Anoma Research & Development Update: November 2021
November 2021 in review
November commenced with the release of Anoma’s first public tesnet: Feigenbaum. In the wake of the testnet release, lots of maintenance and fixes followed — as expected — keeping our development teams engaged with providing solutions. We would like to thank all of those early users that participated and those who remain an active part of the community.
Synchronously, momentum picked up in several other areas, most notably the zero-knowledge proof protocol Plonkup and distributed key generation scheme Ferveo, which received lots of attention thanks to its coverage in ZK Hack. Juvix continued to expand its applicability and concluded with two impressive research proposals.
Anoma testnet improvements and networking-level progress
Subsequent to the release of Anoma’s first public testnet, lots of work was focused on improving the stability and performance of the ledger. As with any first, it didn’t come without its challenges, calling for our development teams to solve unforeseen issues. However, they have been found, fixed, and implemented for the next tesnet release.
In parallel, networking-level progress continued with the IBC integration which included implementing proofs for queries, necessary Merkle tree modifications and storage adjustments. We also merged transaction encryption for ABCI++. In the first stage of the integration, all transactions were encrypted in a “wrapper” transaction that is signed by an implicit account’s key. In the future, these wrapper transactions will be encrypted using the DKG protocol. In addition, the intent gossiper and matchmaker underwent several developments in design, laying the foundation for a more efficient architecture.
An active month for key cryptographic initiatives: Plonkup and Ferveo
Plonkup is an advanced and universal zero-knowledge proof protocol. This month, it garnered significant attention thanks to ZK Hack, where Anoma has been a proud sponsor (contributing via cryptographic puzzles) for the last several weeks. As a part of our presentation led by Joshua Fitzgerald, the Plonkup protocol was introduced and followed up by a live coding session using the Plonkup library. Included in this presentation was a discussion on Ferveo, a DKG scheme for front-running protection led by Joe Bebel. Check out the entire presentation here:
Plonkup was also featured on the ZK Study Club some days later, highlighting the protocol from a more technical perspective. In addition, we hit two milestones on both papers covering Ferveo and Plonkup — having written the preliminary version for Ferveo and submitting the Plonkup paper for peer review to the Science of Blockchain conference. The month concluded with the development and funding of the library that will implement Plonkup, which is in collaboration with researchers and developers from multiple projects.
For a more in-depth overview of Ferveo check out our blog posts here:
- https://anoma.network/blog/ferveo-cryptography-overview
- https://anoma.network/blog/ferveo-a-distributed-key-generation-scheme-for-front-running-protection
Expanding Juvix usability
This month has seen a rapid development of the LLVM backend, where we’ve added features like closures and thus widening the number of programs we can compile in Juvix. We’ve continued working on the unifier, which will allow the language to infer implicit arguments and on the compilation of clauses to case trees needed for pattern matching.
The team has also drafted two ambitious research proposals: a small dependent-linearly-typed language (MiniJuvix) to extend the Juvix typechecker, and a minimal dependently-typed programming language, with reflection and metaprogramming named GEB that will allow us to prove correctness properties of the pipeline steps of the compiler, among many other things.
Keep an eye out for the next update!
Anoma has many projects in the works that all establish the framework of the ecosystem. Don’t forget to check out our blog where we cover a wide-range of topics with varying degrees of technical detail. In addition, follow us on Twitter for more daily news and join the community on Discord.
