This summer RIAT invited members of the Monero community to Vienna to discuss a diverse range of topics such as open-source hardware, the legal framework of crypto and new solutions for ASIC resistance. RIAT’s Matthias Tarasiewicz and Markus Zimmerman moderated these sometimes heated discussions between miners, lawyers, developers and economists as part of the Monero Austria Meetup.

To introduce the Monero Austria Meetup, that was founded in January 2017, Matthias presented recent meetings and initiatives, such as the first Meetup Clash of Coins (which featured an amazing Monero intro by SamsungGalaxyPlayer) that was later continued at Ars Electronica in Linz. In December 2017 the Monero December led into the RIAT x Monero x Bitcoin Assemblies at 34C3 Chaos Communication Congress in Leipzig.

Another topic discussed at the recent meetup was the inaugural participation of the Monero community at the international hacker conference DEF CON. This year for the first time at DEF CON 26 Las Vegas, the Monero Project and BCOS Village co-organized a village dedicated to Blockchain and Cryptocurrency Security that was a gathering for all the Monero Project supporters and enthusiasts (see this summary of the village by rehrar). In this context, Monero DEF CON open hardware badge previews could be demoed.

Kovri

Time to celebrate: the initial release of Kovri has happened. Kovri is an implementation of an I2P router, a general purpose anonymizing overlay network. I2P stands for the Invisible Internet Project and Kovri will allow the Monero network to be transmitted over I2P. RIAT’s research intern Kun Woo has written a text back in June 2018, outlining why the Lightning Network, Monero and the Kovri I2P Router will pave the way for private cash (cryptocurrency) in 2018.

Monero Open Hardware Wallet: Kastelo

The Monero Open Hardware Wallet was another topic of interest, and the progress of the project is quite impressive. Monero hardware wallet is a printed circuit board design resembling the Ledger or Trezor wallet PCBs. Future extensions and possibilities have been discussed extensively, and additional hardware developers could be interested in helping advance the project further.

International presentations

Blockchain Legal

Radim Kozub from Blockchain Legal, a law firm located in Prague, introduced the legal framework for cryptocurrencies currently existing in the Czech Republic (the country with the most Monero ATMs worldwide). Kozub outlined future legal reforms we could be expected in the EU and more especially in his country.

“In today’s world of modern technologies, we aim to support and strengthen the values of personal freedom, privacy and decentralization.” (blockchainlegal.cz)

Paralelní Polis

Software developer Josef Jelačič presented Paralelní Polis, an organization in Prague that hosts the Institute of Cryptoanarchy, the Bitcoin Coffee, the Paper Hub and the Crypto Lab.

Founded by members of a contemporary ­art group “Ztohoven”, and Slovak and Czech hacker­spaces with the main goal to promote economic, social and digital freedom, all services within Paralelní Polis can be used by paying with cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Monero, Litecoin, Dash and Ether.

RandomJS and hash functions

Jeremie “binaryFate” Dubois-Lacoste is a recent addition to the Monero core team member and admin of xmr.to. During his talk, he discussed a new approach of the Monero community to put an end to the ASIC resistance problematic: RandomJS, which is heavily debated throughout the Monero community (#1, #2, #3, #4, #5). RandomJS creates random code which has to be executed and malicious miners would not have the time to optimise FPGAs or create ASICS for it, so the best option would be to run it on a CPU or GPU. This approach is in line with the recent Monero changes, which would make it “ASIC resistant”, as was described in an article by Rachel-Rose O’Leary in March 2018 on Coindesk.

Philosophy & Theory of Money

Georgios Papadopoulos is a researcher in economics. He presented his next book project, thematizing cryptocurrency from the angle of philosophy & theory of money. Georgios has been previously active with the art-group Artistic Bokeh, co-producing the piece “Too Much Money…” (2014), part of the Artistic Technology Research series (see a description in “Burning Bitcoin to Buy Ai WeiWei”). Georgios is an author in Bitcoin, with his first appearance of Bitcoin research in the Handbook of Digital Currency (2015).

European Union Crypto-Ban

A heavily discussed topic has been the recent rumors on a possible ban on anonymous cryptocurrencies and privacy technologies in the European Union, which have been dubbed “The European Crypto Wars”. The debate started online after the release of a study by the TAX3 initiative of the European union with the title Cryptocurrencies and blockchain — financial crime, money laundering and tax evasion, which asks “[..]whether some aspects relating to some cryptocurrencies should not just be banned and criminally sanctioned. To mind come the mixing process attached to Dash’s feature PrivateSend and Monero’s RingCT, stealth addresses and Kovri-project”. As this absurd claims remind of the Crypto Wars and the attempt to ban the export of the Rivest–Shamir–Adleman RSA source-code (one of the first public-key cryptosystems), dystopian post-privacy settings could be imagined.

The Monero Austria Meetup is taking place irregularily in Vienna, Austria. The RIAT Monero Workgroup communicates updates from the Monero project. RIAT is the Institute for Future Cryptoeconomics.