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Contract-Controlled Parties on Canton

Contract-Controlled Parties on Canton

Programmable Authority for Canton Network Applications Abstract: Contract-Controlled Parties are a Canton Network pattern for a party that can hold assets but has no wallet, no submission path, and no way to move those assets except through a governing smart contract. It is, in other words, a party whose

Rootless Nix Daemon

Rootless Nix Daemon

The Nix daemon is a very powerful piece of software. It can reproducibly build tens of thousands of packages from Nixpkgs, securely limited in a small sandbox, triggered by requests from users. It can detect what packages are currently in use and delete unused ones. And it can even build

Formatting is an interface between code and reasoning

Formatting is an interface between code and reasoning

Code formatting has a bad reputation for a good reason. A lot of formatting arguments are boring. Tabs or spaces. Where the comma goes. Whether a record should be vertically aligned. Whether a formatter is "ruining" someone's carefully arranged code. These "bikeshedding" conversations can

Daml + Nix: Reproducible Builds as a Security Primitive

Daml + Nix: Reproducible Builds as a Security Primitive

At Obsidian, we say that reproducibility is a security primitive not because it proves that software is correct, but because it makes an otherwise invisible part of the release process inspectable. When a build is reproducible, two different people compiling the same source code on different machines produce bit-for-

reflex-vty 1.0: Terminal UIs with Haskell and Functional Reactive Programming

reflex-vty 1.0: Terminal UIs with Haskell and Functional Reactive Programming

Obsidian is pleased to announce the 1.0 release of reflex-vty, a terminal UI framework for building interactive Haskell applications using functional reactive programming. It brings the declarative, compositional style of Reflex FRP to the practical work of building reliable terminal interfaces. Built in Haskell using Reflex FRP, reflex-

Nix and BSD: NetBSD

Nix and BSD: NetBSD

As announced on the Nix discourse: We can also cross compile OpenBSD binaries now! Nixpkgs branch: https://github.com/obsidiansystems/nixpkgs/tree/openbsd-rollup (will be making PRs from here and force pushing it, be warned) Command: nix-build --arg crossSystem '{ system = "x86_64-openbsd"; isStatic = true;

Compiler bootstrapping in Nixpkgs

Compiler bootstrapping in Nixpkgs

Nixpkgs is a very large pure functional program, a recipe for building 10,000s of open source projects — building just about every bit of software we can get our hands on. For a program this large, with this many authors, it is very important to think about how it should

Haskell + XCode with Obelisk 🤝

Haskell + XCode with Obelisk 🤝

We typically build our full-stack applications with Obelisk, which gives us the ability to share code across the frontend and backend. Obelisk uses Nix for dependency management and deployments. This works great when you're deploying to targets that you completely control (e.g., a server). But some

BDD with daml-cucumber 🥒

BDD with daml-cucumber 🥒

We've been using cucumber gherkin specifications on some of our daml projects lately. They’re great for building specifications that can be read both by a human and by gherkin tooling. What we lacked, however, was a tool that allowed us to write gherkin test implementations in daml

Auctions as Smart Contracts

Auctions as Smart Contracts

Part one of a series on the implementation of various auction formats as smart contracts. In this post, we'll be implementing an English auction in DAML, a smart contract language based on Haskell. The word "auction" typically calls to mind bidders competing for an item by

See you at NixCon NA!

See you at NixCon NA!

Join us at NixCon NA this year! Ryan Trinkle and John Ericson from Obsidian Systems will lead the workshop 'Continuous Integration Hands-On' on the first day of the event. NixCon NA 2024 will be co-located with SCaLE 21x in Pasadena, California, marking the first time NixCon

The National Georeferenced Data Platform powered by Obelisk

Building Your Product

The National Georeferenced Data Platform powered by Obelisk

Developing innovative software can be challenging, and even experienced software agencies can struggle to estimate the time and resources needed to complete a project. Working with government entities can add additional obstacles, often requiring tailored solutions that accommodate multiple operating approaches and needs of various users, without altering people'

Obsidian Systems at MuniHac

Obsidian Systems at MuniHac

Come and join MuniHac this year! Ryan Trinkle will present the session 'React + Reflex: Harmonizing TypeScript and Haskell with Functional Reactive Programming' Obsidian Systems specializes in fullstack and web products, offering out-of-the-box solutions to clients. During MuniHac, Ryan Trinkle from our company will present how

Haskell: How a Lazy Language Was Put to Work (Part Three)

Haskell: How a Lazy Language Was Put to Work (Part Three)

>Welcome to the third part of our series on the history of the Haskell language. To ensure a truly comprehensive understanding, we strongly encourage you to explore the previous chapters of this enthralling series: Part 1: The Outline - Beginnings (1990 - 2000) Part 2: Haskell and the Rise of Functional

Fintech Trends Worth Following in 2023 and Beyond

Fintech Trends Worth Following in 2023 and Beyond

Fintech faces many challenges right now. Changes caused by post-pandemic events, supply chain fractures, and political conflicts reshaped consumers' behavior and the market in general. All the events and changes are reflected in the bespoke solutions of Fintech. By creating trends and building future-ready solutions, Fintech companies

Accessing the Software Heritage Archive via the InterPlanetary FileSystem

Building Your Product

Accessing the Software Heritage Archive via the InterPlanetary FileSystem

Building a bridge to disseminate the Software Heritage archive over IPFS. Software Heritage is a non-profit initiative with a mission to preserve open source software code. It houses the largest public archive of software source code in the world. IPFS, developed by Protocol Labs, provides a decentralized, peer-to-

Why Organizations Pick Haskell and Why You Should Care

Why Organizations Pick Haskell and Why You Should Care

Haskell: Like a Steak in a Hot Dog 1 Since 1990 and beyond Haskell attracts students, researchers, and passionate engineers, thanks to its maturity and vibrant community who are deeply involved in various opensource projects and its gift economy approach. It welcomes those new to functional programming or those who

How Obsidian Systems Builds Products

How Obsidian Systems Builds Products

For almost a decade, we’ve shaped our unique modus operandi to deliver great products to our customers with shorter timelines and smaller budgets, and we guarantee to lead an idea from plan to prototype in only ten weeks. This post is an overview of our workflow. How it started

Tools to Build your Remote Workplace

Tools to Build your Remote Workplace

What tools do we use for our digital office? In 2020, many teams went remote. Obsidian Systems has chosen to remain remote. We are a fully remote, distributed team with more than thirty members, and we know how to operate effectively. Remote offices are not a fad: Atlassian and Stack

The art of MVP. A successful way to build a product

entrepreneurship

The art of MVP. A successful way to build a product

To build a successful business it is not enough to be quick to market, you also need to be able to iterate and adapt quickly. The MVP approach could be described as “Release early, and release often!” Being able to iterate quickly saves both money and time as it lets

Seven GUIs in reflex-vty, Part 2: The Temperature Converter

Seven GUIs in reflex-vty, Part 2: The Temperature Converter

7GUIs defines seven tasks that represent typical challenges in GUI programming -- 7GUIs: A GUI Programming Benchmark 7GUIs is a set of 7 typical GUI programming tasks of varying levels of complexity. We're going to implement the 7GUIs in Haskell using the reflex functional reactive programming framework. The structure

How to Choose the Right Software Consultancy for Your Project

Building Your Product

How to Choose the Right Software Consultancy for Your Project

A Short Checklist for Every Entrepreneur A brilliant business idea, which might change the market, needs an exemplary implementation. Depending on your background, that could be a task for a technology partner who would build the software product and enable you to enter the market with your new solution. When

Building a Haskell CRUD stack with Obelisk for PowerZonePack

Building a Haskell CRUD stack with Obelisk for PowerZonePack

There isn't an abundance online of writing about successful, reliable, and reproducible CRUD stacks for Haskell developers. We wanted to add to the amount of explanation available, using by example the practical context of our work with PowerZonePack, or PZP. PZP is a group of Peloton users who

CI / BC in Nix

What roles do continuous integration and binary caches play in software development? How does Nix facilitate their implementation? What are continuous integration and binary caching? Continuous integration (CI) is the automation of testing, debugging, and merging when a change is upstreamed to a development team's codebase. It prioritizes

Alamgu: The Rust Ledger Platform

Alamgu: The Rust Ledger Platform

Alamgû (Akkadian) n.: engraver of seals The Beginning Lately, across ecosystems, more blockchain protocols are allowing security-minded users to store their private keys offline, on hardware devices. The leading hardware wallets are the Ledger devices, for which we have been developing applications that expand the range of Ledger-compatible