Saito Development Update – March 2023

This post is a quick update about what is happening with Saito Development for those who track our blog updates. For more detailed updates, come to Saito RedSquare – our team is in the habit of posting updates on dev priorities there in real-time.

A lot of historical work on the ‘Saito application stack’ over time has been experimental and exploratory. We have been pushing the boundaries of peer to peer blockchain applications. This led to a platform with prototypes, unused features and layers of incremental design.

Recent development work has focused on RedSquare and the Saito Arcade in a refactor designed to fix this, resulting in a trimmer, tighter set of functions. Significant changes have been implemented to how cross-module UI elements are created and displayed, and inter-module interactions are easier to program. We have also improved some base level features like transactions are compressed, shrinking them to improve the speed and responsiveness of applications.

For anyone following the overarching project roadmap, our refactoring work is part of our efforts to “dogfood” application development in order to improve the usability of our application suite and development tools, as part of a long-term strategy to increase transaction volume and spearhead broader adoption.

With this refactor largely complete, we are now focused on simplifying and improving the quality of the user-facing experience, such as by adding ‘Web3 login’. This is a simple backup-and-restore option that hides behind a familiar web2 login. This work is accompanied by fixes to identifier management and a visual refresh to the sidebar menu and wallet, creating a much better and more persistent user experience. We are currently stress-testing the login system but believe this kind of “easy wallet restoration” will be key to driving mass adoption of RedSquare and game leagues.

Another feature we have spent considerable time on improving has been peer-to-peer video calls. Team members have moved almost all two-person meetings to Saito Video Chat, and are using our experiences to keep improving stability and usability. Two person calls are currently stable and we are focused on improving automatic reconnection and other features that become critical in group calls. If you are looking for a great way to help, please assist by testing this feature on your mobile devices and report to us if you have any problems.

Ongoing Work

Core work continues to replace the consensus code in our javascript-stack with a WASM implementation compiled from the Rust codebase. This will make in-browser applications faster. In the distant future, WASM (web assembly) will also allow developers to plug applications written in other languages into the Saito web stack.

Our gaming work is focused on improving the leaderboards and adding high-scoring tracking for single-player games. We are sweeping through existing games to improve the UI/UX, and trying to find time for new games including Realms – the open source card-powered enchantment game being driven by community development., We are also making updates to how our digital library module works to provide necessary support for on-chain vintage game and ROM management.

Finally, with the new slide-in wallet moving towards completion we are refactoring 3rd party crypto support to try and improve its reliability and quality. We expect that this will take some time, but expect the result to be much more usable and reliable platform for storing third-party crypto, particularly when combined with the ability to recover accounts with the “web3 login” feature.

As above, we are now regularly posting updates and interacting with community members in Saito RedSquare. This is the best place to stay up to date, participate in the process of identifying and discussing our priorities, and of course experience Saito while you are there.