"We have successfully launched the preparation phase and setup phase into the Monero mainnet. The setup phase consists of 1 thread with r = 5. The transaction ID for the preparation phase is

b6781f2a6f5608553546442b84888346fdc3f78dd8995170180ed74081c05362 "

Ok, so that's a quote from a 2018 paper, but it gives one pause

I suppose MRL already knew about this paper, but it is interesting that researchers were actively fiddling with the blockchain as far back as 2018.

<Rucknium[m]> "In Computer Science, what is..." <- an "heuristic" is often used to qualify a method/algorithm which simply works,

could sometimes have emerged from practice (ie is old),

and often you don't know exactly why it works.

... roughly summarized.

a heuristic also tends to have no defined stopping point, as opposed to algorithms which have deterministic endpoints

heuristics "usually" work but can also jusst blow up into infinite loops, undefined behavior, etc.

by definition, algorithms don't do that.

Halver hyc Thank you. I have a clearer idea now.

A heuristic is a non-exact algorithm. It might provides you with the exact/optimal solution to a problem, but without a proof that the solution is indeed exact

Some analysis on the WannaCry laundering effort through Monero:

UkoeHB: i am not able to optimize `ge_scalarmult_p3()`it goes straight over my head, i would have to study this function for at least a week/month to understand what the hell is going on there 😅 i am sorry