highly performant layer-one blockchains, each with distinct histories and characteristics, serving unique markets, and related by a common framework. Backed by the synergy of these combined network resources, the release of Antelope signifies a major move towards self determination for EOS, for the coalition, and for the Antelope ecosystem as a whole.
Antelope builds upon the significant strengths of EOSIO which has been battle-tested for over four years as the basis for some of the fastest and most secure blockchains in the world.
Antelope is not just a rebranding. It is an evolution of EOSIO.
The Antelope coalition is determined to carry the torch of open-source development for the whole ecosystem.
The Antelope protocol has branched off of an earlier version of the EOSIO protocol implemented in version 2.0 of the nodeos software. New features have been introduced to the protocol including:
- Action return values.
- Ability to retrieve from within smart contracts the current block number and the hash of any code deployed to an account.
- New native cryptographic and math functions accessible to smart contracts.
In the months ahead, Antelope will move into a class of its own, incorporating Faster Finality, Trustless Inter-Blockchain Communication between all Antelope based blockchains, a robust suite of Secure Smart Contract Libraries, SDKs, P2P Code Improvements, and other game changing tools and innovations.
Antelope repositories are hosted in the AntelopeIO GitHub organization.
Today, we are also revealing the name of the blockchain node software that implements the Antelope protocol.
The main C++ implementation of the prior EOSIO protocol was never given a distinct name which led to confusion regarding whether one was discussing the protocol itself or a particular implementation of the protocol. This ambiguity is resolved by the first community-run implementation of the Antelope protocol: Leap v3.1.
Beyond implementing the new features of the Antelope protocol mentioned above, the Leap software also introduces the following new features:
- Improvements to subjective billing
- Ability to automatically retry transactions
- Ability to estimate resource consumption of transactions without including them in blocks
- Ability to prune block and ship logs to reduce their storage requirements
Come With Us! — Developers Get Ready.
Current EOSIO-based chains who wish to benefit from the new community-run protocol, maintain parity with network upgrades, receive security patches, and gain additional features are highly encouraged to start using and testing the new software.
Leap: Blockchain node software and supporting tools that implements the Antelope protocol
CDT: A C/C++ toolchain targeting WebAssembly (WASM) and a set of tools to facilitate development of smart contracts to be deployed to Antelope blockchains
DUNE: A tool to abstract over Leap programs, CDT, and other services/tools to perform the functions of node management, compiling smart contracts, running tests, and several other common tasks developers need to make smart contracts
Important Note on History Solutions!
The deprecated v1 history plugin is now fully removed to avoid taking obsolete code to the new repository. Because there are still integrations which rely on the deprecated v1 format, we have prepared a guide for drop-in alternatives that will allow you to keep running with your current integrations, giving you time to upgrade. Linked below is a guide on how best to upgrade your integrations to a newer format in the future.
Goodbye Mandel
As of today, we are retiring the codename “Mandel”. All future documentation will refer to “Antelope” as the official name for the protocol and “Leap” as the name for the main C++ implementation of the protocol. Prior documentation will be updated to reflect the change without obscuring it.
Special Thanks
The Antelope coalition would like to recognize and give thanks to all the engineers who contributed code and submitted patches for this release:
@heifner, @brianjohnson5972, @oschwaldp-oci, @spoonincode, @ClaytonCalabrese, @jgiszczak, @766C6164, @larryk85, @arhag, @elmato, @ericpassmore, @swatanabe, @tbfleming, @nsjames, @linh2931
About Antelope
Antelope is an open framework for building next-generation web3 products and services. Its community-run codebase is behind some of the fastest, most secure, and user-friendly blockchains, reliably fulfilling millions of daily transactions with its innovative DPoS algorithm. Developers and businesses worldwide use Antelope for a diverse range of applications, from DeFi and supply chain management through to NFTs and games.
Learn more: https://antelope.io/
