Meeting summary: Monero Research Lab, 10 August 2022

This is a comprehensive summary, with added reference links, of the MRL meeting¹ from August 10th 2022, 1700 UTC.

Logs

The raw, unedited, full log file for this meeting:

220810-mrl.log (62 lines)

Summary

Note: it is possible that some relevant information may be missing from this summary; read the full log file for the complete, unedited discussion.

• Participants: 6 (UkoeHB², dangerousfreedom³, rbrunner⁴, tevador⁵, Rucknium⁶, jberman⁷)

• (1) Updates

  • (1.1) on cryptography libraries and Monero addressing schemes:

  • tevador published their X25519⁸ code and was planning to update the JAMTIS⁹ specs

  • (1.2) on Seraphis¹⁰:

  • UkoeHB reported finishing the legacy balance recovery for their Seraphis library and started unit testing it

  • (1.3) on statistical analysis / OSPEAD¹¹:

  • Rucknium published an analysis of the evolution of the distribution of spent output age on BTC, BCH, LTC, and DOGE¹²’¹³

  • (1.4) on zero knowledge schemes:

  • dangerousfreedom reported reading about different zero knowledge schemes and started scanning the blockchain (BP and so forth) in Rust

  • (1.5) on the HF¹⁴:

  • jberman was monitoring PR reviews, pool updates and other related things, to make sure the hard fork goes smooth

• (2) Open discussions

  • (2.1) on Rucknium’s research post¹²:

  • rbrunner and tevador appreciated Rucknium’s article as interesting and an excellent write-up

  • Rucknium was getting ready to finish the documentation for the chart and concluded that the “dynamic risk” for a static Monero decoy selection algorithm would be higher if Monero’s distribution is similarly unstable

  • (2.1) on mining pool centralization issues and MineXMR closure¹⁵:

  • Rucknium was keen on eventually resuming research efforts to estimate the effect of minexmr’s increased pool fee on their share of hashpower, although preliminary results suggested very little effect, if any

  • Rucknium also suggested that the Monero community should put in more effort into trying to resolve the challenges of tevador’s anti-pool [Pro-p2pool] proposal¹⁶

  • (2.2) on Seraphis¹⁰

  • dangerousfreedom offered to help UkoeHB develop the wallet so we could have a working full prototype asap; UkoeHB suggested dangerousfreedom could start by looking at unit tests and get an understanding how the library is put together

  • (2.3) on JAMTIS⁹

  • tevador was looking to remove “certified addresses” from the main specs and shared some proposed changes to the Jamtis key hierarchy¹⁷

Let me know if you find this kind of report helpful.

Feedback, edits always welcome @/about.

-3RA