# Engineering Weekly Update - 2021-08-16

**URL:** <https://gov.near.org/t/engineering-weekly-update-2021-08-16/4569>\
**Category:** Engineering Updates\
**Tags:** weekly-updates\
**Created:** [August 16, 2021, 5:59pm UTC](https://gov.near.org/t/engineering-weekly-update-2021-08-16/4569 "2021-08-16T17:59:57Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**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:** [August 16, 2021, 5:59pm UTC](https://gov.near.org/t/engineering-weekly-update-2021-08-16/4569/1 "2021-08-16T17:59:57Z")

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# Brief Summary

- DevRel launched office hours! Jump in if you have any technical questions on NEAR. It will be hosted in the `#dev-support` Office Hours channel under `DEVELOPMENT` on our [Discord server](http://near.chat/).
  - 12-2PM PST - **Tuesdays**
  - 9-11AM PST - **Fridays**

- NEAR node 1.21.0-rc is going to be released on ~~2021-08-16~~ (UPD: 2021-08-23). If you are using indexer, you might want to recompile it based on new commit before ~~2021-08-18~~ (UPD: 2021-08-25) to avoid it getting stuck. For any questions write [here](https://near.zulipchat.com/#narrow/stream/295356-dev-node-interfaces/topic/indexer);
- [NEAR Data Center is launching](http://gov.near.org/t/launching-near-data-center/4449);
- Check out [discussion on “sandboxing” smart contracts](http://gov.near.org/t/discussion-smart-contract-sandbox/4111);
- Core is making steady progress with sharding, runtime is parallelized and node syncing is underway together with state sharding;
- You can now see USD value of tokens in Wallet;

# Results

- Explorer got Chinese and Vietnamese languages thanks to @that86, @IsQiao , and @robertyan ;
- [Indexer for Explorer 0.8.0](https://github.com/near/near-indexer-for-explorer/releases/tag/0.8.0) was released, adding historical circulating supply feature;
- Developer Platform merged several optimizations into Rust SDK;
- Node Experience did lots of performance optimizations to Nayduck latency;
- Node Experience added `--disable-rpc` flag to NEAR node;
- Core and Contract Runtime teams fixed param estimator issue related to lto and cargo profile;
- Core wrote [documentation on how our Trie works](https://github.com/near/nearcore/blob/master/docs/trie.md) ❤ . It is a non-trivial design and it is great that we started building documentation for it;
- Core merged parallelization of chunks and started working on parallelization of catch-up!
- Core [implemented](https://github.com/near/nearcore/pull/4614) ShardLayout and ShardConfig structures;
- Network added Python wrapper for RPC used for network testing;
- Wallet now displays NFT tokens in wallet;

# Challenges and Blockers

- Please contribute to Explorer [self-identification here](https://github.com/near/near-explorer/issues/668)!
- Contract Runtime team is still reworking fee estimator, lots of issues were found. Also, we have previously updated our fees only a little bit, so a major refactoring is underway by @Longarithm to enable clean large updates;
- Wallet team is considering adding a contract to all accounts created through coin-op, this can add work to Developer Platform, Developer Relations, and Node Interfaces teams. CC @jim , @josh , @frol ;

# Full Reports

- [Node Interfaces](https://github.com/near/nearcore/discussions/4683);
- [Developer Platform](https://github.com/near/community/discussions/85);
- [Node Experience](https://github.com/near/community/discussions/84);
- [Core](https://github.com/near/community/blob/master/meetings/chain-wg.md#august-16th-2021);
- [Network](https://github.com/near/community/blob/master/meetings/chain-wg.md#august-16th-2021);
- [Wallet](https://github.com/near/community/discussions/86);
- [Developer Relations](http://gov.near.org/t/devrel-weekly-update-we-08-14-2021/4573).