# 2021-03-22 Engineering Update

**URL:** <https://gov.near.org/t/2021-03-22-engineering-update/986>\
**Category:** Engineering Updates\
**Tags:** weekly-updates\
**Created:** [March 23, 2021, 1:04am UTC](https://gov.near.org/t/2021-03-22-engineering-update/986 "2021-03-23T01:04:46Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![nearmax](https://dub1.discourse-cdn.com/flex005/user_avatar/gov.near.org/nearmax/32/13344_2.png) [@nearmax](https://gov.near.org/u/nearmax)\
**Post date:** [March 23, 2021, 1:04am UTC](https://gov.near.org/t/2021-03-22-engineering-update/986/1 "2021-03-23T01:04:46Z")

</div>

If you are a team/person working on NEAR components and you want your progress updates to be included into the weekly update, please send your updates to `eng-updates@near.org`.

# [AURORA](https://aurora.dev/)

# [EVM](http://gov.near.org/t/2021-03-19-evm-update/965/3)

- [We implemented](https://github.com/aurora-is-near/aurora-engine/commit/b3be59b2da980c71d0a1152f582e1906c518c9c0) [raw\_call](https://vyper.readthedocs.io/en/v0.1.0-beta.10/built-in-functions.html#raw-call) for EVM support, which is a fundamental built-in for cross-contract calls in EVM;
- Eth-connector is a connectivity tissue between EVM and Wasm world in NEAR runtime. [We have implemented, but not merged yet its no-std implementation](https://github.com/aurora-is-near/eth-connector/pull/10);

# [Bridge](http://gov.near.org/t/bridge-working-group-update-2021-03-12/917)

- We switched to [NEP-141 standard for the fungible token support](https://github.com/near/rainbow-token-connector/pull/39)!
- [Bridge front-end](https://near.github.io/rainbow-bridge-frontend/) now also supports NEP-141!

# CORE

## [Node Interfaces](https://github.com/near/nearcore/discussions/4138)

- We released [borsh-rs 0.9.0](https://github.com/near/borsh-rs/releases/tag/v0.9.0) with one non-backwards compatible change that you are unlikely to be affected by;
- We’ve done lots of fixes to nearcore and indexer to catchup with new protocol version upgrade and interface changes.

## [Infra](https://github.com/near/community/blob/master/meetings/infra.md#march-18th-2021)

- We moved all CI scripts from [nearcore](https://github.com/near/nearcore/) into a private repository, for now;
- Follow our new [near/local](https://github.com/near/local) repository into which we will be adding Docker compose files for spinning up the entire NEAR stack locally;

## [Application Experience](https://github.com/near/community/discussions/50)

- Check out [live contract review on NFT with approvals + Marketplace](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBMvjkNTKw8);
- Check out the ongoing discussion about [the improved NFT standard](https://github.com/near/NEPs/discussions/171);

## [Contract Runtime](https://github.com/near/community/blob/master/meetings/contract-runtime-wg.md#18032021)

- We [live-tested Wasmer 1.0](https://github.com/near/nearcore/issues/4076);
- We experimented with [rkyv serializer](https://github.com/djkoloski/rkyv) and it shows great performance improvement for contract loading. And it is not as crazy unsafe as [abomonation](https://github.com/TimelyDataflow/abomonation);

## [Chain](https://github.com/near/community/blob/master/meetings/chain-wg.md#march-22nd-2021)

- We found an issue related to how we store refcounts in Rocksdb and we are currently investigating it;
- We [added versioning](https://github.com/near/nearcore/pull/4115) to the `ValidatorStake` structure. This is an important step for switching to [the new block/chunk selection algorithm](https://github.com/near/NEPs/pull/167).

## [Network](https://github.com/near/community/blob/master/meetings/chain-wg.md#march-22nd-2021)

- We found that the cause of occasional slowness of the new routing table computation algorithm is in iteration through routing table edges. We will be testing it more…