- Nano has announced that the Nano Node V18 (a.k.a. Dolphin) is released
- The release, which is claimed to be faster and lighter than before, gets rid of RailBlocks naming in the code
- The Nano team is already working on the next release
Nano has announced in its blog post that the long-awaited Nano Node V18 (a.k.a. Dolphin) is released. The update brings along many positive changes that should eventually improve the network.
More Nimble and Smart than Ever Before
The release builds upon the already-great Boulton node V17, improving various small aspects that add up to a better software overall. The changes were made in the several key areas:
- New tools for developers are provided, which can be integrated in third-party software. These include Local timestamp tracking, which will allow developers to concentrate on building stable and efficient applications on top of the Nano protocol by providing a new standardized method of monitoring the time on all Nano blocks and thus reducing the time needed to be spent on this action
- Additional functionality, such as cached representatives and peers and support for additional local data has been added
- Renaming of internal components allowed Nano team to eliminate the remaining bits of code associated with the old RailBlocks naming. The project is keen to point out that this change, although largely cosmetical, represents a symbolic milestone in Nano development
How to Upgrade
One has to be careful when upgrading to the Dolphin, because the changes in database mean that any ledger files updated to V18 will be incompatible with previous node versions.
Nano recommends to perform a backup of all the node data before starting the upgrade process. The upgrade, which is automatic and runs in the background, will involve heavy IO and CPU usage.
It requires such an amount of computing power because all the block entries in the database have to be rewritten while the node itself is still running to allow the syncing of blocks across the network.
Start of the Solidus Development
With Dolphin released, the team switches its attention to the development of Solidus, the next Nano node version. As for the time of publishing, there is no information about Solidus features, but it is possible to keep track of the updates using Nano blog.
