Hey everyone,

EDIT: Version is now **0.0.10**. Emergency hotfix for broken permlinks.

Today, I'm happy to announce a new release for **`hive-nectar`**, which is now at version **0.0.9**. This update focuses on improving the reliability and intelligence of how the library handles Hive nodes. Plus, I took the opportunity to clean up a lot of minor linting errors that were annoying me. A clean codebase is a happy codebase!

![v0.0.9 Dist Created](https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/thecrazygm/Eo43sg8uWm9PC7XpYDRnGwiHq3UnQZnVHf8epibWyGLPSuCRavce9LE4DXsGEGWnYyp.png)

The core of this update is a significant refactor of the `update_nodes` function within the `NodeList` class. This is the part of the library responsible for finding and maintaining a list of healthy, fast nodes to connect to.

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#### What's New in Node Handling?

Previously, the logic for updating the node list was a bit scattered. Now, it's much smarter and more authoritative.

- **A Single Source of Truth:** The `update_nodes` function now gets its authoritative list of nodes and performance data directly from the `json_metadata` of the `@nectarflower` account. This ensures it's always working with the most current and accurate report.
- **Smarter Scoring:** Instead of calculating scores locally, the function now directly uses the `weighted_score` provided in the report for ranking nodes. Any nodes not in the report have their scores zeroed out, so they don't interfere with the official ranking.
- **Dynamic Node Discovery:** The library now dynamically adds new nodes it finds in the report, even if they weren't in the original hard-coded list. This includes nodes that are known to be failing, which are correctly added with a score of -1 to avoid being used. This ensures the node list is always complete and up-to-date.
- **Cleaner Code:** A lot of unused fallback paths and redundant code were removed to make the logic leaner and easier to maintain.

These changes mean that any application using `hive-nectar` will be much more resilient and intelligent when connecting to the Hive blockchain. It will automatically favor the best-performing nodes and avoid ones that are down or struggling, leading to a faster and more reliable experience for the end-user.

This is an important step forward for the library, and I'm excited to get these improvements out there.

EDIT: <https://github.com/TheCrazyGM/hive-nectar>

As always,
Michael Garcia a.k.a. TheCrazyGM