Dusk Network Development Update — July

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

We’re back with another update! An extremely important month for the project has come to an end. From the public release of the first iteration of the Testnet (called Shin (殉星)) to the launch of DUSK token on numerous exchanges, July has been a non-stop whirlwind of events. Readers are invited to join us for this recap of the past month.

Development

July marked the release of Testnet v1 Shin (殉星) and accompanying tools. Aside from a few minor hiccups, the launch has gone smoothly with more than 50 nodes participating in the consensus producing a block once every 7 seconds on average. This Testnet release marks the beginning of the public testing phase of the protocol which will proceed until the launch of our Mainnet, scheduled for late 2019.

With the Testnet v1 finally revealed to the gazes of the public, the team had continued working on the core protocol and all accompanying modules. The publication of ZeroCaf will speed up the work on the zero-knowledge Virtual Machine (VM) and real-life implementation of the XSC standard. As mentioned in previous articles, ZeroCaf is an efficient implementation of a zero-knowledge proof-friendly elliptic curve on which to build the cryptographic primitives. As two new developers join our ranks (stay tuned for a separate article about our new recruits!), who will aid in accelerating the work on the VM, we are still on track to complete the VM development in time for our Testnet v2 launch.

Research

Following the launch of the Testnet, our research into block compression has intensified as the first days of testing had already provided the team with concrete proof that the consensus can achieve a major speed up if coupled with block compression. Specifically, the team has been experimenting with Graphene and Txilm, both of which enable to drastically decrease the sizes of propagated blocks.

The core consensus has been on a receiving end of an important theoretical upgrade that significantly decreased the ability of the Adversary to bias the committee extraction in his/her favour. The upgrade tackles the seed generation procedure, the security of which prior to the aforementioned upgrade depended on a relatively strict computational bound imposed on the Adversary, which meant that the Adversary gained an advantage as his/her computational power increased. However, following the upgrade, the ability of the Adversary to bias the seed (outside a negligible bound predefined by the protocol) has been decreased to a negligible probability without regard to the computing power that the Adversary has in his/her possession.

Community

The launch of the Testnet is not the only major milestone achieved before the dusk (no pun intended!) of July. DUSK has been launched on Binance DEX, Bitfinex and Ethfinex, Bittrex International, Binance, BitcoinMeester and Bitladon, Litebit.eu and Coinmerce exchanges. In addition, DUSK has been fully integrated with the Delta cryptocurrency portfolio app, enabling users to track DUSK in real-time and be instantly notified about all the latest announcements.

The team had also participated in numerous AMAs, including an Ethfinex AMA, Vietnamese Blockchain Community AMA and CryptoDiffer AMA. Aside from that, Carlos Perez has given a presentation on Confidential Smart Contracts at Barcelona Ethereum Dev Meetup, while the video from Luke Pearson’s presentation on Confidential Smart Contracts for Securities at ZKLux#1 has been published on Youtube. For a more business-centered discussion, Jelle Pol had joined Brad Laurie to give an extended interview.

A community campaign has been successfully concluded, garnering in excess of 64,000 participants enabling us to grow Dusk Network’s social media presence immensely. The results of the campaign will be communicated to the participants within 28 days of the campaign completion.

On the advisory front, Balder Bomans had joined Dusk Network as a Strategic Advisor. Balder is the Head of Investment and Trading at Maven11 Capital and an experienced blockchain technology investor who has a rich traditional financial markets background.

Dusk — Technology for Securities

Dusk streamlines the issuance of digital securities and automates trading compliance with the world’s first programmable and confidential securities.