Evidence-0002: Retention at Rank I

Report Date	Date of submission (2024/12/19)
Submitted by	Alin Dima

Member details

• Matrix username: @alin:parity.io
• Polkadot address: 148f8D1P4CP2tV8JuaVHzEXQQgj3jBxEg3k9qZydPzkJjbQG
• Current rank: I
• Date of initial induction: 2024-04-26
• Date of last report: 2024/10/01
• Area(s) of Expertise/Interest: Parachains consensus, Elastic Scaling, Availability

Reporting period

• Start date: 2024/10/01
• End date: 2024/12/19

Evidence

My contributions in these past months have been mostly centered around Elastic Scaling.

Elastic Scaling

I have continued the implementation of RFC103, which enables having an untrusted collator set when using elastic scaling:

• creating v2 receipts on collation-generation: https://github.com/paritytech/polkadot-sdk/pull/5908
• refactoring and hardening the core index check: https://github.com/paritytech/polkadot-sdk/pull/6217
• validating the receipt version when fetching the collation: https://github.com/paritytech/polkadot-sdk/pull/6011
• adding e2e zombienet-sdk test that verifies elastic scaling works both with the old and new receipt versions: https://github.com/paritytech/polkadot-sdk/pull/6452
• successfully debugged 12 core elastic scaling which will enable 500ms block times: https://github.com/paritytech/polkadot-sdk/issues/6858

I have also started updating the elastic scaling enablement guide for parachain teams (PR still open): https://github.com/paritytech/polkadot-sdk/pull/6739

Another notable contribution is my involvement in the design discussions around streamlined block production I researched and proposed an alternative implementation idea which would achieve the desired result in a much shorter time (thanks to the simpler design, despite it being less efficient). I successfully developed a PoC and tested it with gluttons and spammening parachains. The code is available here: https://github.com/paritytech/polkadot-sdk/tree/alindima/post-state-poc

Other contributions:

• Offering significant guidance and help on the collation fetching fairness PR: https://github.com/paritytech/polkadot-sdk/pull/4880
• I have started offering technical mentorship for a new hire inside Parity's parachains team (which I'm a part of)
• Fix a best backable chain reversion bug in prospective parachains: https://github.com/paritytech/polkadot-sdk/pull/6417
• Rewriting some of the flaky zombienet tests to zombienet-sdk: https://github.com/paritytech/polkadot-sdk/pull/6757

Polkadot-sdk reviews: https://github.com/paritytech/polkadot-sdk/pulls?q=is%3Apr+reviewed-by%3Aalindima

Voting record

Provide your voting record in relation to required thresholds for your rank.

Ranks	Activity thresholds	Agreement thresholds	Member's voting activities	Comments
I	90%	N/A	I have voted on 0 out of 0 referenda in which I was eligible to vote (i.e 100 % voting activity).	There were no referendums available for my rank to vote on.
II	80%	N/A
III	70%	100%
IV	60%	90%
V	50%	80%
VI	40%	70%

Misc

• Question(s):

• Concern(s):

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