<0​xfffc:monero.social> My sincere apologies. I have been relocating to a new city. It took few days and I will not be 100 percent available for few more days.

<r​ucknium:monero.social> MRL meeting in this room in two hours.

<r​ucknium:monero.social> Meeting time! monero-project/meta #1226

<r​ucknium:monero.social> 1) Greetings

Hello

<b​oog900:monero.social> hi

<a​ntilt:we2.ee> seas

<j​berman:monero.social> *waves*

<r​ucknium:monero.social> 2) Updates. What is everyone working on?

<r​ucknium:monero.social> me: Working on data collection on reachable nodes and a web app to display the data: github.com/Rucknium/xmrnetscan . "Participated" in MoneroKon.

<j​berman:monero.social> me: fixed ofrnxmr 's reported bug on the fcmp++-stage branch (credit to ofrn for solid testing and maintaining a reproducible setup, making it easy to track down and fix), worked on reducing data stored per output in the fcmp++ curve tree, PR review / PR touchups

<r​ucknium:monero.social> 3) SLVer Bullet: Straight Line Verification for Bulletproofs. Cypher Stack review of divisors for FCMP. github.com/cypherstack/silver-bullet github.com/cypherstack/divisor_deep_dive

<r​ucknium:monero.social> Last I remember hearing, kayabanerve was going to look closely at SLVR Bullet for its suitability for FCMP and see if improvements could be made.

<a​rticmine:monero.social> Sorry I am late

<j​berman:monero.social> (I'm not aware of an update on SLVer)

<j​berman:monero.social> AFAIK this is the latest still

<j​berman:monero.social> Actually to be more precise, that this is the latest (that kayaba is going to implement the changes)

<j​berman:monero.social> Link for IRC folk: libera.monerologs.net/monero-research-lab/20250619#c535414-c535418

<a​rticmine:monero.social> Voice message.ogg

<r​ucknium:monero.social> Any updates that Cypher Stack wants to share on this? If not, we can move to the next item.

<r​ucknium:monero.social> 4) MoneroKon 2025 recap. monerokon.org cfp.twed.org/mk5/schedule

<r​ucknium:monero.social> Interesting talks that will be posted in about two weeks:

<r​ucknium:monero.social> Talk by ArticMine on FCMP++ fees

<r​ucknium:monero.social> Talk by jeffro256 on changes to the block format with FCMP that could help enable Simple Payment Verification (SPV) wallet software

<r​ucknium:monero.social> Talk by afungible about his mainnet experiment in August 2022 of a minor stress test of the network.

<r​ucknium:monero.social> Talk by Yu Gao about the topology of the Monero network (i.e. inferring the connections between nodes)

<r​ucknium:monero.social> Talk by hbs that shared new software to improve Monero<>Ethereum atomic swaps

<r​ucknium:monero.social> Talk by CJ and Sean Coughlin on an in-progress implementation of payment channels on Monero (Grease)

<r​ucknium:monero.social> Talk by Alan Szepieniec on post-quantum anonymous transactions without signatures

<r​ucknium:monero.social> Talk by Aaron Feickert (sarang) about temporary mnemonic seeds for risky situations like border crossings

<r​ucknium:monero.social> The MoneroKon organizers will scrub the live records of any privacy problems, then post

<r​ucknium:monero.social> But there were four pre-recorded talks that were posted immediately.

Can't somebody fast-track that Grease talk? :)

<r​ucknium:monero.social> Luke Szramowski - Full-Chain Membership Proofs (FCMP++) Divisors: The Inside Scoop youtube.com/watch?v=6kQYqaKgupQ

<r​ucknium:monero.social> Justin Ehrenhofer - Overview of the Last Year of Audits, Reviews, and Proofs youtube.com/watch?v=Fo1uxIETpOI

<r​ucknium:monero.social> Rucknium & Boog900: Defeating Spy Nodes on the Monero Network: vimeo.com/1095371245 youtube.com/watch?v=k7LBKOn81rc

<r​ucknium:monero.social> Rucknium: OSPEAD: Optimal Ring Signatures: vimeo.com/1094758696 youtube.com/watch?v=F7hNOQVp88A

<r​ucknium:monero.social> sarang posted his slides here: github.com/AaronFeickert/monkon2025

<r​ucknium:monero.social> Slides for my presentations + Boog900 are here: github.com/Rucknium/presentations

<r​ucknium:monero.social> IIRC, the presenters of the Grease talk said that they were more interested in one-ro-one applications of Grease than creating a whole network like Lightning.

<r​ucknium:monero.social> one-to-one*

<r​ucknium:monero.social> Which is something that I liked hearing.

<r​ucknium:monero.social> afungible's talk helped answer a question that I thought I already had the answer to: why did tx volume spike right before the August 2022 hard fork?

<r​ucknium:monero.social> I thought it was MineXMR, a mining pool, shutting down and sending the last of its payments. That was a logical explanation, to me. But, something less logical happened.

<a​rticmine:monero.social> The failings of LN can for the most part be traced back to a broken layer 1.

<a​rticmine:monero.social> Grease on Monero would not have this issue.

<r​ucknium:monero.social> For example, I think that Grease could be used with something like XMRChat. A user may not want to wait 20 minutes, on average, between comments to livestreamers!

<r​ucknium:monero.social> More comments about things that happened at MoneroKon?

