In Symbol, it's possible to store a PDF document on chain and then randomly access its pages. In this article, we'll build a proof of concept that illustrates how this could work. In order to showcase the key usage of Symbol, we will make some simplifications around the handling of PDF documents. The trade-off of the simplifications is additional data bloat written to the blockchain.

In Symbol, voting and harvesting need to be sufficiently decentralized in order for the network to be resilient to attacks. In this article, we review current network statistics to determine the actual decentralization of harvesting and voting power.

In Symbol, it's possible to create mosaics that can only be sent between preapproved accounts. The key feature that enables this is mosaic restrictions. In this article, we'll explore how to use this feature to restrict a mosaic to only accounts that have passed KYC.

Symbol has four types of key link transactions - Account, Node, Voting and VRF. Each of these has a different purpose, but each effectively creates a commitment on chain by preregistering a supplemental key with an account. They can be standalone transactions or embedded in aggregate transactions. For a deeper understanding of transactions, it's recommended to read Chapter 6 of the Symbol Technical Reference.

Toshi recently wrote another article about extending the mosaic plugin to support mosaic levies. He did a very good job again! Let's look at what he did and see if we can make any improvements.

In Symbol, the global blockchain state is stored in one or more caches. There are some core caches, but other caches can be added via the plugin system. The cache implementations are template-heavy, so they can be a bit confusing to understand. Let's examine the Mosaic Cache to understand how they work!

Toshi recently wrote an article about extending the mosaic plugin to support mosaic levies. He did a very good job, but had a few unresolved questions. Let's look at what he did and try to answer them!

Symbol transfer transactions are used to send mosaics and/or messages from one account to another. They can be standalone transactions or embedded in aggregate transactions. For a deeper understanding of transactions, it's recommended to read Chapter 6 of the Symbol Technical Reference.

Toshi recently wrote an article about the transfer transaction plugin. He did a very good job, but had a few unresolved questions. Let's answer them!

Symbol Shoestring is the successor to Symbol Bootstrap. It is strongly recommended to use Shoestring for all new node deployments. Bootstrap is no longer supported and might stop working in the future.

One of the few NEM features that was not completely migrated to Symbol is the Mosaic Levy. But, did you know you can use Symbol's features to approximate a mosaic levy? Read on to find out how!

The Symbol Python SDK supports sending Symbol transactions. In this guide, we're going to look into how to send transactions asynchronously using only the SDK and aiohttp. We'll write a function that can be used to easily send a transaction to the network given a transaction descriptor.

The Symbol Python SDK supports sending NEM transactions. In this guide, we're going to look into how to send transactions asynchronously using only the SDK and aiohttp. We'll write a function that can be used to easily send a transaction to the network given a transaction descriptor.

Is Python your language of choice? Do you have dreams about the Symbol Python SDK? Would you like to get the most out of your Python projects? If so, read on for some quick tips. 👇

Transcript of talk given (virtually) at Xymposium 2023 in Tokyo, Japan. Discusses some of the motivations for Symbol (and NEM). Provides an overview of the architecture of the Catapult client.

If you've used Symbol for any length of time or poked around its configuration files, you've probably come across the term "extension". What is an extension and what can you do with them? 🤔 This is the first part in a series of articles to help you understand extensions and eventually build your own.

This article is a continuation of the previous article in this series. If you have not already read that article, you should read it first, and we'll be here waiting for you! One of the limitations of that article is that we omitted proper certificate verification using ssl.CERT_NONE. That setting allowed the python code to connect to a Symbol node without first verifying its certificate chain. In this article, we'll implement the proper certificate verification.

This guide will explore calling basic catapult client C++ functions from Python using cffi. This is an advanced topic, but it opens up a wide range of possibilities. With a little work, Python applications can access functionality already implemented in the catapult client but not in the SDKs - for example VRFs.

This guide will walk through the changes required to fork the catapult client by using the recent 1.0.3.4 fork as an example. The specific fix in that fork will not be covered in detail because this guide is meant to be descriptive of common changes required for all or most forks.

Throughout Symbol's development, we've used a large number of different languages. As part of regrouping and turning the ship, we've decided to cut back on the number of primary languages. Some choices will be less surprising than others. We hope this will facilitate hiring and improve intra-organizational mobility. We want to tear down those walls, Mr. Gorbachev!

In the previous article, we looked at adding a simple transaction to Catapult. That will provide some additional context to this post, so you should read it if you haven't already! 🤓 In that article you might have seen some terms like Notification, Observer, Validator (oh my!) and wondered what they mean. Now, we're going to dive into each of these concepts in more detail and learn how Catapult actually transfers tokens from one account to another.

If you've been around Symbol for a few months, you might remember the Cyprus fork. As part of that fork, a new MosaicSupplyRevocationTransaction was added to the protocol. Have you ever wondered what client changes were required to add that new functionality? Well, you're in luck because we're going to go over them here! 😄

Symbol was designed from the start to be a heterogeneous network of nodes. When designing and building Symbol, we expected peer nodes to be the backbone of the network with some api and dual nodes sprinkled in and operated by our biggest supporters, service providers and exchanges. Instead, what happened was quite different.