Dev Update March 2, 2026

News and Announcements
1

Dev Update | Neptune & Triton Projects

1. Last Week by the Numbers

neptune-core

  • Issues: 3 raised
  • Pull Requests: 1 opened, 2 merged
  • Commits: 3 merged into master

triton-vm

  • Issues: 1 closed
  • Pull Requests: 1 opened, 2 merged
  • Commits: 5 merged into master

2. Stand-up Summary

Alan Szepieniec

  • Last Week: Resolved issues regarding the ZK note to prepare for research outreach. Managed a significant overhaul of the transaction initiation pipeline to support the get balance RPC endpoint, which now allows for arbitrary confirmation depth (N-blocks) filtering of UTXOs.
  • Coming Week: Will focus on further exchange integration endpoints, leveraging the new streamlined pipeline. Plans to coordinate testing for the updated infrastructure and polish and reach out to researchers regarding the ZK note.

Thorkil Schmidiger

  • Last Week: Worked on exchange-related RPC endpoints for neptune-core. Worked out functional requirements in corporation with Alan Szepieniec,Safetrade, and contributor KaffinPX. Implemented three endpoints.
  • Coming Week: Expect to finish work on exchange integration endpoints.

Ferdinand Sauer

  • Last Week: Completed the implementation of the ZK construction code. Addressed a compatibility issue between Triton VM and WASM.
  • Coming Week: n/a

3. Technical Discussion

Exchange Integration

The goal is to allow exchanges to use neptune-core out of the box, without additional modifications. Performance-related issues to facilitate this have been solved on the masterbranch already but have not made it into a release yet. Once the work on endpoints is completed, a new release should be made.

The implementation of the get balance RPC endpoint proved more complex than anticipated. To support requests for balances confirmed at least N blocks deep, the transaction initiation pipeline required a rewrite. The system now effectively tracks and filters the UTXO lifecycle based on historical confirmation depth rather than just the current tip.

The UTXO index is coming in handy for these endpoints, as it provides a (very fast) way to answer the question “did a transaction with these inputs and these outputs ever get mined?”. Exchanges can use this endpoint to verify that their payouts to customers did get mined.

ZK Construction & Security

The construction for achieving zero-knowledge is undergoing refinement. Polishing is underway to document the new construction before external review.

Triton VM

Work continues on upgrading Triton VM, specifically resolving recent versioning or interface mismatches and updating the ZK construction.

4. Updates and Announcements

  • Research Outreach: The ZK note has reached a stable state (or is about to) and is ready for external peer feedback from the broader research community.
  • Infrastructure Testing: A new testing phase for the overhauled transaction pipeline will be initiated shortly.
  • New compiler: The vast majority of the Triton VM programs that define the Neptune Cash blockchain have been written directly in Triton VM assembler (TASM for short). A 3rd party is working on a compiler for Triton VM though. If successful, this project will accelerate the use of Neptune Cash as a smart contract platform. GitHub - cyberia-to/trident: 👽 language from future.