--- layout: post title: Logs for the MRL Meeting Held on 2020-01-29 tags: [dev diaries, crypto, research] author: asymptotically / Sarang --- # Logs **\<sarang\>** Let's go ahead and get started with GREETINGs **\<sarang\>** Hello **\<ArticMine\>** Hi **\<RingSize937\>** v Greetings **\<Isthmus\>** Heyo **\<koe\>** greetings **\<Insight\>** hello **\<atoc\>** Hi **\<sarang\>** Let's continue with ROUNDTABLE, where anyone is welcome to share research topics of general interest (and discuss any questions arising from them) **\<sarang\>** Since there was so much to discuss last week, I'll try to keep the discussion focused to the extent possible, for clarity **\<sarang\>** I have a few brief things to mention **\<sgp\_\>** hello **\<sarang\>** First, I wanted to better understand the effects of including hidden timelocks in CLSAG signatures, and worked up a version of 3-CLSAG in C++ for performance tests **\<sarang\>** Including timelocks would negate the verification time advantages of an MLSAG-CLSAG transition **\<sarang\>** but would still give size benefits over MLSAG **\<sarang\>** A similar approach would work in Triptych, so I extended the Triptych test code to 3-Triptych for this purpose **\<sarang\>** And, just for completeness, updated the Triptych preprint on IACR to a general d-LRS construction **\<sarang\>** Here is the 3-CLSAG test code, for those interested: https://github.com/SarangNoether/monero/commit/db33d18bb889043c4bdea6d8582ffe2f6c581d28 **\<sarang\>** And the 3-Triptych concept code: https://github.com/SarangNoether/skunkworks/commit/f7581a385d72baa3dbb60c83e8d856a9335bec1f **\<sarang\>** And the updated Triptych preprint: https://eprint.iacr.org/2020/018 **\<sarang\>** I also found a very minor change to make in the existing CLSAG test code **\<sarang\>** Finally, suraeNoether and I have been doing more security model stuff **\<sarang\>** Any questions on these items from anyone? **\<koe\>** not directly for sarang, but at Isthmus regarding timelock; what is the prevalence of non-zero timelock for non-coinbase tx? **\<Isthmus\>** Absurdly prevelant **\<koe\>** whether or not to include encrypted time lock depends in part on how much use it actually gets **\<koe\>** used **\<sarang\>** Yeah, and I'm not formally advocating for it at this point; only curious about the implications **\<Isthmus\>** I think our options are to remove the silly timelock field (It's just an arbitrary integer memo field currently) or encrypt it. **\<koe\>** I like that it's a straightforward application of concepts already used in Monero **\<sarang\>** Yeah, conceptually it's really neat **\<Isthmus\>** Will we be the first privacy coin to roll it out? **\<Isthmus\>** I expect that it will become industry standard **\<sarang\>** Does Zcash offer such functionality? **\<sarang\>** (I have not checked) **\<sgp\_\>** no clue **\<Isthmus\>** I don't think so, but not 100% confident **\<ArticMine\>** ZCash has serious scaling issues **\<sarang\>** Anyway, whether or not Zcash does it should not be the determining factor IMO :) **\<sarang\>** Merely curious **\<Isthmus\>** Oh wait. Zcash inherited nLockTime from Bitcoin **\<Isthmus\>** **\<Isthmus\>** I'mma fish out their information leaks too **\<Isthmus\>** And OP\_CLTV **\<sarang\>** If implemented, it would make the most sense to bundle the timelock range proofs with the existing Bulletproofs **\<sarang\>** So this means the sum of timelock-enabled inputs (all inputs, if mandatory) and outputs is restricted **\<koe\>** for Triptych, what are the steps between now and considering it for replacing RingCT? **\<sarang\>** Formal review, a determination about its effects on multisig (particularly on compute-limited hardware), a decision on Triptych vs something like RCT3 **\<sarang\>** I have not yet examined how easy it would be to include timelocks in RCT3 with their security model **\<ArticMine\>** ^ ... and estimated recommended tx size for Triptych **\<sarang\>** Also note that, as I think I mentioned last week, it would not make sense to deploy hidden timelocks with MLSAG due to the poor scaling **\<sarang\>** (though technically possible) **\<koe\>** agreed **\<sarang\>** Anyway, I want to make sure others have time to speak as well **\<sarang\>** Who else