March 27, 2018

Roadmap Updates

After our successful token sale, we are making some changes to our old Red development roadmap.

0.6.4 release

We are merging the 0.6.4 branch into master today. There are still some features to add and polish, so we plan to release it in about a week.

We are still considering a 0.6.5 milestone for swapping the REPL and the toolchain thus making the Red console the new Red executable. If we cannot fit the required changes for that into 0.6.4, we will insert a small extra milestone for that before releasing 0.7.0.

Full I/O milestone

This gets higher priority now, as we don't need to rush Android support anymore, given the new funds we have now. We can now proceed in a more logical order which will result in the Android release having much more complete support.

0.7.0 will focus on bringing the port! datatype and with it, async networking I/O and some basic protocols. Work will start on it right after 0.6.4 release. This also means that a 0.7.x could be turned into a 0.9 release, providing a first Red beta version and a shortened path to 1.0. That depends on decisions about incorporating the module system and/or concurrency support in 1.0, or in a later version. We hope to decide on that with the help of the Red user community, using the voting power granted by the RED token. ;-)

Android milestone

It is still a very important milestone for Red, even if the work on it has currently slowed due to the big blockchain-related wave of tasks. It is now scheduled to be a 0.7.x release. We should accelerate work on it once new developers have joined the team. A new blog article (later this week) will provide a sneak peek at Red's current Android capabilities and what is left to do in order to complete it.

Red/C3

We are still working on combining the Red core roadmap and the Red/C3 roadmap and allocating resources adequately on the different branches of the whole project. So far, the Red/C3 roadmap (as described in the whitepaper) remains unchanged.

The first milestone in the Red/C3 roadmap is:
Q1 2018:
  • Ethereum node wrapper for Red Dapps (alpha)
  • RED wallet Dapp (alpha)

We are glad to announce that we are finalizing those tasks, and will be releasing the wallet app (as alpha) next week! The wallet currently supports only the Nano Ledger S hardware key (no software keys support for now). More info about the wallet app in a blog post next week, including a list of all the features planned for the 1.0 wallet release.

For the Ethereum node wrapper, we have implemented a JSON-RPC library in Red, used by the wallet app. That library will be released alongside the wallet code. It only covers some basic features from the Ethereum node API for now. We plan to vastly extend the API coverage in subsequent versions. Once the 0.7.0 release is out, we could wrap that library code in an eth:// port and provide a nice, human-friendly interface for it. We believe that enabling an easy way to interact with the Ethereum blockchain (and some others later this year), will raise the interest of existing Red coders for the Ethereum ecosystem, and set a new standard for high-level scripting tasks for blockchains.

Last but not least, we are setting up an online Ethereum node, that will be controlled by the Red Foundation, as a backend for the wallet app (currently relying on Infura's nodes) and all future Red Dapps.

We are now preparing to start work on the Red/C3 compiler first alpha, which is planned for release in June. After that, during the summer, we will review the next steps in the roadmap and eventually adjust them according to the feedback from users, how fast we can move Red/C3 to a 1.0, and the state of needs in the crypto world by then.

Red/Pro

Huh...what? :-) Yes, you read it correctly, we, at Fullstack, are cooking a great new product for Red users which should be our first commercial product. At the moment, I am directing Fullstack's key resources to work solely on the open source Red and Red/C3. Work on Red/Pro is postponed to the second part of this year. There will be more info about what Red/Pro is in a future blog post. ;-)

Until then, you can help us test the new console and features of 0.6.4 before the new release, you are welcome to report issues in our red/red or red/bugs rooms on Gitter.

Cheers!

3 comments:

  1. A foundation is more likely to receive help either from companies and government. Someone who ask for money for a product is seen as commercial entity. Plese don't forget this very important rule.
    (Note: Phyton, on of the best open programming language and receives funds from everywhere. https://www.python.org/psf-landing/)

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    Replies
    1. I think you misread it, it says "we, at Fullstack,", so the commercial product will be coming from the company, not from the Red Foundation, which as stated before, has no commercial activities.

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