Ergo Ecosystem Weekly Update - Oct 27th, 2024

* Rosen is now processing transactions to and from Ethereum, there is still small but growing rsERG/ETH liquidity pool on uniswap  https://www.dextools.io/app/en/ether/pair-explorer/0x85bb44d0a6f2a5844975ef19149d9c4b0bb77b7d?t=1730104926034 , so another way to get onboarded, and also small but growing rsETH/ERG pool on ErgoDex / MewFinance. So consider to profit from liquidity provision and arbitrage!

* RoseNet - the new implementation of Rosen guards' p2p communication layer is in its final stages of testing. In simple words, it solves the problems of current p2p layer: it aims to 1. be more fault tolerant, improving bridging pace a bit and preventing stuck events, and 2. capable of being scaled to a larger guard set, securing the protocol even more. As part of these final test phases, we need a global decentralized network of RoseNet nodes that communicate with each other. It's not simple to achieve this level of decentralization without spending a lot of resources; so, to get as close as possible to this scenario, we are asking the community members to participate in this test from anywhere around the world. The more participations, the more decentralized the network will be, and results will be far more real. To participate, you need a computer with a preferably stable internet connection, capable of sending and receiving a considerable amount of messages (probably tens of GBs of data during the test duration). It also need to have a modern hardware config - a system with at least 8GB of RAM and 8 cores of CPU is preferred in order to handle the huge amound of data. The instructions to run a node will be provided later (a non-permanent link of the draft version of instructions is available in RoseNet GitHub repo (https://github.com/rosen-bridge/rosenet/tree/feat/global-test/tests/global), but in short, it will be far easier than setting up a Watcher, which is already simple .) The test will take around a day, and we appreciate if you don't bring your node down meanwhile (otherwise some wrong data may be collected as part of test results, which is to be avoided).

* ErgoHack IX is going on, watch videos being released on the way! https://www.youtube.com/@ErgoPlatform/videos

* MewFinance  is now supporting rsSNEK as payment asset, has added several Cardano natives to ergo and built Intial LP's, and  implemented  verified collections following the latest eip standards https://mewfinance.com/

* Pgr456 Started working on Ergo integration into Keystone hardware wallet. Got the address generation working (see attached video) and now I am working on wallet connection and transaction signing. Currently waiting on some additional info from the Keystone team.

* Cyberverse done Rocket Rush Fix update with a lot of  fixes and improvements

* Nautilus v0.15.0-beta.0 with 0-conf enabled is finally reviewed and released on the Abyss channel, please test and let me know about any issue/thoughts.

*  ZenGate pre-announced Lithium-pegged stablecoin https://x.com/danieltetsuyama/status/1850247429179969926

Ergo Ecosystem Weekly Update - Oct 6th, 2024
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* There was good discussion over X (Twitter) Spaces with notable members of Nervos community on blockchain based P2P economy, you can listen to the recording at https://twitter.com/ergo_platform/status/1841825652690780586

* Rosen testing group made a lot of tests this week! The test has been successfully concluded so the Rosen team is integraing feedback collected and some fixes into the main code and getting ready for deployment.

* Sigmanauts started to sell tokenized Ergo merchandise via MewMart: https://mart.mewfinance.com/explore?category=Phygital

* Satergo v1.8.0 has been released! https://satergo.com . A lot of new features here, such as: airdrop from a spreadsheet file, UTXO consolidation, token burning, and transacting everything at once, sending to multiple addresses in 1 transaction (faster and lower fee), improved transaction history, and so on! Also, better accessibility support (for blind people), Javanese language support, and bug fixes!

* A new developer found for adding Ergo support to new Stax and Flex devices, it will start to work on it from Monday, Oct, 7th. After new devices support is done, there will be functional test by Ledger team, 3rd party audit, and then Ergo support will be landed in Ledger Live!

* Mew Finance started its token presales: https://mewfinance.com/presale (do your own research!)

* Lithos devs finished first prototypes of NISP contracts, working on testing using 6.0 devnet

* Sigmanauts mining pool stood up test pool for mining swaps. Runs in the background and get shark tokens so btc-SHARK for example. Miners will be able to swap to: RSN, rsADA, rsBTC, CYPX, GAU for the time being.

* A new forum post on Ergo ecosystem as a free and open financial ecosystem:  https://www.ergoforum.org/t/ergo-ecosystem-as-open-financial-stack-movement/4869

* Another forum post is proposing possible possible topics for a thesis or a research papers: https://www.ergoforum.org/t/possible-topics-for-a-thesis-or-a-research-paper/4872


And more:

* ErgoHack IX is approaching! Do not forget to register @ https://ergohack.io/register/

* If anyone is interested in testing out an improved script to spool up an ergo node on a pi, feel free to test and comment. On “ccg-dev” branch under 02-proficient
https://github.com/ccgarant/ergo-full-node-raspi/pull/8

* More ErgoHack9 ideas collected! Please visit Ergo developers group ( https://t.me/ErgoDevelopers ) to discuss them or propose more!

Some exchanges (e.g. in South Korea) do not like privacy coins now. Thus privacy and non-privacy coins should become close.