wishes to share research topics? **\<Isthmus\>** Zebra network stack looks interesting, potential applications in Monero? **\<sarang\>** I saw that yesterday! **\<sarang\>** Blag post about it: https://www.zfnd.org/blog/a-new-network-stack-for-zcash/ **\<sgp\_\>** cool, will check out **\<sarang\>** And a corresponding forum post (not much activity there yet): https://forum.zcashcommunity.com/t/a-new-network-stack-for-zcash/35870 **\<sarang\>** It's from Zcash Foundation research **\<Isthmus\>** Monero maintains a single state across all the peers, right? **\<sarang\>** That's a good question, and I don't know the answer **\<sgp\_\>** ping vtnerd **\<sarang\>** I had thought so, but not confident in that **\<hyc\>** not even sure what that means. single state? what is included in that state? **\<hyc\>** there is an aggregate state for bandwidth limiting **\<hyc\>** but sync info is per-connection **\<Isthmus\>** Oh so maybe we already take the Zebra approach? **\<Isthmus\>** It seems pretty elegant. **\<sarang\>** Isthmus: did you have other topics you wanted to bring up as well? **\<hyc\>** "Unlike zcashd, which maintains a fixed number of outbound connections, we attempt to connect to as many peers as possible, subject to resource limits " **\<hyc\>** this approach will be troublesome for them, since they use levelDB/rocksDB for storage **\<hyc\>** lvelDB/rocksDB requires thousands of file descriptors for its storage. **\<hyc\>** that competes with the demand for socket descriptors **\<sarang\>** Interesting... worth bringing up as a question on the forum? **\<sarang\>** One of the developers (Henry) opened the thread **\<hyc\>** not from me. I have no interest in helping zcash project **\<sarang\>** ok **\<Isthmus\>** I'm trying to make the unlock time plot, but my laptop is struggling with the 1.5 GB data set **\<hyc\>** they should have already known by now that their DB choice is inappropriate for a network service that uses lots of connections, but it seems they haven't discovered that yet **\<sarang\>** Isthmus: no rush! **\<sarang\>** In the meantime, koe: did you wish to address anything in particular? **\<koe\>** yes muahaha **\<koe\>** not technically research, my roadmap has been cleaned up a bit; in particular I want to get opinions on item koe\_11, which would enable view-only wallets to know when owned outputs have been spent; also item koe\_9 which would allow all wallet implementations to more or less deprecate pre-RingCT transaction versions **\<koe\>** https://www.pdf-archive.com/2020/01/29/moneroroadmapkoe012920/moneroroadmapkoe012920.pdf **\<hyc\>** koe\_11 sounds like a high priority **\<koe\>** also, sarang helped me work up a decentralized CoinJoin-esque protocol (temporarily named JoinMo), which is available as chapter 9 of current ZtM2 draft **\<koe\>** https://www.pdf-archive.com/2020/01/29/zerotomoneromaster-v1-0-21/zerotomoneromaster-v1-0-21.pdf **\<koe\>** chapter 10\* **\<sarang\>** I like the JoinMo approach of using per-participant shared secrets to obscure the input-output mapping **\<koe\>** also, rbrunner at one time investigated OpenBazaar integration, and ran into some roadblocks, so my 'research' has been engineering solutions to those problems, which should be available next week **\<sarang\>** I'm giving extra scrutiny to the specifics around SAG/LSAG since the keys are per-output only **\<sarang\>** I was thinking about the implications of using a separate keyset for inputs as well **\<sarang\>** (keys = per-join participant keys, I mean) **\<koe\>** however, OpenBazaar integration would likely entail a large update to the code-base, to optimize communication rounds **\<koe\>** moreover, multisig in general should be updated to comply with suraeNoether's paper on the subject **\<sarang\>** Yes **\<Isthmus\>** Somewhat related to item 10, I'm still concerned about any blockchain observer being able to identify which transactions do not include any outputs to subaddresses. **\<Isthmus\>** n3ptune and I will make a plot of subaddress adoption over time : -) **\<Isthmus\>** But ideally that should not be possible.3 **\<sarang\>** Also yes :) **\<sarang\>** It's been suggested before to standardize on some form of per-output keys for this purpose **\<sarang\>** but