Evidence-0002: Retention at Rank I

Report Date	2025/01/07
Submitted by	Andrei Eres

Member details

Matrix username: @andrei:parity.io
Polkadot address: 1436xp47dm3w1yTvSncsf4cgVLH5dVsgBzMqtHkSx1XjG1Wb
Current rank: 1
Date of initial induction: 2024/07/19
Date of last report: 2024/10/20
Area(s) of Expertise/Interest: Parachain Consensus, Nodes Scalability and Observability, Subsystem Benchmarking

During the reporting period, I primarily focused on the scalability of Polkadot. There are the most impactful directions:

Backing back pressure. Completed the fork tracking and removing non-viable backing jobs in #5616. A possible follow-up is to investigate the impact of dropping approval jobs as well; see issue #6401
Networking backend benchmarking. To support the ongoing transition from libp2p to litep2p, implemented and released benchmarks to compare the performance of network backends based on both libraries.. See #6077, #6455, #6636. Charts over commits to master branch: notifications_protocol, request_response_protocol.
Subsystem benchmarking with real networking stack. While networking backend benchmarks allow us to compare the performance of p2p libraries, we need to use a real network in our subsystem benchmarks to see the bigger picture. Attempted a straightforward approach by spawning real peers, but it was unsuccessful: #6845. Started working on a more efficient approach.

In the upcoming period, I will continue working on the scalability of Polkadot, focusing on the performance of the networking stack.

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 0 % voting activity).	There were no referenda during the current period in which I was allowed to vote. I target to raise it to 90% at least for the next reporting period
II	80%	N/A
III	70%	100%
IV	60%	90%
V	50%	80%
VI	40%	70%