Meeting summary: Monero Research Lab, 14 September 2022

This is a comprehensive summary, with added reference links, of the MRL meeting¹ from September 14th 2022, 1700 UTC.

Logs

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

220914-mrl.log (54 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: 9 (dangerousfreedom², one-horse-wagon³, jberman⁴, rbrunner⁵, Rucknium⁶, ajs_⁷, UkoeHB⁸, xmrack⁹, chch3003¹⁰)

• (1) Updates

  • (1.1) on Monero inflation tools¹¹ and Seraphis¹²:

  • dangerousfreedom finished scanning the blockchain: bp and clsag era, using his own Rust tools, and is planning to create auditability proofs to seraphis and help develop a minimum useful seraphis wallet¹³

  • dangerousfreedom confirmed that no new anomalies turned up while scanning, thanks to Bulletproofs

  • (1.2) on statistical analysis / OSPEAD¹⁴:

  • Rucknium included the statement: “I consider exploration of ring classification to be out of scope of this OSPEAD CSS.” into a newly added section on classification of rings by Decoy Selection Algorithm.

  • Rucknium announced that the disclosable part of OSPEAD fully specified plan will be released as soon as the MAGIC Monero Fund campaign¹⁵ to raise funds for mj-xmr’s C++ work for OSPEAD begins, probably next week

  • (1.3) on Monero dev work, Seraphis and Jamtis:

  • jberman was mostly doing dev work for the past week, fixing various bugs¹⁶, and is planning to complete background sync mode next and then prepare to dive into Seraphis/Jamtis¹⁷ along with rbrunner and dangerousfreedom

  • rbrunner invited contributors to join the #no-wallet-left-behind:haveno.network¹⁸ Seraphis/Jamtis project¹⁹ Matrix room

  • UkoeHB continued their work on the Seraphis library²⁰ legacy integration and a non-multisig working demo could be ready by next week

  • (1.4) on Monero’s deterministic build process²¹:

  • one-horse-wagon was intently looking for ways to increase the number of deterministic builders before a code version is released, but concluded that the process cannot be made any more easier

  • (1.5) on Monero Konferenco 2023²² and MRL recruitment:

  • ajs_ and a few others started making plans for MoneroKon 2023 and would like to seek technical co-sponsorship with IEEE Computer Society²³ in an effort to attract more researchers to the conference and help with MRL recruitment efforts²⁴

  • (1.6) on Monero research papers:

  • Rucknium mentioned that xmrack’s Lord of the Rings: An Empirical Analysis of Monero’s Ring Signature Resilience to Artifically Intelligent Attacks (PDF²⁵, report²⁶) MAGIC-funded research paper is making the rounds.

• (2) Open discussions

  • (2.1) on Monero funding systems:

  • Rucknium explained the need for both the CCS²⁷ and MAGIC Grant’s Monero Fund²⁸ to chch3003

  • (2.2) on quantum resistance:

  • one-horse-wagon expressed concerns about the coming era of quantum computers: Big corporations and governments will have them. The MRL will not at least initally.

  • dangerousfreedom thought that quantum computers are so far from being a threat and proposed exploring the algorithms that are in the final phase of NIST; tevador linked to their Zero-cost post-quantum mitigations for Seraphis²⁹ draft

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

Feedback, edits always welcome @/about.

-3RA