Breaking Down IOTA’s Alpha 2 Release: Discover the Groundbreaking Changes and Updates

• IOTA released an alpha version of iota-ore last week, whose changes include fixing the docker network test framework, which broke due to an attention parameter that had recently been added.
• Other changes include adding CI workflow for nightly docker network tests and supporting the usage of local snapshots to reduce the burden of constant uploading.

The IOTA Foundation released the first alpha version of iota-ore last week as the latest march toward fine-tuning protocol parameters and enhancing the network’s usability.

Hans Moog, a developer with the Foundation, announced the release on social media, noting that despite its significance,  it had flown under the radar.

Btw, are people aware of the fact that we released the first alpha version of iota-core (coordicide) last week?https://t.co/7qP1e8H4x9

— Hans Moog (@hus_qy) January 23, 2024

Among the changes include introducing a fix to the docker network test framework. Previously, the docker tests broke down due to the addition of new retention parameters. The fix also adds a new script that simplifies the usage of the docker test framework.

Another fix was the addition of continuous integration (CI) workflow for nightly docker network tests. CI is a practice in the software development sector where contributors are required to commit code to a shared repository, enabling the quick detection of errors and faster merging of code from different team members.

Developers can now use local snapshots instead of having to upload and download every time. In another fix, the developers approved a change to reject the propagation of confirmation ratifiers over epoch boundaries. It follows up on a proposed change in which only the confirmation votes that count are those from the same epoch as the block they are voting for. This change is meant to avoid glitches from counting previous and newer votes at the epoch boundary.

According to Moog, while the Alpha release may not contain a lot of new updates, “the community can maybe derive some knowledge about our progress from this release.”

As the IOTA Foundation’s Q4 2023 report revealed, the iota-core team collaborated with other core protocol research teams last year to align implementation with theoretical concepts. This included the Congestion Control Working Group, the Finalization Research Working Group and the Parameters Taskforce.

In the fourth quarter, one of the iota-core team’s most significant upgrades was the introduction of the implicit account mechanism, which offers users a permissionless entry point to the network.