Meeting summary: Monero Research Lab, 19 June 2024

This is a comprehensive summary, with added reference links, of the MRL meeting¹ from June 19th 2024, 1700 UTC.

Logs

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

240619-mrl.log (81 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: 10 (rucknium², isthmus³, rbrunner⁴, k​ayabanerve⁵, vtnerd⁶, spackle⁷, jberman⁸, e​msczkp⁹, 0​xfffc¹⁰, a​aron¹¹)

• (1) Updates

  • isthmus was working on their library for detecting a particular anomaly created by some non-wallet2 codebase that caches decoys and reuses them¹²

  • r​ucknium created a Shiny app to collect and display stressnet data¹³, set up a stressnet explorer¹⁴ and wrote a transaction spamming script

  • jberman was still working on the fcmp trim_tree algo implementation

  • k​ayabanerve presented at Monerokon¹⁵ and had an update on the Veridise audit¹⁶

  • vtnerd finished stress testing LWS remote scanning and found one outstanding bug report that was unrelated to remote scanning¹⁷; he was also working on updating the serialization code and was planning to reduce the PR in order to attract more reviews

  • e​msczkp was working on the implementation of the compressed sigma-ipa and compared it with bp ipa

• (2) Open discussions

  • (2.1) on ‘Stress testing monerod’¹⁸:

    • r​ucknium shared a link to Boog900’s Monero Stress Testing Tools¹⁹ after noting that the node died earlier: xmrblocks uses more RAM and CPU than I expected

    • r​ucknium invited Monero protocol developers who want to test performance patches to sync a node to stressnet: It’s a good time now to test. AFAIK we want to run stressnet for about two months.²⁰

    • rbrunner was wondering if there are any plans for coordinated spamming

      • rucknium replied that the spam timing will be loosely coordinated

  • (2.2) on ‘Potential measures against a black marble attack’²¹:

    • rucknium didn’t have anything to add to this agenda item: I think I will have the update that gives Alice a budget constraint by next meeting.

  • (2.3) on ‘Pre-Seraphis Full-Chain Membership Proofs’ research²²:

    • k​ayabanerve announced that Veridise has completed a proof of the divisor technique and was hoping to have a quote for the review of the proofs by next meeting

      • a​aron was interested if that was publicly available; k​ayabanerve replied that he will share it ideally in a few days as soon as he gets the final PDF or their confirmation that the one thus far shared is okay to publish

    • e​msczkp stated that their implementation was showing a 50% optimization on verification times compared to the BP’s IPA

      • k​ayabanerve asked for a link and wanted to find out if e​msczkp was intending to delaying the verification to a final multiexp

      • e​msczkp posted a link to the IV-IPA public repository²³ and replied that they haven’t implemented the multi-exp version yet and was working on it

      • a​aron was wondering if this approach was formalized anywhere; r​ucknium and e​msczkp confirmed and pointed to the relevant research paper: Scala, E., & Mostarda, L. 2024, Efficient inner-product argument from compressed $sigma$-protocols and applications²⁴

      • k​ayabanerve was ready to move to auditing after disclosing that he has been soliciting review of the GBP proofs for a week or so: There’s one candidate in mind so I’m hoping that works out. Else, it’ll be another candidate spread, likely Goodell and one or two other groups.

      • aaron confirmed to kayabanerve that the report made available at the CS repository should be fine for review by anyone interested²⁵ and that they did reach out to the original authors in early May, but did not hear back

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

Feedback, edits always welcome @/about.

-3RA