Anoma Research and Development Update: February 2022
The new year continued with notable developments from the teams behind Anoma. Following the release of Anoma v.0.3.1 in January, the engineering team released Anoma v.0.4.0 at the very end of the month. Continuous specifications were made on multiple features, such as the integration of the MASP for multi-asset shielded transfers, and the gas and fee distribution system.
Meanwhile, our cryptographic initiatives advanced in the areas of private bartering circuits, Plonkup, and the MASP. The last details of Juvix are being polished for the next release, allowing users to compile validity predicates into WASM and use them in the Anoma ledger, while the incentive and transaction fee model was finalized.
Anoma v0.4.0 and further architectural specifications
February saw the release of Anoma v0.4.0, which closely followed its predecessor. This minor release featured some small additions, such as a flag indicating that the client should exit once a transaction is in the mempool without waiting for it to be applied in a block, the ledger emitting and validating IBC events from transactions and the fungible token transfer support to the IBC validity predicate.
From the engineering perspective, work continued on the integration of the DKG and IBC protocols, and a wide range of specifications were written down. The MASP was specified and integrated for multi-asset shielded transfers, as well as the initial on-chain signaling and governance version with a native validity predicate. Further specification was done on the gas and fee distribution system, and the ledger’s transaction and validity predicate execution system, its public API, crypto and encoding. Finally, various fixes and improvements were made on the base ledger.
Private bartering circuits, Plonkup integration and the MASP
On the cryptographic front, the addition of specifications for Private Bartering Circuits (PBC) continued, with the implementation of a prototype framework for PBC without crypto primitives. The integration of Plonkup into the ZK-garage Plonk proving system used for the PBC continued as well. Development of the intermediate representation format for Plonk circuits also started, for the purpose of PBC and Juvix integration. The investigation of private bridges for PBC in collaboration with the distributed systems team also began.
Additionally, the MASP code was updated to the latest versions of librustzcash/Sapling code. Further options were then investigated for the MASP trusted setup and updated trusted setup code.
Gearing up for the next release of Juvix
In the aspect of programming language theory (PLT), we set focus on polishing the last details for the next release of Juvix, that will allow users to compile validity predicates into WASM, and use them in the Anoma ledger. Several implementations were also carried out, for foreign functions that are to interact with the ledger and the record syntax. The existing build tools were integrated with Nix.
Furthermore, the developer’s experience is now improved with a pipeline that allows tracing. Two things were enabled: the re-exporting of Juvix modules with the `include` keyword, and the `infix` syntax for Sum constructors. Lastly, work continued on allowing users to write recursive types.
Discussions about the protocol
This month also saw extensive discussions in different aspects of the protocol. This included the design of cross-chain private state transitions, the state model for fractal instances, and the handling of proof-of-stake validator set changes in Typhon. Additionally, the incentive model and transaction fee model were finalized.
Building up towards an exciting 2022
Anoma is gearing up towards some big releases this year after an exciting start to 2022. On top of these research and development updates, Anoma is sponsoring and attending a number of events this year, such as ZK Hack Mini which is currently running, and more to be announced! Follow our Twitter for prompt updates on the latest developments, updates and announcements, and don’t forget to subscribe to the monthly newsletter for a digestible monthly summary of Anoma-related news.
