Logs for the Monero Research Lab Meeting Held on 2019-07-08
Surae work, Sarang work, and miscellaneous
dev diaries
crypto
research
el00ruobuob / sarang
Logs
<sarang> Righto, let's begin our meeting! <sarang> Agenda: https://github.com/monero-project/meta/issues/368 <sarang> Starting now with GREETINGS <sarang> hi <sgp_> Hi <sarang> suraeNoether: you here? <sarang> It's quiet... too quiet... <suraeNoether> yes <suraeNoether> sorry <suraeNoether> hellow gents <suraeNoether> harrow <sarang> Let's jump into ROUNDTABLE then, with our small crowd <suraeNoether> mine is going to be super fast: last week basically right after the research meeting i started getting very ill. long story short, i went to the hospital, and let me just say: recreational pancreatitis is not a thing for a reason <sarang> but it'd be a cool name for a band <suraeNoether> yes. yes. *strokes chin* <suraeNoether> so, i'm trying to take it easy and i did very little this past week <sarang> Glad to see you're well enough to debug :) <sarang> For me, MLSAG/CLSAG verification updates continue, with PR 5707 open for review and similar changes to my CLSAG branch (to be included in later code for review) <suraeNoether> i have a few things on my plate for today, but other than that: i'm basically all action items and no progress compared to last week. onto sarang :D <sarang> I've been in contact with Aram, the author of the Lelantus paper/protocol; he came up with an interesting idea to make the prover very efficient, at the cost of proof size and verification <sarang> although the verification cost can be batched, of course <sarang> I view proving time as generally unimportant (to an extent), but it's a very clever new way to prove a 1-of-N zero commitment <suraeNoether> good prover times means fast construction of transaction for mobile devices <suraeNoether> which is v nice <sarang> true <sarang> but if it costs you both space and verification time... <suraeNoether> unlike, say, verification time, which puts a constraint on how rapidly the network can grow, which has security consequences for the chain <suraeNoether> ^ ah yeah that's true: is it faster with a big space tradeoff? <sarang> Faster prover, slower verifier, bigger proof <sarang> I think you can batch away some of the verification increase (you effectively do two smaller proofs) <sarang> There's a non-public draft writeup already, but I assume he'll work it into the main paper once the modified security proofs are complete <suraeNoether> oooof <suraeNoether> very interesting consequences <sarang> Regardless, it's a damn clever construction <suraeNoether> i'm excited to read all about it <sarang> I'll ask if I can send it to you suraeNoether (not public though, sorry) <sarang> I'm investigating a possible modification to Omniring that splits out the range proofs, improving verification batching at the cost of proof size <sarang> And, because of the Omniring non-batching currently available, am revisiting analysis of RCT3 <sarang> Which, while it would require a separate output pool (non-compatible key image structure), does allow for batching of proofs (aside from ring member group elements, which cannot be batched unless reused) <suraeNoether> last we spoke about this, we were still interested in writing up a comparison paper, but you've done all the legwork on it so far <suraeNoether> still the plan? <sarang> I don't consider a formal paper necessary, or even a great use of time <sarang> But analyses of spacetime, totally <suraeNoether> fair, maybe we can do a blog post on tradeoffs between the three schemes or something <sarang> Maybe, but it gets subtle and complex really quickly under many different assumptions <sarang> There isn't really a quick-and-dirty soundbite answer to which is better or worse <sarang> Depends heavily on input/output structure, use of fixed epochs, batch behavior, etc. <sarang> and output pool migration is nontrivial <sarang> Omniring would _not_ require this... Lelantus and RCT3 would <sarang> (or rather, Omniring does not _require_ this) <suraeNoether> see... when you say all that, it seems like it *is* a good use of time. maybe not high priority, but <sarang> A comparison is useful, I agree. But I don't want it to get lost in unnecessary formality of a full paper <sarang> And a comparison is exactly what I'm doing <sarang> Any questions on these topics? <sgp_> Just a comment to say simple comparisons are good <sarang> roger <sarang> Does anyone else have research topics of interest to share? <sarang> Righto! <nioc> suraeNoether: people are wondering what the attendance was at konferenco <sarang> At least provide a range proof <moneromooo> 26 people and 172 sybils. <nioc> an article in coindesk mentioned 75 which I know is way low <suraeNoether> nioc: i'm finishing up my post-mortem report on the konferenco today (on my action item list). We had 150 swag bags made, with around 30-40 leftover, but we had 27 speakers and like 10 sponsors. <nioc> I estimated 120 just by glancing <suraeNoether> 75 is the number i gave coindesk for the number of attendees on Saturday morning, but more people bought tickets on both days and the totals were higher <suraeNoether> if you count speakers and sponsors, that's around 110 on the first day, and around 125 the second <nioc> think you mran Sunday morning <nioc> mean <suraeNoether> nope, we sold tickets throughout the afternoon on saturday and a few on sunday too. but coindesk asked for a comment on saturday morning, so i told them what i had sold at that point <nioc> I'll wait for the report <suraeNoether> k <nioc> thx <sarang> suraeNoether: congratulations on effectively committing yourself to running a kickass conference annually until the end of time =p <suraeNoether> it was actually some of the best days of my life, but i've been told explicitly by my doctors that i need to take a vacation <suraeNoether> so i'm planning for that in august, since scary cardio and internal medicine people told me so with stern voices <sarang> Well then, let's move on to ACTION ITEMS <sarang> I have many things in progress. Lelantus proof review, modified Omniring split proof analysis, RCT3 analysis, and starting to put together my defcon talk/workshop <suraeNoether> my action items: konferenco post mortem, research report for previous quarter, funding request for the next 3 months, and some debuggin <sarang> I'm doing a talk on transaction protocols (very high level), a workshop on simple cryptographic constructions with Python, and a panel discussion at the blockchain village <suraeNoether> oh and i'm definitely not going to defcon this year. i can ship leftover swag like our USB data blockers with the monero logo and our pull-up banners if someone sends me the information for it <sarang> :( <sarang> The pull-up banners would be nice, assuming it's cheaper to ship than to get new ones <sarang> as would the USB blockers <suraeNoether> i'll look into it; ordering the usb blockers may be short notice but i can find out <suraeNoether> unless you just meant shipping the banners <suraeNoether> which is cool too <sarang> Yeah I meant the banners <sarang> I believe there was an idea to perhaps order more blockers for this (I'm not the one to ask) <sarang> If you have extra USB blockers and would ship with the banners, cool <suraeNoether> fantastic, i am happy folks liked the blockers <sarang> Any last questions or comments before we formally adjourn, since agenda topics have been completed? <sarang> Going once <sarang> twice <sarang> adjourned! <sarang> Thanks to everyone for attending; logs will be posted shortly on the github issue