Neptune and Triton Dev Update
1. Last Week by the Numbers
neptune-core
- Issues: 1 raised
- Pull Requests: 5 opened, 2 merged
- Commits: 3 merged into master
triton-vm
- Pull Requests: 1 merged
- Commits: 4 merged into master
twenty-first
- Commits: 1 merged into master
2. Stand-up Summary
Ferdinand Sauer
- Last Week: Released a WebAssembly 32-compatible version of Triton VM, which involved rewriting Git history and updating the internal libraries. Scrutinized the Zero Knowledge upgrade.
- Coming Week: Finalizing the merge of the ZK branch. Evaluating VM priorities to determine whether to focus on Tip 10 or to develop specialized instructions to accelerate the recursive verifier.
Alan Szepieniec
- Last Week: Reviewed the “secret addresses” pull request and identified design trade-offs between two distinct use cases. Evaluated the security properties of XORing the hash of the shared value with a hash derived from the address to determine its necessity in formal security proofs.
- Coming Week: Continuing the architectural review of the two candidate address formats once optimizations are proposed.
Thorkil Værge
- Last Week: Investigated balance discrepancies between Neptune Core and Neptune Wallet caused by missing non-standard methods for identifying UTXOs. Developed the “elliptic curve hybrid” address format aiming for short, quantum-secure addresses under 256 characters.
- Coming Week: Refactoring secret addresses to create two optimized candidate formats. Programming functionality in Neptune Wallet to import incoming randomness files and encrypted off-chain announcements to achieve parity with the core account system. Providing technical support to external developers starting Wednesday.
3. Technical Discussion
Triton VM Zero Knowledge Proof Track & Version 4
Discussions clarified that while current released versions (2 and 3) do not feature provable Zero Knowledge, a tweak to the proof system that comes with a proof of the ZK property is currently contained within a dedicated branch. This implementation introduces a novel mathematical approach involving randomization of the quotient table. This feature is slated to be standard in the next breaking release of Triton VM (i.e., v4.0.0). To further accelerate the recursive verifier, development focus is shifting toward assessing specialized instruction sets versus Tip 10 integration to yield the highest performance gains.
Address Format Optimizations
The “secret addresses” pull request underwent review, revealing that the current iteration sits as a middle-ground compromise between two separate use cases without being optimized for either. The team decided to branch this into two distinct candidate formats to establish true baseline performance characteristics for further review.
Concurrently, work advanced on the “elliptic curve hybrid” address format. This format leverages elliptic curves to deliver compact addresses, ensuring an attacker would require both explicit knowledge of the target address and a quantum computer to deanonymize a transaction. A strict engineering constraint has been set to keep these address lengths under 256 characters.
Neptune Wallet Balance Synchronization
To resolve known balance synchronization issues between Neptune Core and Neptune Wallet, the wallet architecture is being updated. The wallet previously lacked non-standard methods for identifying incoming unspent transaction outputs (UTXOs). The engineering team is actively implementing features to allow the wallet to import incoming randomness and parse encrypted off-chain announcements directly.
4. Updates and Announcements
- Release Announcement: Triton VM has officially released a WebAssembly 32-compatible version, expanding cross-platform compatibility and integration paths for developers.