Week of Feb 10-17, 2026

This was a release week. All 21 merged PRs landed in v0.2.10, which went live on MainNet on February 17. Here is what the engineering team shipped.

Consensus Layer

PR #710 — PoC Sampling Optimization The biggest change this week. The validator sampling algorithm in the Proof of Compute module was rewritten from a nested loop (O(N^2)) to a single-pass slot-filling approach (O(N*N_SLOTS)). For the current validator set this shaves milliseconds off block processing, but the real benefit appears as the network scales. The previous implementation would have become a bottleneck beyond ~200 validators.

PR #725 — Time-Based Weight Normalization PoC weights now normalize by actual wall-clock time between inference completions rather than by block count. This fixes a subtle issue where validators with better network connectivity would accumulate slightly more weight per epoch, not because they computed more, but because they saw more blocks. The correction makes reward distribution proportional to real compute contribution.

PR #767 — Upgrade Grace Period + Qwen3 Tool Calling A combined PR that introduced two features. First, a 3,000-block grace period (~5 hours) for MainNet software upgrades, giving validators a window to update without penalty. Second, native tool calling support for Qwen3-235B-A22B, enabling structured function call responses through the OpenAI-compatible API.

API Layer

Nine PRs addressed API reliability and security:

  • Rate limiting adjustments for high-traffic inference endpoints
  • Input validation hardening for chat completion requests
  • Error response standardization across all endpoints
  • Timeout configuration for long-running inference calls
  • Connection pool tuning for the ML node proxy
  • CORS policy updates for SDK clients
  • Request logging improvements for debugging
  • Health check endpoint enhancements
  • Authentication token rotation support

These are not individually dramatic, but together they represent a significant improvement in API stability. Several originated from bug reports by SDK users.

Bridge and Vesting

PR #723 — Bridge Testnet Scripts Automated deployment and testing scripts for the Ethereum bridge on testnet. These scripts handle contract deployment, relayer configuration, and end-to-end transfer verification. CertiK is currently auditing the bridge contracts, and these scripts support the audit process by enabling reproducible test scenarios.

PR #641 — Streamvesting Transfer with Vesting Added the ability to transfer tokens that are still in a vesting schedule via the streamvesting module. Previously, vesting tokens were completely locked. This change allows transfers while preserving the vesting schedule on the recipient's side, which is useful for team token management and early contributor distributions.

Infrastructure

PR #712 — Proto Generation Enforcement CI now enforces that protobuf-generated Go code is committed and up-to-date. If a developer modifies a .proto file without regenerating the corresponding Go code, the CI pipeline fails. This prevents a class of bugs where the proto definition and the generated code drift apart.

What This Means

The v0.2.10 release was one of the larger releases by PR count (21). The PoC changes are the most architecturally significant — they set the foundation for scaling the validator set. The API hardening reflects the network's growing usage through the SDK, and the bridge scripts signal that the Ethereum bridge is moving toward MainNet readiness.