layout: wip
title: Triptych research and optimizations
author: Cypher Stack
date: April 8, 2021
amount: 22.86
milestones:
- name: First 20 hours complete
funds: 6.325
done: 28 June 2021
status: finished
- name: Second 20 hours complete
funds: 6.325
done: 28 July 2021
status: finished
- name: Third 20 hours complete
funds: 6.325
done:
status: unfinished
- name: Fourth 20 hours complete
funds: 6.325
done:
status: unfinished
payouts:
- date: 28 June 2021
amount: 6.325
- date: 28 July 2021
amount: 6.325
- date:
amount:
- date:
amount:THIS PROPOSAL HAS BEEN CHANGED FROM TRIPTYCH RESEARCH OPTIMIZATIONS TO TRIPTYCH MULTISIG RESEARCH AFTER A MEETING WITH THE MONERO DEVS ON APRIL 21, 2021.
Brief Intro
As of April 12th, 2021, Aaron "Sarang Noether" Feickert has joined Cypher Stack LLC as a resident researcher.
Cypher Stack is a for-profit LLC owned by Diego "rehrar" Salazar. It started as a design firm but has since expanded to include blockchain consultancy and digital utilities and infrastructure hosting. They already donate to the Monero Project in the form of employing Dan "pigeons" Miller as a system administrator, who is responsible for running and securing much of Monero's infrastructure including Taiga, Matrix, and other key infrastructure in conjunction with the core team.
Sarang himself needs no introduction. A previous full-time researcher of MRL paid for by the CCS, he wants to continue doing research into next-gen privacy with Monero (particularly in Triptych), hence this proposal.
The scope
Sarang Noether and collaborators created the Triptych and Arcturus privacy protocols, which, if implemented in Monero, could allow ring sizes of greater than 100 with similar size transactions to present ones (though verification times would increase linearly).
Work is already underway to include Triptych into Monero's codebase, but one of the big question marks shrouding the new protocol is multisig. The Monero ecosystem is maturing in such a way that Monero's multisig feature is being used in more and more applications, and moving to Triptych would break the current implementation. This could potentially stop Triptych's implementation in its tracks.
The goal of this proposal would be to do further research into Triptych's multisig options. Some research has already been done, and a path forward is already known, but the details and specifics need to be ironed out. Sarang would conduct this research to see if multisig is possible, and how a migration from the old to the new might be conducted in a way that is safe, private, and efficient.