Dusk Network Development Update — December

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

Development

2019 is here! With an exciting year ahead of us, let’s run through the work that has been done in the last month of 2018. Having presented the devnet demo at the Hard Fork Decentralized event in London this month, we are excited to announce that the much-anticipated code will soon begin exiting the so-called “stealth-mode”.

The wiring module has been finalized and has already been successfully completing the testing required to be deemed testnet-ready. Our Bulletproof implementation is in a near-completion state, requiring additional time to improve the proof generation efficiency. The BLS module has been upgraded to be immune to the “rogue-key attack”, which makes original entropy extraction possible when multiple unique keys sign the same message. While the core consensus phases have been finalized, our team has completed the design of the blind-bid procedure. With a few modifications in place, we are confident to announce that we have devised a secure anonymity-preserving solution that we envisioned when designing the original consensus, barred for a few minor details that still need to be refined.

Research

Our team has looked into using curve-pairings to build a significantly more space-efficient ring signature scheme than the one used in the current iteration of Dusk Network. While the initial research is promising, the actual scheme design requires a substantial effort to be finalized and deemed provably secure. Aside from the decrease in the ring signature size, curve-pairings might potentially enable signature batching, which will lead to an even more drastic space-saving scheme. Unfortunately, if devised, the scheme will require a switch to a BLS-curve (Barreto-Lynn-Scott), BLS12–381, which, while offering 128-bit security, has an increased key-pair size compared to the BN-256 curve described in the previous Development Update. On the other hand, BN-256 offers 110-bit security, which, while being enough for the current use case, cannot be used in the ring signatures, as it will impact the security levels of the entire platform.

The other field of research that the team has been involved in is related to deterministic Provisioner extraction, also known as deterministic sortition. A few proposals are being looked at and modified for the specific use-case that our protocol requires. The switch to deterministic Provisioner extraction will require an overhaul in the current security model of the consensus protocol and a potential split into two distinct sub-protocols with differing security assumptions.

Community

In the “Meet Dusk’s Investors” series, we have announced that Olymp Capital has invested and partnered with Dusk Network, becoming the second investor to be disclosed in the series after featuring Maven 11 Capital in the first iteration.

We have also announced our first STO to be launched on the Dusk Network mainnet. BWRE, a Maltese short stay real estate business, is going to use Dusk Network for the tranched issuance of €21 million worth of tokenized equity.

How to learn more about Dusk Network

The Dusk Network is a project coordinated by the Dusk Foundation. We are a decentralized ecosystem entirely focused on providing the perfect trade-off between privacy and transparency. Dusk protects privacy and fits regulations in payments, communications and asset transfers.

Website: https://www.dusk.network

FAQ: https://www.dusk.network/faq

Telegram: https://t.me/dusknetwork

Twitter: https://twitter.com/duskfoundation

Reddit: https://reddit.com/r/dusknetwork

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/duskfoundation/

GitHub: https://github.com/dusk-network