Release Roundup - April 2024

In April, we released a new onboarding flow for the Hiro Platform and made a number of changes to Hiro tooling to support Nakamoto, including the release of the Nakamoto-ready v7.10.0 of the Stacks Blockchain API. We also increased the speed of running tests in the Clarinet SDK and shipped the beta version of a new Ordinals API that supports reinscription transfers. Let’s get into it.

Story details

Type

Product update

Topic(s)

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Product

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Hiro

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Published

May 8, 2024

Author(s)

Hiro Team

Contents

Release roundups are organized into a few categories spanning the breadth of the developer experience. From core protocol contributions all the way to the Hiro Platform in the cloud, let’s take a look at what we shipped in April and share some of our priorities in May:

Release Roundup

Hiro Platform

In April, we rolled out a new onboarding flow in the Hiro Platform to better guide users through all the platform has to offer. Previously, devs were pushed to create a project with smart contracts, and with the new flow, we give equal weight to creating event streams with Chainhook and generating API keys:

A screenshot of the new platform onboarding

Related to that above change, we’ve now compartmentalized chainhooks, API keys, and project management, so you can use each feature set independently of the others.
We also improved contract checking and released a number of bug fixes.

DevTools

Clarinet

We released v2.6.x of Clarinet. With this release, devnet will now run in epoch 2.5 by default, and devnet now runs 2 signers to more closely mimic Nakamoto behavior on testnet and mainnet.
We also shipped a bug fix and performance improvement in the Clarinet SDK, which makes the SDK 150ms faster per test. In some projects that translates to a 7x speed improvement.

Stacks.js

We released several code fixes and added a new read-only <code-rich-text>verify-signer-key-sig<code-rich-text> helper, which helps verify stacking payloads.

Chainhook

We released v1.5.x of Chainhook, which added support an rm unconfirmed block command for deleting the unconfirmed blocks on-demand using the <code-rich-text>drop<code-rich-text> command, better error detection, as well as the ability to use a local RocksDB when using the scan command for better speeds. We also released several bug fixes.

API Services

Stacks Blockchain API

We released v7.10.0 of the Stacks Blockchain API, which is the Nakamoto-compatible Stacks Blockchain API, including support for <code-rich-text>pox-4<code-rich-text> and new signer and block behavior.

Ordinals API

We shipped v3.1.0 of the Ordinals API, which includes several bug fixes as well as support for self-minted 5-byte wide BRC-20 tokens (a new BRC-20 protocol update).
We also shipped the beta of v4.0.0, which comes with big changes. This release adds support for reinscription transfers, a breaking change that means our postgres tables now handle locations at the sat level instead of the inscription level. This release also removes all API processing for BRC-20 tokens and delegates that work to Ordhook. This release also adds <code-rich-text>parent<code-rich-text> and <code-rich-text>metadata<code-rich-text> to inscription responses.

Token Metadata API

We changed the default image cache script to convert token images into PNG files (full-size and thumbnail-size), giving wallets and explorers the option to use the full-size or thumbnail-size images as needed.

Blockchain

We continued to be one of the many contributors to the working group on the upcoming Nakamoto release. In April, the ecosystem reached a major milestone of mainnet instantiation. The working group also announced an updated timeline for mainnet activation. TL;DR activation is shifting to the end of August, so the working group can add more robust signer resiliency features. Slow is smooth, smooth is fast.

Blockchain Explorers

In the Stacks Explorer, we shipped a number of updates in April, including a new support page, better error messaging, performance improvements, and several bug fixes.

Looking Ahead to May

Here are our biggest priorities in the coming month:

New educational resources and onboarding flows for the Hiro Platform: We want devs to use the Hiro Platform (no surprise there), so in May we are focused on making it easier to use the platform by guiding devs through everything that the platform has to offer. This comes with more tweaks to product UI as well as new email touchpoints throughout the platform experience. Additionally, we are exploring support for advanced Devnet and Chainhooks use-cases.
Docs improvements: We are close to the finish line of a brand new docs experience. Keep an eye out later in May for a new docs platform, one with better guides, code integrations, and more, to make building with Hiro tools easier than ever before.
Supporting work towards Nakamoto mainnet: The biggest priority in the Stacks ecosystem is the Nakamoto upgrade, which now activates on mainnet in August. We are one of many contributors in the blockchain public working group progressing towards that goal, and in May, we plan to help work on updating a pre-launch testnet with a working multi-node set up. Learn more about the timeline to activation here.

Beyond that we’ll of course have lots of work and upgrades to the suite of Hiro products, so keep an eye out for new updates.

Learn More

For a full list of releases and improvements by product, please view the following links: