The first .bch page now opens with zero user-visible latency and stays fresh
for as long as the browser runs. Four sources conspire in parallel — none of
them can block a navigation:
1. Warm start from disk (sync)
warmFromSnapshot loads the user-cache snapshot first, then falls back to
the copy bundled with the build. sharedIndex is set BEFORE the first
navigation can even fire.
2. Continuous background delta refresh (every 30 s)
startBnsPolling opens one electrum connection, fetches the beacon
history (a single call), and only pulls verbose tx bodies for txids we
don't already have — mergeFreshHistory-style. Merges into memory,
rebuilds the index locally, persists the enlarged snapshot to disk.
Turns a ~60 s full walk into ~1 s per new event.
3. Sia snapshot pull on boot (one-shot, wins the NEXT boot)
refreshSnapshotFromSia downloads the operator's published snapshot from
s3.silentmode.st for the next launch. After a long idle period the
browser resumes from that fresher snapshot instead of walking days of
events.
4. ensureIndex full-walk fallback
Still runs on boot for the case where there's no bundled snapshot AND
the poll hasn't landed yet — very first launch, offline install, etc.
resolveHost now prefers sharedIndex (which the poll keeps live) and, on a
miss with a stale index, triggers pollAndMerge (delta fetch) instead of
ensureIndex (full walk). The old full-walk fallback is only taken if the
delta primitives aren't available (running against an older resolver-web).
Argus/src/lib/resolver-web.js exports connectElectrum so the Theseus poll
can drive its own ad-hoc queries against the pool without duplicating the
Electrum wrapper.
Bundled starter snapshot refreshed: 73 beacon txs, root c37b859682…54e414ba.
Artifacts:
dist-public/TheseusNavigator-Setup-0.0.7.exe (95.4 MB)
sha256 1b0dabcd2b13067aa1fd89c3271708b35ba22dfc7a620e248b35e0487b7a104f
dist-public/TheseusNavigator-0.0.7-portable.exe (92.7 MB)
sha256 706dc01b21a88d3c2fbc3eeced0cab6ace873630bf3edc2d40915ca5be5c8cae
Four independent pieces of one story — make cold-start .bch resolution fast,
survive individual electrum outages, and turn adding a Silent Mode BNS server
into a checklist run.
* Argus/src/lib/snapshot-name.js — pure, interpretation-free snapshot format
for the name beacon (raw history + verbose tx cache + deterministic root).
* Argus/src/publish-name-mirror.mjs — mirror the snapshot to Sia S3
(floating + content-addressed) and Nostr NIP-33 (kind 30078,
d-tag bns-name-list). Same pattern as publish-tld-mirror.mjs.
* Argus/src/snapshot-name-to-file.mjs — dump the snapshot to a file for
bundling. Writes to TheseusNavigator/snapshots/bns-name-snapshot.json.
* Argus/src/lib/resolver-web.js — new export buildIndexFromSnapshot() runs
the same REG/UPD reduction as buildIndex() but from a pre-fetched snapshot,
no electrum required. Warm-start path in Theseus depends on this.
* TheseusNavigator/main.js — warmFromSnapshot() and refreshSnapshotFromSia()
wired into app.whenReady(). First .bch navigation returns from a warm index
instead of waiting on a full electrum walk.
* TheseusNavigator/package.json — bundles the starter snapshot as an
extraResource so packaged builds ship with a floor.
* TheseusNavigator/snapshots/bns-name-snapshot.json — first starter snapshot
(70 beacon txs, root 8cc859aa…).
* VPS/BNS-SERVER-PLAYBOOK.md — turn-key checklist for spinning up a second
or third Silent Mode BNS server, distilled from what actually worked on
the silentmode box (BCHN 29 [chip]-not-[chipnet], multi-beacon indexer,
wss:// nginx, on-chain publish via electrum.bch, common gotchas table).
* Argus/src/register-electrum-list.mjs — publish the current chipnet
server pool as `el` on electrum.bch. Fits inside the 200-byte OP_RETURN
cap by sizing the record (drops fallback IP pins in favour of URL-only
tokens until they fit). NAME was chosen deliberately: two-part `electrum.bch`
normalises to the bare distinct name `electrum`, whereas the earlier
candidate `electrum.silentmode.bch` collapsed to silentmode.bch and would
have inherited/overwritten that name's records.
* Argus/src/revert-silentmode-bch.mjs — one-off recovery from the earlier
register-electrum-list revision that hit exactly that subdomain-collapse
bug (broadcast an UPD to silentmode.bch and clobbered its s3 record).
Records recovered from the local snapshot cache; safe to leave in the
tree as documentation of what happened.
