Last week by the numbers
neptune-core
neptune-proton
tasm-lib
Neptune Happenings
neptune-proton desktop wallet v0.1.1 for Linux and Windows
neptune-proton is a GUI dashboard/wallet for neptune-core from the neptune team. It provides a graphical interface to the wallet that is built into neptune-core.
Linux binaries were released in v0.1.0 followed a few days later by a Windows installer in v0.1.1. A MacOS build should be coming soon, once a camera-capture dependency is replaced.
Work begins on Succinctness
Succinctness promises to be a novel and key feature of the neptune blockchain that enables scalable privacy. At a high level it is a property whereby a neptune light node can verify any given block without requiring all the intervening blocks since genesis. Such light nodes will not need to download the entire blockchain but will still be able to fully verify validity of wallet funds.
@sword-smith has committed himself to the task. It will require implementing all the transaction and block validation logic in triton-asm (tasm).
At this point, it appears it can be implemented without a fork (hard or soft) but the most elegant implementation might necessitate one.
Issue 781 has been opened to track this effort.
Initial Block Download: Parallel Sync
@aszepieniec submitted a draft PR that implements parallel block syncing. This enables neptune-core to request blocks from many peers at once instead of relying on a single peer. The net effect should be to make the sync process both faster and more robust.
Research: Outsourcing of Proof Generation
The network requires that each transaction have a SingleProof before it can be included in a block. Generating these proofs requires a powerful machine. Weaker machines can submit a transaction with a ProofCollection to the network for others to “upgrade” to a SingleProof, for a percentage of the transaction fee.
However some devices are not able to produce even a ProofCollection. Such a transaction has a PrimitiveWitness. This type of transaction cannot be submitted to the network because it would leak privacy.
This week @aszepieniec is meeting with another cryptographer to discuss this problem and investigate how lightweight devices might be able to outsource the work of generating a SingleProof without leaking privacy.
Such a solution would make neptune web wallets and mobile wallets much more practical.
RPC support for independent self-custody wallets merged
PR 777 by @KaffinPX was merged.
This PR is notable because it provides three new json-rpc calls that together enable wallet software clients that manage their own keys to use neptune-core for interacting with the neptune network: identifying incoming payments and sending transactions.
This means that wallets such as VXB should now be able to use the official neptune-core node rather than a customized fork. It thereby opens the door for wallet developers to innovate with web wallets, mobile wallets, multi-account wallets, etc.
Stir and Verifier Rewrite
@jfs reports progress on the Stir project, specifically concerning parameter derivation. This week, he plans to rewrite the Stir verifier to be amenable to TASM translation by changing the pre-processing step that currently uses allocations, which is not ideal for assembly programming.