Zano Project Update (21–06–21) — Hard Fork Success, Research Team Status and Current Development Focus
Atomic Swaps Hard Fork
Hi everyone. We’re very happy to report that the hard fork at the start of this month to activate Atomic Swaps on the Zano network was — aside from a minor hiccup with one mining pool — a complete success. Thanks to everyone for updating in a timely manner. Full details of the implementation can be found in our previous blog post. We’re incredibly excited to see what applications might be built around this new functionality and how it will help us form new connections with the wider crypto world.
Ongoing Privacy Research and Current Focus
As you may know, for the last year we’ve been working with Anton Sokolov on a new log-size ring signature scheme (Lin2Xor). We’ve made significant progress with this research and it looks very promising, however, the conducted peer reviews, while finding no refutation of the scheme so far, made clear that the work needs to go through a longer academic process than we’d anticipated in order to ensure the scheme’s security and soundness — something absolutely critical before it can be considered for actual deployment. With that in mind, Anton and the team have mutually decided to end our formal working relationship for the time being. Anton is planning to continue with his research in cryptography after a while and we’re looking forward to seeing him progressing with it. Meanwhile, the Zano team will prioritize giving users the maximum level of privacy possible now using already available and well-established cryptographic primitives. This means updating Zano’s privacy with Confidential Ring Signatures (something that some people have claimed is impossible with Proof-of-Stake) and Bulletproofs+ as soon as possible.
While our immediate short-term goal is to bring Zano’s privacy in line with that of today’s most advanced CryptoNote-derived projects, in the longer-term we’ll continue to research and evaluate all options with the aim of eventually employing Lin2Xor or whichever other scheme gives the most benefits to the project and our user base. We’ll keep you all posted as to our progress. Thanks and good health!
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