<j​berman:monero.social> Sounds like it was a great conference. Looking forward to watching these

<r​ucknium:monero.social> 5) Spy nodes. monero-project/research-lab #126

<r​ucknium:monero.social> Last week, jhendrix released research about the network-level privacy issues on the Zano network, which is a CryptoNote-based protocol like Monero. Onion hidden service link accessible with Tor Browser: g7cpug4k6ydyq5dlxrji35xnfq5n5rba3n7holux4tmdsm42ju543tad.onion

<r​ucknium:monero.social> It seems that the combination of not having Dandelion++ and having around 40 reachable nodes can reduce privacy a lot.

<r​ucknium:monero.social> IMHO, one clever thing about this research is that it could infer the amount of staked coins in Zano's hybrid proof-of-stake/proof-of-work protocol because you can figure out how many blocks each IP address mines.

Yes, that's cool, and unexpected

<r​ucknium:monero.social> Despite the fact that Zano has the Zarcanum protocol to "hide" the amount that you are staking on the blockchain, which koe helped with IIRC

<r​ucknium:monero.social> jhendrix had previously examined the Monero network, released findings, and discussed them here a few months ago: maldomapyy5d5wn7l36mkragw3nk2fgab6tycbjlpsruch7kdninhhid.onion

<r​ucknium:monero.social> Monero has spy nodes on its network, but it has Dandelion++, thousands of nodes, and does not use proof-of-stake

<r​ucknium:monero.social> I would not be surprised if jhendrix releases finds about a third coin's network soon.

<a​ntilt:we2.ee> ... and also a vulnerability - core stakers are ~8 nodes with known IP addresses

<r​ucknium:monero.social> The Zano team released a response to the research: blog.zano.org/team-response-to-zano-network-analysis-report

<a​ntilt:we2.ee> on the other hand staking 51% secures the net

<a​ntilt:we2.ee> ... call it centralized.

<r​ucknium:monero.social> They said that they had tried broadcasting all txs over Tor earlier, but that method was unreliable. I didn't know that, but it's consistent with the position that boog900 and I had about Tor/I2P-only in our MoneroKon talk about spy nodes: Tor/I2P is too unreliable to use as default for all users.

<a​ntilt:we2.ee> remote nodes need to be reachable as tor hidden service. Such a mix is fine.

That response sounds a bit like an attempt of damage control to me.

<r​ucknium:monero.social> I don't agree with their claim that Dandelion++ doesn't help much. It's not perfect, but even Chainalysis in their leaked video said that Monero network surveillance became much more difficult after D++ was deployed.

Even if it's not great. "It's not perfect therefore not worth doing" is a well-known intelectual fallacy

<r​ucknium:monero.social> And they suggest that users concerned about privacy can choose to connect only to "trusted" nodes. IMHO, a trusted node soon becomes a targeted node. And taking that stance isn't very decentralized.

<a​rticmine:monero.social> The Chainalysis blockchain surveillance video actually indirectly made a case for the use of VPNs to defeat spy nodes in Monero

<a​rticmine:monero.social> If they detected a VPN they gave up surveillance of the wallet

<r​ucknium:monero.social> Like I said in my update, I am working on a data pipeline and webapp data visualizer to collect daily data about reachable Monero nodes. This could potentially detect if new spy nodes with patched code appear suddenly. I will also collect informative data such as the share of pruned node, which nodes have RPC available, which nodes appear to be using ban lists, etc.: githu<clipped message

<r​ucknium:monero.social> b.com/Rucknium/xmrnetscan

<r​ucknium:monero.social> I may have something to show by next meeting.

<r​ucknium:monero.social> This uses the network scanner written by boog900 , using cuprate technology, as its core.

<b​oog900:monero.social> their video was just a show. In reality you can still link txs together if they come from the same IP, even if you can't find the real source.

<b​oog900:monero.social> specifically the part about tracking the person was just a show.

<r​ucknium:monero.social> rbrunner's subnet deduplication PR to reduce spy node threat is available for review: monero-project/monero #9939

<r​ucknium:monero.social> 6) CCS proposal: Monero Network Simulation Tool. repo.getmonero.org/monero-project/ccs-proposals/-/merge_requests/589

<a​ntilt:we2.ee> #9939 is paramount and not too risky to release IMHO.

<r​ucknium:monero.social> I tried to contact the developer of EthShadow to get their opinion on implementing Shadow for Monero: ethereum/ethshadow #25

<r​ucknium:monero.social> No response yet. Making a GitHub issue maybe it's the best way to contact someone, but their personal website is a dead link and I cannot find any other contact info.

<a​ntilt:we2.ee> would't this be a job for @ginger ?

<a​rticmine:monero.social> Of course one can link TXs to the same IP, but the whole point of blockchain surveillance is to accuse a person of a crime and then sell the accusation to law enforcement for profit.

<r​ucknium:monero.social> Well, I said I would do it last meeting, so I did do it.

<r​ucknium:monero.social> 7) Peer Scoring Metrics.

<b​oog900:monero.social> knowing txs are linked can be very useful if you know something about one of those txs, i.e sent to an exchange or whatever.

<b​oog900:monero.social> or even just analyzing ring members, knowing some ring members came from the same source.

<a​rticmine:monero.social> In my view the real value of Monero's privacy technologies including Dandelion and FCMP++ lies in removing even the illusion of surveillance. This is critical to protect the innocent from false accusations. This being said we must keep in mind that from a technical perspective blockchain surveillance remains highly unreliable even on so-called surveillance coins.

<r​ucknium:monero.social> Any discussion on peer scoring metrics?

<r​ucknium:monero.social> We can end the meeting here. Thanks everyone.

<a​rticmine:monero.social> Thanks

<a​ntilt:we2.ee> de-doubling (#9939) is a pre-requisite to taking further action imho. (strengthening anchor nodes, for example)

<a​ntilt:we2.ee> de-doubling may be a scoring spectrum - rather than on/off