Bee v0.6.0 release cycle

Background: Why not release Thursday (this week), but next sprint

Warning

Currently unpublished blog post! ETA for publishing is Tuesday

Announcement

To all Bee node operators, developers and other users!

Bee v0.5.3 has been spinning for a while now, but the dev team obviously has not been idle. In the background, we have been working hard on the v0.6.0 release, which is now ready for a test drive!

We have also seen the amazing activity on our Github and Discord, with users trying out Bee and reporting suggestions for improvements.

To address both points, we would like to share with you our plan for the upcoming two weeks after which we plan to release v0.6.0.

Present new features and invitation for try-out

Each of the new features, being postage stamps, light nodes and file representation are important iterations on Bee, contributing eventually to a stable Bee that is a pleasure to use for each of you.
We are delighted to share our work with you and hear your feedback. To faciliate this, we are currently preparing a blog post that outlines each feature and what it means to you. Besides this, we will organise a public testing session early next week (date t.b.a.). In this session, we will try out the mentioned features on a test-cluster. You are wholeheartedly invited to join us!
We will sync about this on our Discord server (channel #xyz)

Making the network work

The features being released are without value if the network on top of which they operate does not function. We currently find ourselves in this situation, which is a somewhat "fortunate" side-effect of The Rise Of Bee Airdrop. We now have a realistic test-environment with more than 40.000 Bee nodes running (source), showing there is a lot of potential to improve.
We plan to work intensively on this opportunity in the upcoming two weeks. Fixing these identified and yet non-identified issues. The end goal is simple: Swarm should work.
Since you have been helping us already extensively with identifying issues, we gladly work together with you in the upcoming two weeks. In order to facilitate this, we will be available in the Discord channel (#xyz) from the try-out session onwards.

Work on the integrations side

Javascript progress and announce that they also participate in testing session / making the network work sprint (? => to confirm with Attila)

That's it for now

We look forward to working more together with you in the upcoming weeks, towards a (hopefully) very succesfull v0.6.0 release!

What does this mean for Swarm-internal?

Bee team:

  • Rinke: Prepare blog post for tomorrow, detailing all new features
  • Rinke & Elad: set up framework in which we can efficiently do a public testing session
  • Anatol: prepare demo light nodes (5 mins)
  • Alok: prepare demo file representation (5 mins)
  • Rinke: Prepare conceptual presentation postage stamps (5 mins)
  • Elad: prepare demo postage stamps (5 mins)
  • Vandot: Can we release binaries of v0.6.0 release candidate or make it otherwise easy for people to try out Bee in the upcoming weeks?

Comms

  • Get out the message (via any means) above once dev team confirms
  • Set up Discord channel
  • Advertise public testing session and hardening sprint in upcoming period

Bee-js team:

?

Select a repo