ARPA BLS-TSS Network DevNet

ARPA Official
3 min readJan 14, 2023

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ARPA Network is a decentralized, secure computation network that can generate on-chain BLS signatures for a variety of use cases. The ARPA Network can provide a much more affordable substitute for existing inefficient and expensive on-chain operations by serving as the infrastructure of many blockchain applications, such as verifiable random number generator (RNG), secure wallet, decentralized asset custody, cross-chain bridge, and more.

To ensure a mission-critical, decentralized network is secure and robust, we have adopted a DevNet — TestNet — MainNet release model. Following last year’s pivot towards threshold BLS signature schemes (TSS-BLS), the ARPA team has been tirelessly working on development, and we are currently on track for the next milestone — a perpetual development network (DevNet) integrated with EVM-compatible chains.

DevNet

We run tests against the experimental features, patches, and code base improvements with our internal DevNet.

We primarily focus on four different types of tests:

  • Unit test to ensure function-level code works as intended.
  • Integration test to ensure various components work well together.
  • Regressional scenario test to ensure the entire ARPA network functions appropriately along with the Ethereum smart contracts and the protocol-level implementation adheres to the design.
  • Fault tolerance test to ensure the robustness and the recoverability of the network.

Using Anvil, we deployed a long-running ARPA network and a standalone Ethereum chain forked from Mainnet. With the help of CI/CD, whenever a code change has been reviewed and merged into the main branch, it will be automatically built and tested against all the test scenarios so that we are confident the code change does not accidentally alter the behavior of the network.

The Robot Framework helps to deploy DevNet and execute the regression scenario testing. All the testing scenarios are written using the Robot syntax. The flexibility and composability of this syntax help us define runnable test scenarios with plain English describing the actions involved within each scenario. And within the Robot Framework, we develop custom Python libraries to facilitate the entire build-deploy-test cycle. To best emulate real-world computing and networking conditions in the test environment, we deploy nodes onto AWS EC2 instances across different regions and use the Fault Injection Simulator to simulate power loss, network congestion…., and connectivity issues.

DevNet will also help us to run benchmarks on the performance, network load, and other metrics of the network to provide insights into the potential optimization strategies.

After the DevNet testing, we will focus on releasing TestNet and think about offering a Bug Bounty program. For developers interested in building on ARPA, please sign up for updates. If you want to become a future node of ARPA Network and gain rewards by performing BLS computation, please join the waitlist.

About ARPA

ARPA Network (ARPA) is a decentralized secure computation network built to improve the fairness, security, and privacy of blockchains. ARPA threshold BLS signature network serves as the infrastructure of verifiable Random Number Generator (RNG), secure wallet, cross-chain bridge, and decentralized custody across multiple blockchains.

ARPA was previously known as ARPA Chain, a privacy-preserving Multi-party Computation (MPC) network founded in 2018. ARPA Mainnet has completed over 224,000 computation tasks in the past years. Our experience in MPC and other cryptography laid the foundation for our innovative threshold BLS signature schemes (TSS-BLS) system design and led us to today’s ARPA Network.

Randcast, a verifiable Random Number Generator (RNG), is the first application that leverages ARPA as infrastructure. Randcast offers a cryptographically generated random source with superior security and low cost compared to other solutions. Metaverse, game, lottery, NFT minting and whitelisting, key generation, and blockchain validator task distribution can benefit from Randcast’s tamper-proof randomness.

For more information about ARPA or to join our team, please contact us at contact@arpanetwork.io.

Learn about ARPA’s recent official news:

Twitter: @arpaofficial

Medium: https://medium.com/@arpa

Discord: https://dsc.gg/arpa-network

Telegram (English): https://t.me/arpa_community

Telegram (Turkish): https://t.me/Arpa_Turkey

Telegram (Việt Nam): https://t.me/ARPAVietnam

Telegram (Russian): https://t.me/arpa_community_ru

Telegram (Indonesian): https://t.me/Arpa_Indonesia

Telegram(Sri Lanka):https://t.me/arpa_srilanka

Telegram(Africa):https://t.me/arpaafrica

Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/arpachain/

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ARPA Official

ARPA is a privacy-preserving blockchain infrastructure enabled by MPC. Learn more at arpachain.io