SONM new release and first hard fork tomorrow (9 Feb 2018)

Tomorrow, 9 Feb 2018 SONM will deliver new releases for the following software components:

• Platform (core);
• GUI (wallet).

For the platform core a new set of binaries (hub, worker, node, CLI) will be provided with internal protocols updated, smart contracts redeployed. No backward compatibility will be provided with the previous release.

Full change list available here: https://github.com/sonm-io/core/pull/452

This protocol update must be technically called a hardfork, which is a surprising and wonderful event for us — formally our first hardfork.

Please do not worry, this is more like just a word to say. Typical hardfork mean social conflicts, uncertainty, network split and other side effects. However, we estimate this hardfork to be adopted swiftly and uniformly without any issues because the SONM network is in the testnet status. We foresee no difficulties for current testnet users to switch to the new version without any loses.

Old market and locator services will be operational for some time, we will disable them later.

More details:

• SNM livenet tokens (smart contract) not influenced. Your valuable ICO tokens not touched in any way.
• SNMT test tokens on Rinkeby (smart contract) not influenced. Your test tokens and test Ether are still with you, no need to request new, just keep the keys.
• Old binaries must be stopped and replaced with new binaries.
• Delivery options for new binaries now include deb packages and “apt-get install” option (after setting up a custom repository).
• Delivery options for Node and CLI now include Windows binary (client may work on Windows).
• Delivery options for Hub/Worker now include prepacked virtual machine image (VirtualBox). IaaS platform still operates under Linux, but it can be fit into a virtual machine on Windows or (potentially, we did not test) on other platforms. However, this is not considered a production option because GPU is not available inside VM and because of possible virtualization overhead.
• Configuration files formats are updated, so configs must be set up again (but you may copy values from the previous files for most attributes).
• Deals registry is redeployed, so new network state will not know previous deals, which is not relevant at this point.

For the GUI new functions will be shipped:

• Ability to switch between Ethereum livenet (where SNM tokens live) and Rinkeby testnet (where SONM MVP testnet operates with SNMT test tokens).
• Ability to add/remove custom ERC20 tokens.
• Ability to export/import wallet data.
• Now also available as Electron standalone binaries. From now GUI has 3 delivery options: (1) a hosted version (website), (2) a single .html file and now, finally, (3) as Electron.

Full change list will be provided later (this document will be updated).

GUI is not affected by the hardfork, because currently, this software component is not using SONM API, working as an Ethereum wallet. This will change in the upcoming releases when GUI will provide a way to interact with the platform as it is intended.