A monthly development update series created to embrace the transparency and inclusivity that we strive for at Dusk Network



Development



The team has completed the integration of Phoenix with our wallet. Phoenix is our novel transaction model that enables users to spend public outputs such as block rewards or computation refunds without the risk of reduced anonymity. Our Phoenix repository will be made public after an internal review of the implementation.



PLONK Update



This month we have completed the first iteration of our PLONK implementation. We have successfully coded the proving and verifying functions, allowing us to utilise what is arguably the single most performant zero knowledge proof system for our blockchain. We expect to release our code on PLONK in the next few days. If you need a quick reminder about why PLONK is so important, you can refresh your memory [here].

PLONK is the latest and most efficient proof system known today. PLONK outperforms our currently implemented Bulletproofs in 99% of scenarios, and given the difficulty of updating zero-knowledge libraries whilst the Mainnet is public, we have already begun working on the world’s first Rust-based PLONK implementation and scheduled it for launch.



PLONK Continued

After carrying out benchmarks on PLONK code this week, we can say with absolute certainty that it is very fast. We will share more on our implementation & benchmarks soon. Which brings us towards the next step on our PLONK journey, namely the second iteration. Now that the concrete maths are laid out and the foundation of our protocol (proof system) are encoded, we can commence with what we call ‘intense software improvements’.

This next step will involve a lot of optimization and creating the best fit to further improve performance. These architectural decisions and code designs provide the backbone of the second iteration of PLONK, some examples are:

selecting an elliptic curve family;

tailoring our own FFT (Fast Fourier Transformation) library; and

a possible rewrite of the KZG10 commitment scheme to speed up the polynomial commitments.

PLONK will replace Bulletproofs as the native zero-knowledge proof system for the Dusk Network blockchain.

UI/UX

After finishing the major components for the block explorer, The UI/UX team has been focusing on everything that needs to be developed for the standalone wallet and Desktop node. The Desktop Node will be released for Linux and MacOS initially and will leverage a full-fledged dusk node at its core. We are working on a Windows version, which requires some additional work.

In terms of UX, the desktop node will allow users to monitor the network performance and make/receive transactions with a friendly user interface.

Kelvin

Following our Kelvin release, we’ve performed benchmark tests in which preliminary results indicate that on insertion, Kelvin is 3.5 times faster than the version used by Substrate. Kelvin is created by Dusk Network, and has been an indispensable tool for modeling truly blockchain-optimized data-structures that are used by the transaction model and the smart contract engine. In other words, Kelvin reduces the overhead caused by database structures that are designed for mutable data, making insertions faster.



Video Content - Demo Presentations

Within their teams, our developers give demo-presentations about what they’ve been working on. In this Month’s update we wanted to try something new and release two of these demo recordings to the public.

If the addition of video content is appreciated, please let us know - email, telegram, twitter, you decide -and we will do our best to continue with it in the next episode of the Monthly Update as well.





Community

We have published the final article in our Economic Model series detailing the game-theoretic principles that protect the security of our protocol. Part IV had concentrated on our consensus protocol, how it incentivizes honest and deters malicious behaviour.



Dmitry Khovratovich, our Cryptography Lead, has given a presentation on Poseidon hashing function at Real World Crypto (RWC) conference in New York, USA.

Jelle Pol, our managing director, guided the 2tokens Second round table session on Token Finance

About Dusk Network

Dusk Network is an open-source and privacy-oriented blockchain based on years of academic research. You can use Dusk Network to create smart contracts that control digital assets and securities.