Engineering update 9

boba_documentation/Engineering_update_8.md

@@ -1,7 +1,5 @@
 # Engineering Update #8
 
-**DRAFT DRAFT DRAFT DRAFT DRAFT DRAFT DRAFT**
-
 - [Engineering update #8](#engineering-update--8)
   * [1. Roadmap and Whitepaper](#1-roadmap-and-whitepaper)
   * [2. Blockchain Trends - the L2 space and where we fit](#2-blockchain-trends---the-l2-space-and-where-we-fit)

boba_documentation/Engineering_update_9.md

@@ -0,0 +1,37 @@
+# Engineering Update #9
+
+- [1. Roadmap and Whitepaper - update](#1-roadmap-and-whitepaper---update)
+- [2. Data are flowing](#2-data-are-flowing)
+- [3. Gateway updates](#3-gateway-updates)
+- [4. Under the hood - updated L2Geth / Turing](#4-under-the-hood---updated-l2geth---turing)
+- [5. WAGMIv0 and WAGMIv1](#5-wagmiv0-and-wagmiv1)
+- [6. Boba3 (prelude)](#6-boba3--prelude-)
+
+February 13, 2022
+
+Greetings from your engineering team. As noted, we have a transitioned to a 7 day tech update cycle. The main goal is to support a quickly-growing messaging infrastructure, which will take this and other material and make sure that it more broadly distributed compared to what Boba did in the past. 
+
+## 1. Roadmap and Whitepaper - update
+
+A graphical roadmap for 2022 was released [today](https://github.com/omgnetwork/optimism-v2/blob/develop/boba_documentation/roadmaps/RoadmapFeb13_2022.svg). As noted, this will be a 'living' document, subject to major change as needed. Boba research will be presenting a technical talk at ETH-Denver, and the slides for that - focusing on Turing, will be released after the talk (two days from now). In terms of other materials, please also see a first schematic for [Turing](https://github.com/omgnetwork/optimism-v2/blob/develop/boba_documentation/diagrams/TuringOverview.pdf).
+
+## 2. Data are flowing 
+
+**Boba-Straw** - Boba's own price-feed oracle is now up and running on both Boba Mainnet and Boba Rinkeby. The price feed, based on Chainlink's implementation, can handle price data aggregation from multiple oracles, on-chain. To get us started - **Folkvang** has started streaming data and is acting as our first data source. While Folkvang has their own price-data aggregation strategy, to further increase reliability we will keep adding more data sources to Boba-Straw in the future. And, of course - BOBA is what keeps driving the price-feeds in the form of providing incentives for price data-submission and as a fee token to utilise/subscribe to these feeds.**Witnet**, a decentralised oracle network is also live on Boba (Mainnet and Rinkeby) with their witness-backed decentralised price feeds. While multiple options gives more to chose from, it also might just present the opportunity to have your own personal level of data-aggregation - by combining these for consistency and reliability!
+Check out the various active feeds [here](https://feeds.witnet.io/), for example. 
+
+## 3. Gateway updates
+
+The revised gateway is on track with new pages for the DAO and NFTs and a completely rewritten back-end. The main change there is to allow people to see as much as possible without needing to connect MetaMask, to make it easy to get a sense of the Boba ecosystem right away. New features include a BOBA faucet secured by a CAPCHA, which in turn is using Turing to connect real world events (solving a game/CAPTCHA) to an an on-chain event - obtaining some BOBA. Additional features include an entirely new `Bridge` page designed to simplify the bridging experience greatly. 
+
+## 4. Under the hood - updated L2Geth / Turing
+
+We are currently testing an updated version of the L2Geth developed by Optimism, with a view to updating our Geth this coming week. This will be a hot-update with minimal downtime (less than 2 hours). The updated L2Geth will also contain an updated version of Turing, with a new caching and gasEstimation system to provide better performance under load.
+
+## 5. WAGMIv0 and WAGMIv1
+
+As part of the gateway updates, expect an interface to redeem your WAGMIv0, and to handle WAGMIv1, which will target new metrics and therefore needs a new oracle, a new LSP contract, and a new token (WAGMIv1).
+
+## 6. Boba3 (prelude)
+
+As noted on the roadmap, see above, we are preparing to transition to an alternative L2 architecture, but to do so safely and smoothly we will run the two systems side-by-side, with Optimism-style messages tunneling through the new system - provisionally called a **Zipup**. Hence the code name for Boba3 - prelude - it's a stepping stone to Boba4. The overall goal of these major architectural changes is to (**1**) end up with a highly secure and cost efficient system that is also (**2**) easier to maintain and update than the current approach. Both Boba3 and Boba4 will have similarities to Optimism at the smart contract level but will take a substantially different approach to cross-chain communications and bridging. In large part this transition is driven by anticipated changes in Ethereum's architecture - all L2s should already be preparing for those changes, to ensure a smooth migration, excellent user experience, and substantial cost savings relative to Ethereum. Documentation on the new system remains to be written, but that is underway as well.