it never gained traction **\<sgp\_\>** koe: nice list! koe\_9 may be controversial since spending pre-rct would stand out more, no? **\<atoc\>** Yeah looks like a nice list koe **\<koe\>** it already stands out like a sore thumb **\<koe\>** but that sort of problem will exist for RingCT as well, since spending ancient outputs is always somewhat unusual **\<koe\>** and my suggestion is to start using pre-ringct outputs as decoys as well **\<hyc\>** If we told everyone to sweep them to themselves, would that also be too obvious? you could assume that every txn with pre-RCT inputs is going back to its sender **\<koe\>** so gamma select over entire site of outputs **\<koe\>** set **\<sgp\_\>** koe: do we currently only select rct randomly as decoys? **\<koe\>** yes, and coinbase (not sure if pre-ringct coinbase are included) **\<koe\>** coinbase are included as decoy in normal tx, which is where this idea comes from **\<sgp\_\>** then this actually makes spending pre-rct slightly less suspicious, no? **\<sarang\>** And the handling of coinbase outputs is by no means solved **\<Isthmus\>** This is 80% a joke: We implement Koe\_9 and sgp\_coinbase\_only rings, \*but\* require each and every one to include N coinbases and M pre-ringCT transactions, for fixed consensus parameters N and M **\<sarang\>** sgp\_: the distribution tail falls fast **\<sgp\_\>** sarang: indeed, but it's near-zero better, not near-zero worse I think **\<sarang\>** Yes, but does provide slightly more information (amount) **\<Isthmus\>** https://usercontent.irccloud-cdn.com/file/R26YQwiJ/image.png **\<Isthmus\>** ^ which is hilarious, because all of these would hypothetically unlock at HEIGHT 2 and HEIGHT 12 back in 2014, IIRC what mooo said **\<sarang\>** Due to the non-standard handling of that field, you mean? **\<sarang\>** (which should be standardized anyway) **\<sgp\_\>** Isthmus: hmm, I would need to see a lot more info on how many people actually spend pre-rct (suspected) compared to coinbase. My intuition leans no **\<ArticMine\>** So include a single pre ring CT fake if the real output is not pre ring ct **\<Isthmus\>** @sarang: Yes, currently, 3 things are being put in the unlock field: **\<Isthmus\>** https://www.irccloud.com/pastebin/0Y87gTTq/ **\<Isthmus\>** Argh sorry **\<Isthmus\>** Small integers like "12", presumably to be interpreted as height differences, i.e. "unlock in 12 blocks" **\<Isthmus\>** Large integers like "1980000", presumably to be interpreted as block heights **\<Isthmus\>** Very large integers like "1578561720", presumably to be interpreted as unix timestamps **\<sarang\>** yup **\<atoc\>** I am working on a first version implementation of xmr-btc atomic swap in Rust **\<atoc\>** more info here: https://github.com/h4sh3d/xmr-btc-atomic-swap/blob/master/whitepaper/xmr-btc.pdf **\<sarang\>** atoc: did you identify a suitable zkp? **\<sarang\>** Aside from things like the handling of non-compliant participants etc., the zkp of hash/log preimage was not specified **\<atoc\>** the paper proposes two transactions for each token **\<sarang\>** yep **\<atoc\>** is there is a zkp not specified I will look at it. So far I have just gotten some initial stuff implemented **\<atoc\>** however I have not gotten to the swap part yet **\<atoc\>** for the implementation, I have read through the paper and it seems sounds **\<atoc\>** sound\* **\<sarang\>** Yeah, you'll notice there's a requirement for a particular proof that a hash preimage and discrete log preimage are equal in equal knowledge **\<sarang\>** Something trustless like Bulletproofs could be used for this, with a suitable circuit **\<atoc\>** I see **\<sarang\>** The BP paper had data on such a circuit, but I was specifically told it was for testing only and was not yet suitable for any kind of deployment **\<atoc\>** I will take a look at that **\<atoc\>** We will need it. Perhaps we can see if that circuit works okay, and if not hopefully we can look at ways to improve. **\<sarang\>** koe: thanks for that roadmap writeup; it's nice to see many suggestions put together in one place **\<sarang\>** It might be useful to open research-lab issues for those that require ongoing discussion **\<sgp\_\>** I still advocate for those two mining pool-related