1/ They say the two hardest problems in computer science are 1) cache invalidation 2) naming and 3) off-by-one errors. Cryptocurrencies face these challenges, plus they face a new level of difficulty that’s rare outside of critical applications such as aircraft autopilot. 2/ I’m referring to correctness. Many computer applications operate under human supervision and have manual signoff before computations are considered final. This is a luxury that cryptocurrency networks do not have.

1/ As you dig into cryptography, you come across many mind bending phenomena. Homomorphic encryption is one of those ideas that I can’t get out of my head. Homomorphic encryption is already employed today by popular networks, and may be the key to private smart contracts. 2/ Homomorphic encryption allows for math to work over ciphertext without revealing any information about the original plain text. Addition, subtraction or multiplication of ciphertexts results in a new ciphertext. Only those with the encryption keys can decrypt the values.

1/ A new paper was recently published by @Zac_Aztec, @relgabizon, and @OanaCiobotaru that outlines a new cryptographic construction called a PLONK. It has caught the attention of many including @VitalikButerin, so what’s it all about?
eprint.iacr.org/2019/953.pdf 2/ A PLONK is a new type of zero-knowledge proof. It stands for “Permutations over Lagrange-bases for Oecumenical Noninteractive arguments of Knowledge”. What’s important to know is that they fulfill the same role as a SNARK, with slightly different properties

1/ I just dove into the newly announced tBTC project from the @keep_project team led by @mhluongo which @scalarcapital backed. The project will help bring Bitcoin to Ethereum’s decentralized finance world. Highlights from the white paper below. 👇

https://twitter.com/mhluongo/status/1162481737525583873

2/ Motivation for the new project comes from the fact that many find Bitcoin lacking in sufficient ability to be utilized by smart contracts or act as collateral for DeFi, a popular new area that my cofounder @ljxie lays out in her recent post lindajxie.com/2019/08/07/the….

1/ I just did a deep dive into the new Nightshade paper from the @NEARProtocol team which @scalarcapital backed. Summary of the highlights below.👇 nearprotocol.com/downloads/Nigh… 2/ The plan is to replace shard chains to shard chunks. System is modeled as a single blockchain, rather than a nested blockchain. In each block, a shard may or may not be represented via a chunk.

1/ I’m fascinated by a major unsettled theme within the cryptocurrency space. Should crypto protocols be flexible or rigid? This question is relevant both on the protocol specifications, as well as the project’s attitude towards changing the specification. 2/ Each cryptocurrency network is forced to choose their place on this spectrum. Projects must weigh their ability to handle an ever increasing desire from developers for more expressive functionality with the technical risk that comes with it.

1/ I dove into a new crypto protocol, ZEXE. It’s an exciting, if early, spec for a private distributed execution environment capable of expressive applications. The paper is a collaboration of researchers from UC Berkeley, Johns Hopkins, Zcash and Cornell. eprint.iacr.org/2018/962.pdf 2/ ZEXE extends the Zerocash Protocol underlying Zcash. Zcash makes use of zk-SNARKs, which are cryptographic constructions that allow statements to be made and verified without revealing why they are true.

I just finished a deep dive into Zether, a novel cryptocurrency protocol from researchers at Stanford and Visa. I am blown away with the work they have done. crypto.stanford.edu/~buenz/papers/… /1 Zether is a new protocol, not a new asset. It is consensus agnostic and can work on any account based cryptoasset network such as Ethereum or Stellar. 2/

There’s a lot of talk about price in crypto but it’s a lagging indicator. The best leading indicators are technology development. Here are 5 advancements in 2018 that I was particularly excited by. 1/ #1 Bulletproofs in Monero. When Monero adopted RingCT to hide transaction amounts, larger transaction sizes resulted due to range proofs, which prove that the amounts are non-negative. Bulletproofs reduce transaction size (and fees) by 80%! ww.getmonero.org/2017/12/07/Mon… 2/