Major Blockchain Release - Multisig and POC V9

The 2020.09.15.0 release is a major blockchain release adding support for two features: Multisig and POC-v9.

Multisig

Currently, Helium is the sole entity involved in proposing and issuing chain variables which control the behavior of the blockchain. This is done via signing the chain variable txn using a single authoritative key. With the introduction of multisig, we go from having a single key to a group of keys, a majority of which will be required to sign a chain var txn. This change is guarded behind use_multi_keys chain variable and will be in effect once we activate it.

Proof-of-Coverage V9

POC V9 now checks and validates witnesses and receipts contained within a POC transaction by checking whether the reported RSSI, SNR and Frequency are within reasonable bounds. We have also added channel and datarate fields to poc-witness and poc-receipt record definitions. This change is guarded behind two chain variables that the team will activate once we GA the release. The proposed chain variable updates are:

• poc_version from 8 to 9
• data_aggregation_version from 1 to 2

Additionally, we also improved logging to better debug POC related issues. Finally, this release bumps the blessed snapshot to height 499681.

Related PRs

• Add witness and receipt validation for poc txns
  • blockchain-core/593
• Add support for POC V9
  • miner/507
• Add channel and datarate to witness/receipt
  • proto/50
• Add support for multisig
  • blockchain-core/526
• Change poc_id to base64 of onion_key_hash
  • blockchain-core/617

Plan

We have been betaing 2020.09.15.0 since 4 PM PST on the 15th and will be release it to GA by 8 PM PST.