Haven Protocol — April 2019 Update

8 min readApr 10, 2019

Since January, the Haven Protocol project has undergone many organizational changes. We have grown considerably and are excited to share our progress with the community. Moving forward, we will post regular updates covering any changes and progress in the following three areas:

Team Structure and Roles
Development and Design Progress
State of Governance Funds

Team Structure and Roles

Leadership Team

@News.Cutter — Leads growth, marketing and strategy. News.cutter has been closely involved in marketing and growth strategies for Haven since autumn 2018.

Digital Startup Generalist with broad experience
Growth / Funnel Optimization
Social Media
Digital Marketing
User-Driven Product
Design Behavioral Design
User Experience Design
User Interface Design

@NBourbaki — Leads our development effort, bringing his vast and rock solid experience along with a methodical approach to delivery.

35 years of software development and leadership roles
10 years Consultant software engineer for top 10 consultancy
10 years Senior Manager in top 5 consultancy
7 years VP of software development for major SAS provider
5 years Principal Private Equity
3 years VP of technology for international SAS provider
Agile and Kanban development methodologies
C, C++, Assembler (370, x86, AVR)
BS Mathematics/Computer Science

@Dweab — Leads on governance and operations. After spending the past 10 years building and leading technology delivery teams, @dweab joined the Haven team after volunteering to publish the iOS app, and slowly got more and more involved.

20+ years of commercial Software development and leadership roles
10+ years VP and C-level roles
2 major tech startups
2 x winner of UK Government Innovation award
Ex VP/Director tech/Innovation of UK PLC
Product & Commercial focus, Tech background
Agile/Kanban/FDD development methodologies
Fortran, C, C++, Assembler (X86), PHP, Javascript….+ Others
BSc (Honors) Mathematics

Development Team

@Radvd — Open source software engineer. 10+ years of industry experience using C/C++/Python. https://github.com/radvd

@Juan Two — Experienced Front End crypto developer. Juan Two is a long time contributor to Haven and will be leading the UX/UI side of development and bringing the UX visions of the team to reality.

Operations, Communications and Support Team

@rarecommons — Strategic innovation, technical communication, economics, engineering, MSc. Helping out with: economic systems and marketing.

@Madlentil — Serial entrepreneur. Interest in the bigger picture for where we can take Haven over the next few years. Helping out with documentation, technical writing and ideas/feedback.

@luge — UX and Design/ Product specialist. Luge will bring several layers of help to the team and will assist Dweab in managing operations in general.

@Nickm4 — Medium and Twitter communications, marketing and Windows support.

@AHawk — Medium and Twitter communications, Discord support and community moderator.

Community Managers

@Le_Hibou_Crypto$ Official Telegram moderator.

@jriggs28 — Discord community moderator.

@TheCrazyMiner — Discord community moderator.

Consultants

@Paladin [Imperdin] (https://github.com/imperdin ) — A well known figure in mining and cryptographic circles. Imperdin kindly donates his time to consult, improve, validate and challenge the design of our offshore solution. This kind of input from someone known as a cryptographic and blockchain expert in the ‘real world’ is highly valuable to the team, and has increased progress in creating a solid, secure solution.

Team Changes

@radvd https://github.com/radvd — Rad has joined the Haven team recently and now leads our core blockchain development, allowing nbourbaki to focus purely on offshore. Rad brings great strength of experience and we’re delighted to welcome him to the team.

@Havendev and @Donjor — Both Havendev and Donjor willingly transitioned Haven Protocol’s code and assets to Dweab and members of the new team in January 2019. While communications with Havendev and Donjor are still open, both are no longer involved in development. All major communications and updates will be relayed through members of the new team or Haven Protocol’s Medium and Twitter accounts.

Development Progress

Completed Upgrades

Haven Protocol v3.2.2 — The development team scheduled a hard fork for block 290,587. This hard fork implemented the new team’s multi-signature governance wallet and patched a critical Monero vulnerability. Additionally with the rollout of v3.2.2, the Haven Protocol team has launched new seed nodes, created new block explorers and taken over communications with exchanges. These measures ensure the continuity of the new team’s efforts and cut all reliance on the previous development team. The release for v3.2.2 can be found here:

https://github.com/haven-protocol-org/haven-legacy/releases/tag/3.2.2

Rebase Updates

Haven Protocol is being rebased on Monero v14.0.2. This means that the Haven codebase will now include all of Monero’s recent updates, bug fixes and most importantly, bulletproofs.

Testnet — The testnet for the Haven rebase is scheduled to begin on April 15th. The rebase testnet will allow for ample testing and feedback before the launch to mainnet.

Mainnet — The mainnet rebase requires a hard fork to implement these upgrades. The hard fork is scheduled for block 318,921, or May 2nd.

All community members are encouraged to participate in the testnet, review the rebase and post feedback in the #rebase-feedback Discord channel. The rebase code can be found here:

https://github.com/haven-protocol-org/haven/releases/tag/4.0.0-rc2

We will be releasing another announcement prior to May 2nd with instructions for the community to prepare for the hard fork.

Offshore Updates

Since January, the new development team has been assessing the code received from the previous developers and has been making strides to reach our next round of Offshore testnet.

Our main focus has been the development of the new Oracle. In short, the Oracle is the arbiter of price. The Oracle provides the Haven Protocol blockchain with pricing data that is pulled from exchanges. This data is then normalized, averaged by volume weight, cryptographically signed and broadcast to miners for inclusion in new blocks. The signature allows for validation from the source to the blockchain.

The team is confident we can deliver a working Offshore feature and has provided the following updates regarding development of the new Oracle.

Completed:

Completed the high-level cryptographic design.
Completed prototyping of data pulls and public key signatures.
Completed network messaging, including message formats and cryptographic signatures.
Expanded database schema. Now includes raw data that allows for data validation and monitoring stats to help gauge stability and reliability of data sources.
Completed OracleMon to simplify monitoring of OracleSrc.

In Progress:

OracleSrc is in stability testing. Testing includes expanded logging, instrumentation, additional logic for data source availability and multiple recovery modes.

OracleSrc — pulls pricing information from exchanges and forex, creates a weighted average price, stores both the computed information and raw data to MySql, constructs a pricing record, signs that record and broadcasts the signed record to all OracleRouters.

OracleSrc outputs are being recorded in MySQL and discrete log files to allow analysis by the team.

MySql pricing record

MySql raw table

MySql stats

OracleSrc data output is being reviewed by the team on a daily basis.
OracleNode is in stability testing. Testing includes irregular operations and fault injection testing. OracleNode has achieved 4 weeks of availability with no unrecoverable errors.

OracleNode — receives network director list of active routers, determines the closest router by geolocation and connects to that router to receive pricing records.OracleNodes validate all pricing records via public key.

Integration of OracleNode with Network Director and OracleRouter is in progress.
Geolocation tagging of OracleRouters is in progress. This will allow OracleNodes to determine the best router connections and recovery modes if a connected router goes offline.

OracleRouter — receives OracleSrc pricing records and distributes to all OracleNodes that are connected

OracleMon — monitors Oracle functions and provides summary of uptime and errors.

Next Steps:

Finalization of the OracleRouter network, discovery logic and stability testing.
Completion of Network Director and stability testing.
Integration with the blockchain, miner, wallets, sub-addresses and finalization of consensus rules. Integration will be based on the rebased Haven code.
Review current sub-address scheme used in original offshore testnet.
Create the offshore modifications for miners.
Internal testnet of offshore.

Design Progress

Branding Overhaul

With a new team and new products comes a new, refreshed brand. The wordmark and logo will have a slight refresh and a new design framework for marketing and communications.

Web Wallet

The team is creating an easy-to-use web wallet for the Haven community. This wallet will allow all users with a web browser to access their Haven wallets. Users will be able to check their XHV balances, send/receive XHV and offshore funds once the offshore feature is released.

Website

The Haven Protocol website and block explorer will also undergo a refresh to improve user experience and fully represent the direction of the new team.

Mobile Wallets

Native iOS and Android application design will enable users to use Haven in the real world and on the go. Users who are currently awaiting the updated mobile wallets and need to transfer funds are able to restore their wallets using the Desktop GUI or CLI wallets.

State of Governance Funds

The governance fee will remain at 5%. All governance funds are now being deposited into a team owned multisig wallet. Our goal is to be 100% transparent as to where these funds are spent. We plan to use governance funds for development, marketing, exchange listings and legal fees. We are always open to the ideas of the community so please talk through any opportunities to further Haven Protocol with us in Discord or on Twitter.

Governance Fee Details:

Haven Protocol Project Balance

+ 714.24 XHV — Daily incoming governance fee

- 7,000 XHV — March/April development cost

- — — — — — — — — — — — — -

+ 28,605.75 XHV — Project Balance April 2019

New Team Multi-Signature Governance Wallet : hvxy3f2PhAhimkeLf617BsbVn6UTbofVcMzofXGsSNLoMFr2SrSxRJ9f52Am1QLVddKet XPKHoTLbBaLNT1kMU6Q3kYRc3t6pF

Wallet viewkey:

b8679ce8084f489cc070537941f683ecfaac65321c2e6e73891d7ae10bc3e102

Conclusion

Haven Protocol is here to stay. Team members may come and go but our vision stays the same. Our team is here because we all believe in making the Haven Protocol Offshore a reality. We are excited about the progress we have made and look forward to sharing this project with the community.