# Dev Update 2 November 2026

**URL:** <https://talk.neptune.cash/t/dev-update-2-november-2026/422>\
**Category:** News and Announcements\
**Created:** [November 2, 2026, 12:13pm UTC](https://talk.neptune.cash/t/dev-update-2-november-2026/422 "2026-11-02T12:13:34Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![aszepieniec](https://talk.neptune.cash/user_avatar/talk.neptune.cash/aszepieniec/32/5_2.png) [@aszepieniec](https://talk.neptune.cash/u/aszepieniec)\
**Post date:** [November 2, 2026, 12:13pm UTC](https://talk.neptune.cash/t/dev-update-2-november-2026/422/1 "2026-11-02T12:13:34Z")

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# Dev Update: November 2, 2026

## 1. Last Week by the Numbers

- [neptune-core](https://github.com/Neptune-Crypto/neptune-core/pulse)
  - Issues: 2 raised, 0 closed
  - Pull Requests: 1 opened, 2 merged
  - Commits: 14 merged into master

- [triton-vm](https://github.com/TritonVM/triton-vm/pulse)
  - Pull Requests: 0 opened, 1 merged
  - Commits: 6 merged into master

- [twenty-first](https://github.com/Neptune-Crypto/twenty-first/pulse)
  - Pull Requests: 0 opened, 1 merged
  - Commits: 10 merged into master

## 2. Stand-up Summary

- Alan Szepieniec
  - Last Week: attend discussions on the post-quantum transition, privacy mechanisms, and network issues. Evaluated decentralized finance (DeFi) trading architectures for time-locked Neptune coins, weighing bearer asset designs against protocol hard fork designs.
  - Coming Week: Accelerate commit velocity on the DeFi branch now that desktop access is restored.

- Thorkil Værge
  - Last Week: Optimized the x \mapsto x^7 operation in Triton VM by deferring intermediate modulo operations; implemented AVX-512 instructions accelerating hashing rates by 25% on Zen 4 and 40% on Zen 5 processors (reducing canonical proving benchmarks from 14.5s to 14.0s and increasing guessing rates by 40%); resolved three major stability issues on the epsilon branch following an audit report.
  - Coming Week: Review audit report to extract relevant findings, update the epsilon branch with these improvements, and activate/merge the epsilon branch at block height ~~**61,600**~~ **62,000**.

## 3. Technical Discussion

- **Triton VM Arithmetic & Hashing Optimizations:** Proving performance and instruction throughput saw notable gains through algebraic and vectorization improvements. Optimizing the x \mapsto x^7 computation by delaying intermediate modulo operations, combined with AVX-512 vector instruction support, boosted hashing rates by 25% on Zen 4 and 40% on Zen 5 microarchitectures. This reduced canonical benchmark proving time from 14.5 seconds down to 14.0 seconds (a 6% proving acceleration). Additionally, Triton VM guessing rates increased by 40%, directly helping mitigate testnet mining centralization.
- **Epsilon Branch Stabilization & Report Integration:** Three critical stability bugs on the epsilon branch were resolved. With the delivery of the report from the LLM-assisted soundness evaluation, findings are being analyzed and integrated to ensure full cryptographic and protocol soundness ahead of deployment. Activation is on track for block height ~~61,600~~ 62,000 within the next week.
- **DeFi Architecture & Bearer Asset Mechanics:** Insights from Bitcoin Research Week informed ongoing designs for decentralized finance on Neptune Cash. The team analyzed methods for trading time-locked Neptune coins via tradable bearer assets, which eliminates dependency on coinbase inputs but carries the trade-off of constraining experimental flexibility. In contrast, dedicated hard fork architectures would streamline DeFi primitives natively, though at the cost of managing broader system-wide transition fallout.

## 4. Updates and Announcements

- Epsilon activation is scheduled to deploy at block height ~~61,600~~ 62,000 within the next week.