2024-10-21 Nomos weekly

PPoS / Consensus / DA

Research

• Blog content: The NomosDA Dispersal, Sampling, and Verification page is now complete and is undergoing review.
• Updated the PoV spec to support slashing and simplified it under the assumption that the input is always only one note.
• Studied two more transaction fee mechanisms: StableFees and Tiered Mechanisms (alternatives to EIP-1559). Notes with comparisons can be found here.
• Added a review of the DA market on Ethereum.
• Ran Cryptarchia MEV simulations: Economically Rational Validators in Cryptarchia v2, Cryptarchia v2 Fork Choice Rule Applied to Cryptarchia (C1-weighted), Slotless Cryptarchia, and Cryptarchia GHOST. All simulations were completed, and the results are summarized here. The conclusion is that GHOST performs the best among the improvements we’ve tested.

Development

• PR #826 (Node) - Added handling for automatic reconnections in the dispersal executor behavior. This should significantly improve network stability for executors. After a few iterations, we found the correct approach.
• PR #828 (Node) - Removed unnecessary extra channels from the consensus adapter.
• PR #832 (Node) - Tests: General configuration and multiple nodes. Refactored integration tests to have a general configuration for common services in validator and executor nodes.
• PR #835 (Node) - Started the integration of the Coordination Layer in the node by adding the transaction definition format and cleaning the code by removing Carnot leftovers.

Mixnet

Research

• Updated the Mixnet economy.
• Clarified the specs for the following: Protocol name, DEF (drop message emission frequency), Tolerance in frequency monitoring, and Cover message creation probability.
• We renamed the network “Blend” instead of “Mix.” This will be treated as a placeholder until a better-suited name is found. The term “Blend” is technically accurate, as the network’s purpose is to allow nodes to blend with each other, making it harder to distinguish between them.
• Updated several documents to reflect recent changes aimed at bandwidth and latency limitations, including the Nomos Blend Network Introduction, Nomos Blend Network Tier 2 Message Blending Module, and Nomos Blend Network Tier 3 Cover Traffic Module.

Development

• PR #822 and PR #823 (Node) - Added the mix service.
• PR #824 and PR #829 (Node) - Integrated the mix service into the node.

Coordination Layer

Research

• Blog content: Started the IPA (Inner Product Arguments) page. IPAs are a type of operation on vectors that can be combined with Pedersen Commitments to create polynomial commitments.
• Started writing the CL Ledger spec to include recent decisions and added details on its workings. Also added a requirements comparison in the preliminary research.
• Started writing the Private Atomic Cross-Zone Transaction specification.
• Reviewed an epoch-based nullifier database solution, addressing the challenge of storing nullifiers and preventing database bloat. Relevant notes were added to the document.

Development

• No updates this week.

Zone and Apps

Research

• No updates this week.

Development

• No updates this week.

Testnet and Tooling

Development

• PR #820 (Node) - CI: Added a self-hosted MacOS runner with metal support (in coordination with the Infra team). Additional configuration is needed for specific test cases, but now we have the capability to do it ourselves.

Miscellaneous

• No updates this week.