Add a draft for the quarterly update

quarterly/2023-04-25-consensus.md

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+---
+title: Consensus Quarterly Update
+slug: 2023-04-25-consensus
+authors: dnadales
+tags: [consensus]
+hide_table_of_contents: false
+---
+
+## Consensus Quarterly Update
+## 2023-01 - 2023-03 
+
+### Main achievements
+
+#### UTxO HD
+
+- We finished the testing activities for the prototype, which involved adding
+  new tests, and fixing and enabling temporarily disabled tests.
+- We spent a substantial amount of effort refactoring and cleaning the
+  prototype.
+- We audited the UTxO HD prototype to make sure it can accommodate the migration
+  of additional data from memory to disk. The result of the audit was positive.
+- We ran ad-hoc benchmarks for reading keys and flushing values to disk. No
+  unexpected costs found.
+- We ran the first system level benchmarks. The performance regressions reported
+  were due to an unrealistic snapshotting rate. We need to re-run them again
+  AFTER ... CONDITION?
+
+TODO: we might want to show a plot and-or table with latest ad-hoc benchmarks
+(https://github.com/input-output-hk/ouroboros-network/pull/4295)
+
+#### Genesis
+
+- We elaborated a roadmap of the remaining work for Genesis.
+- We audited the Genesis design with researchers. The design was well received. We
+  updated the Genesis design with the researcher's feedback.
+- We developed quick check property tests for validating the design. 
+- We continued benchmarking CSJ, we found RESULTS? 
+
+#### Support
+
+- We created two new tools. One for dumping CBOR encoded blocks to JSON. Ahother
+  to serve a local immutable DB.
+
+#### Conway era
+
+- We integrated the Conway era into consensus.
+
+#### Technical debt
+
+- We fixed a bug with followers, which was discovered by property tests. 
+- We developed a DSL for specifying and running ChainDB test cases.
+- We fixed failing tests with iterators.
+- We created miro-benchmarks for adding transactions to the mempool.
+
+#### Fostering collaboration 
+
+- We released a new technical documentation site for consensus.
+- We factored out several packages to external repositories. Some of this work
+  originated in the UTxO HD workstream.
+
+### Next steps
+
+#### Fostering collaboration 
+
+- Onboard a new team member.