Monthly Development Update — March 2021

March was as busy as always. The team was focusing on bug fixes and performance enhancements. A new version of the bee-js was released and a new Swarm release is around the corner, too.

Important — with the next Swarm release, some major changes will happen. If you are running a Bee node, please follow our communication channels closely as you will need to update your nodes if you want them to continue working properly.

Bee Track

• Released Bee v0.5.3
• Started onboarding of 4 new developers to the Bee team
• Worked on variable pricing:

1. Merged changes needed to communicate prices
2. Started work on price-based routing

• Merged variable pricing to master
• Cleanups on postage stamps (currently in storage incentives branch)
• Started working on light nodes
• Started working on removing /files endpoint in favour of allowing single file upload and retrieval via /bzz
• Ramping up our attention to testing; manual tests, integration testing, visibility via metrics, stress testing and more

DevOps Track

• Deployed Bee (v0.5.3) to public cluster.
• Released a new version of Bee Helm chart (v0.7.0).
• Released a new version of Beekeeper (v0.4.9) with dynamic cluster improvements.
• Released a new version of the Geth Swap Helm chart (v0.1.11).
• Released exportSwarmKey (v0.1.0).

JS Track

• Released Bee-js Javascript client library 0.6.0 version that contains support for custom Ethereum signers (e.g. Metamask) and several bug fixes.
• Released first alpha version of Swarm-CLI, a command line tool for making Bee easier to use:

1. Upload files and folders to Bee
2. Upload to feeds
3. Import and export keys from Bee-clef, Metamask, etc

• Started working on a Browser Extension. Right now, it is a proof-of-concept tool to help us figure out a good model for creating and using decentralized applications in a browser.
• Also started working on a Status UI for Bee. It is currently in alpha version, but it already beats using curl for certain tasks :)
• Contributors are welcome to all projects!

Ecosystem Track

• We received many new grant applications. The submitted applications need to be reviewed and evaluated. After this is done, we will publish the list of new projects on our Medium page.