Blockchain Release: POC V11 Preparations

The core developers have tagged a new 2021.11.10.0 Hotspot firmware release which includes critical bug fixes, supplementary code for finalizing activation of POC V11 related chain variables, packet transmission and blockchain-etl fixes.

This is a mandatory release for manufacturers to support the packet transfer fixes that were applied but also to ingest chain variables which will be applied once validators and other nodes are upgraded to a matching release. We intend to re-release PoCv11 tomorrow afternoon PT pending confirmation from sufficient manufacturers.

Proof-of-Coverage v11 Activation

The core developers are planning to re-release Proof-of-Coverage v11 tomorrow. We will follow up on Discord with an exact time but we're looking at the following changes:

• poc_version to 11. This activates PoCv11
• fspl_loss set 1.0. This sets the loss factor due to air permeability and permittivity. At this value, It is assumed that there is no loss that is to be expected. Values greater than 1.0 assume some loss is expected. This value can be adjusted at a later date through a governance change.

These variables have also been implemented but will remain unset until a future governance change proposes modification.

• poc_distance_limit. We believe this should be set to something reasonable as the FSPL curve starts to be less useful at great distances but given the feedback from the community, we'll keep this turned off.
• witness_reward_decay_rate: Can be used in the future to apply a soft cap on witness rewards for an individual Hotspot within an epoch.
• witness_reward_decay_exclusion: Associated with the other variable to provide a "grace" number of witnesses per epoch.

Related PRs

• miner#1194: Ignore lorawan packets that are too short to be valid

• miner#1192: Fix lorawan routing crash when packet has no payload

• miner#1187: Recalculate regulatory domain on var txn

• miner#1187: Recalculate regulatory domain on var txn

• miner#1186: Adjust sizes downward for global caches

• miner#1185: Drop 0.0 frequency witnesses

• miner#1181: Allow configuration of rockdb cache sizes

• blockchain-core#1085: Catch unknown_region explicitly

• blockchain-core#1080: Convert POCV11 regions into helium-proto enum values

• blockchain-core#1079: Handle missing region definitions to fix blockchain-etl

• blockchain-core#1077: Discard 0.0 freq witnesses behind chain variable

• blockchain-core#1076: Fix segfault on rocksdb seek

• blockchain-core#1075: Handle witness crash in tagged_path_elements

• blockchain-core#1074: Fix blockchain_state_channels worker hangup

• blockchain-core#1061: Evict rejected gateways from state channel

Plan

We have been beta testing 2021.11.10.0 since November 10, 2021 12:15 PM PT. Current ETA for GA is 3:30 PM PT, November 10, 2021.