proposals btw :) **\<atoc\>** sarang I send you a link to my repo once I push some changes **\<sarang\>** even though most discussion happens on IRC **\<atoc\>** I will send\* **\<sarang\>** Thanks atoc **\<atoc\>** You can take a look and I would like to get your feedback on it **\<sarang\>** Happy to help **\<sarang\>** Thanks for taking a look at that **\<atoc\>** (y) **\<koe\>** sure I can put on research github; was just wondering if koe\_11 should go on main repo's issues **\<atoc\>** Np, it seems interesting. This week I was just l familiarizing myself with different atomic swap techniques i.e off-chain and on-chain **\<atoc\>** And looking at the dalek library in Rust **\<sarang\>** koe: I'd say anything that requires ongoing unsolved research is definitely suitable for research-lab **\<sarang\>** But I don't dictate the scope of issues! **\<sarang\>** OK, we have about 10 minutes left (there's another meeting taking place at 19:00 UTC for the Konferenco) **\<koe\>** ok can put them up there **\<sarang\>** Any research topics that have not yet been brought up, and should be? **\<atoc\>** sarang btw have you considered publishing your list? **\<sarang\>** Of topics I am personally working on? Not really, it's more to help organize my own work **\<atoc\>** The private list that you had of research topics that need attention. **\<sarang\>** I should open issues for them as well **\<sarang\>** TBH github issues for research are not used as well as they could be **\<atoc\>** Yeah I think it would be could to have a public list to look through as important topics for Monero that need attention **\<sarang\>** Since so much of the discussion happens on IRC in real time **\<atoc\>** yes indeed **\<sarang\>** But at least those issues could be used as a central posting location **\<atoc\>** I currently go back to the logs, but that list was helpful. **\<sarang\>** I don't want people to have to scour IRC logs **\<sarang\>** Sure, I'll make some issues **\<sarang\>** We should clear out old issues as well, or request updates **\<nioc\>** peanut gallery here. Now that suraeNoether 's matching project is complete (?) or nearly so, what is the plan to use it going forward ? **\<atoc\>** 'scouring IRC logs' - story of my life :') **\<sarang\>** nioc: good question for suraeNoether! **\<sarang\>** He has also been working on LRS security models lately **\<sarang\>** (which are a blocker for CLSAG review) **\<sarang\>** OK, let's move to ACTION ITEMS for the time being (discussion can of course continue after we formally adjourn) **\<sarang\>** I am writing up some material on transaction proofs/assertions, and writing up new code for a proposed InProofV2 and OutProofV2 **\<sarang\>** As well as security model updates, some work on proof rewinding for data storage, and some odds and ends **\<sarang\>** Anyone else? **\<atoc\>** my action item: mkW my private .git repo (of atomic swap implemntation) public on Githuv **\<sarang\>** neat **\<atoc\>** Github\* **\<koe\>** my action items: multisig and escrowed-marketplace protocol writeup, possibly start bulletproof study if time permits **\<sarang\>** BPs for the ZtM writeup? **\<Isthmus\>** I want to make a website where you can type in a stealth address (or list of them) and see what future transactions have used them as ring members **\<Isthmus\>** But need a little bit more backend work before that is ready **\<koe\>** at the very least studying it **\<Isthmus\>** I think the concerning part will be seeing the outputs that have been used in no subsequent rings, and thus have a known spend state and no plausible deniable for spendedness **\<sarang\>** Let me know if you have any particular questions that I may be able to answer **\<koe\>** of course :) **\<sarang\>** Any other action items, or final comments before we adjourn? **\<sarang\>** (from anyone) **\<koe\>** actually spoiled my writeup from several months ago in the latest ztm2 draft whoops **\<sarang\>** It's great to see so much research lately into so many different areas of interest from so many people :D **\<sarang\>** Gets tough to keep up with everything **\<sarang\>** Which is a great problem to have, in some sense **\<sarang\>** Anyway, thanks to everyone for attending; we are now adjourned!