diff --git a/_posts/2019-02-12-2018-year-in-review.md b/_posts/2019-02-12-2018-year-in-review.md index 51b6e4c7..62f9892e 100644 --- a/_posts/2019-02-12-2018-year-in-review.md +++ b/_posts/2019-02-12-2018-year-in-review.md @@ -17,8 +17,6 @@ Second, two critical vulnerabilities were discovered in the client. The [the mul A third obstacle involved Monero forks (such as Monero Original and Monero Classic) retaining the transaction output (TXO) set, jeopardizing the privacy of Monero users. For example, if Alice spends her output on the Monero Classic chain with ring A, B, C, D, E (where A is the real input) and thereafter spends the same output on the Monero chain with ring A, F, G, H, I (where, again, A is the real input), an observer could reasonably infer (by analyzing both chains) that A was the input being spent, i.e., the real input. Now, if another user used Alice's output A as a decoy output, their privacy was weakened, as the output was, due to Alice's behavior, rendered obsolete as decoy. Fortunately, the Monero developers added several mitigations (for example, a user now has an option to reuse their ring), rendering aforementioned analysis mostly obsolete. In addition, the user can utilize a special tool which ensures no provably spent outputs (e.g. Alice's output in previous example) are used as decoy outputs. This significantly reduced the impact of key image reusage, for example, in the event of a Monero user claiming their Monero Classic. Subsequent research by Justin Ehrenhofer confirmed their effectiveness. -In December, the state of Kovri was thrown into question. The main contributor expressed their interest to move onto another project, and Kovri has fallen behind other related projects. It is unlikely that the Monero daemon or wallets will use Kovri in the foreseeable future. Users will nevertheless be able to test out Tor and i2p support (using i2p-zero or i2p-java) with the upcoming 0.14.1 release. - # Fundamental The most significant fundamental improvement of the year was Bulletproofs. Bulletproofs, which were successfully audited by two renowned security firms ([Kudelski](https://research.kudelskisecurity.com/2018/07/23/audit-report-of-moneros-bulletproofs-integration/) and [Quarkslab](https://blog.quarkslab.com/security-audit-of-monero-bulletproofs.html)) and one independent researcher (Benedikt Bünz, the lead author of the Bulletproof's paper), are a type of range proofs that are substantially more efficient than the now-deprecated Borromean range proofs. Range proofs ensure (with clever mathematics) that a malicious attacker cannot inflate the coin supply by sending a negative amount of money, leaving themselves with a positive balance.