Meeting summary: Monero Research Lab, 3 May 2023

This is a comprehensive summary, with added reference links, of the MRL meeting¹ from May 3rd 2023, 1700 UTC.

Logs

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

230503-mrl.log (53 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: 7 (UkoeHB², Rucknium³, shalit⁴, vtnerd_⁵, jeffro256⁶, ghostway⁷, kayabanerve⁸)

• (1) Updates

  • (1.1) on Seraphis⁹:

    • UkoeHB finished a draft of the implementing seraphis paper¹⁰

    • ghostway and shalit were both planning to restart their work on Seraphis in 2-3 weeks

  • (1.2) on statistical research:

    • Rucknium was working on their Monerotopia talk (A Statistical Research Agenda for Monero¹¹)

  • (1.3) on the Monero Light Wallet Server¹² and Bulletproofs++¹³:

    • vtnerd_ reported working on LWS unit-tests for webhooks and bp++, but was a little worried that he won’t be able to complete the bp++ code; Rucknium noted that the code implementation can be some time away since BP++ is still yet to be confirmed cryptographically sound

• (2) Open discussions

  • (2.1) on exploring trustless zk-SNARKs for Monero’s payment protocol¹⁴ and Post-Quantum Ring Signatures:

    • Rucknium proposed discussing MRL #100, wondering if any trustless zk-SNARKs are under a bounty program

    • UkoeHB had no comments about the issue

    • jeffro256 thought that the big question was if it would be better to work towards replacing Ed25519 with a prime order curves with Seraphis vs keeping ed25519 with Seraphis and changing the address scheme again later; kayabanerve didn’t see any reason to redo the migration post-Seraphis

    • Rucknium mentioned another less reviewed and battle-tested option, the quantum-resistant ring signatures¹⁵; kayabanerve noted that the main issue with PQ schemes was the lack of composability

    • kayabanerve reiterated that he doesn’t believe tevadors indirect cycle is possible: we have to prove an EC OP on the tower yet membership on the cycle. I’m unsure we can feasibly maintain ZK through that

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

Feedback, edits always welcome @/about.

-3RA