Retention at Rank 3

Member details

• Matrix username: @jan:parity.io
• Polkadot address: 15tRXfXoZXkjScB3Awv8s2saPjaicKYAyL1WZ3JP5kycoG9n
• Current rank: 3
• Date of initial induction: seeding
• Date of last report: 2025/08/01
• Area(s) of Expertise/Interest: Substrate, virtual machines, WebAssembly, host <-> runtime interface, performance, JAM, compilers and toolchains

Reporting period

• Start date: 2025-08-01
• End date: 2026-02-13

Argument

As previously, I've spent most of my time working on PolkaVM and on things related to JAM.

Here are the major highlights:

• I've finished researching, designing and prototyping the new gas-cost model for JAM.
  • I wrote a spec of the new gas-cost model to be included in the GP, which I expect to be merged soon.
  • I also authored several other simplifications/improvements to the PVM spec in the GP (these are included in the gas-cost model PR).
• I've authored over 100+ commits in PolkaVM and cut 6 new releases.
  • Currently I'm the sole maintainer of PolkaVM, which has stopped being purely a research project for JAM, and has become an integral part of Polkadot, where it is being used (in production!) on the Polkadot Hub for pallet-revive smart contracts.

Going forward, I will continue my work on the PVM gas-cost model, which still lacks a mechanism for gas metering the memory paging mechanism (which, as we've recently discovered, is necessary for security), and I will help get JAM to 1.0.

Voting record

My voting activity has improved by ~17% compared to the previous retention period.