A particular move in this direction is non-interactive mixing, see this thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5249951.0

There's a notion of non-outsourceable Proof-of-Work puzzles, and Ergo Platform cryptocurrency which has Autolykos PoW algorithm which prevents pool formation ( see https://docs.ergoplatform.com/ErgoPow.pdf for details).

However, if smart contracts are powerful enough, still miners can do coalitions for most of NO-PoW schemes using collaterals , see this paper of my co-authorship https://eprint.iacr.org/2020/044 (published @ FC'20).

So please consider your scheme against smart-contract powered pools.

Currently, users of Bitcoin and other non-privacy coins are using mixing services. However, even for non-custodial services there are many risks, caused by dropping on networking traffic, adversarial partners or even mixing service.

As a solution, non-interactive mixer comes. In this case Alice just puts her coin on the blockchain and waits for Bob. Coin's contract allows Bob to spend Alice's coin as well as Bob's coin but only if two outputs of the transactions would be properly mixed and indistinguishable for external observer.

A paper on such a mixer (with my co-authorship) appeared online recently https://eprint.iacr.org/2020/560 , but for Ergo there's proof-of-concept mixer already (made ny anonymous dev "anon92048"): https://github.com/anon92048/ergo-mixer-web

For Bitcoin, a little bit similar scheme called SNICKER is coming, but currently in form of early draft. Also, it still requires for some offchain public bulletin board.

There are some wallets coming with such mixer built in, such as Cypra wallet: https://cypra.io/

Thus a gap between privacy and non-privacy coins become more narrow.

Please let me know what do you think on that.

Ah I see. We're discussing it, see https://github.com/ergoplatform/ergo/issues/1100 (are you BigEvilSoloMiner aka AsicResearcher maybe though? )

Sorry for the long reply, had problems with recovering the password!


Autolykos is based on k-sum problem and not very different from generalized based problem based Equihash then. Can you explain about "no memory and constant slowdown" please?

Autolykos is pretty close to Equihash, it is based on k-sum problem , but also adds a signature component for somewhat pool-resistance. Parameters are chosen in order to be much more memory-intensive (and memory-bandwidth intensive) than ZCash's and other popular Equihash coins PoWs.

No hard feelings mate! The development of Ergo was started in 2016. So we have two announcement topics already, one PRE-ANN and one ANN. This topic is for free discussions, not announcements. It starts with intro  information about the project. I used to be Nxt core dev back in 2014 and I remember that good thread in this subforum.

Thanks! Actually it was hard to launch and then continue to work in the middle of crypto winter. But we were small and super-focused team of experienced guys, and very conservative about spendings ) so we survived, and now time to grow fast!

"Underdog Cryptocurrencies That Will Shake 2020" https://thecryptoassociate.com/underdog-cryptocurrencies-that-will-shake-2020/

Privacy coins could be under pressure globally soon, Korean exchanges already thrown away some of them.

Maybe mixing should be more easier in coins where it is not private by default, see non-interactive mixer ErgoMix coming to Ergo, and some guys are doing BIP for SNICKER, non-interactive mixer for Bitcoin.

Yes, the project is clearly undervalued if we take into account solid research it is based one (first in the space published papers on space-scarce economy aka storage rent economy, stateless clients etc, along with implementations), unique approach to crypto apps support, solid design, and the fact the project has been delivered and successfully survived the cryptowinter.

For wider adoption, devs are now working on applications, such as non-interactive mixer, DEX, and so on, and now it's the best time for crowd-sourced promotion. so please spread the word, join discord, and get developers you know to build on top of Ergo!

In Ergo we have many issues in GitHub labelled with bounties (in Ergs), e.g. issues with 100-Erg bounty attached https://github.com/ergoplatform/ergo/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%3Aopen+label%3A%22B-100+Erg%22

I dont' remember any women around when Bitcoin was less than $1 and the space was undeground for freaks. Vitalik and Andreas formed back then. Now it is multi-billion industry and we should have diversity? ok girls go back in past with time machine and do your hard work

Sigma protocols (aka Generalized Schnorr Proofs) are used in some cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin is going to adopt Schnorr signatures (Schnorr sig is as simplest sigma-protocol, the Schnorr protocol turned out into a signature scheme), ZCoin is using its "Sigma Privacy" which actually some specific sigma-protocol for log-sized ring signature.

However, what's Ergo is doing is really unique. It is using composability of sigma protocols and also similarity between statements to be proven with them and boolean predicates. Thus Ergo allows to mix crypto statements and predicates on blockchain state. Simplest example:

((HEIGHT <= 1000) AND PK1) OR ((HEIGHT > 1000) AND (PK1 OR PK2)

where HEIGHT is blockchain height during script evaluation

Then if transaction is trying to spend  a coin protected by the script, and height is 2000, after reduction the script is turned into PK1 OR PK2 means "proof (i.e. signature against spending transaction bytes) for a secret key corresponding to public key PK1 or public key PK2 is valid".  Composability of sigma-protocols preserve zero-knowledge, thus from the signature it is not know which secret actually was used (corresponding to PK1 or PK2). Thus this is a simplest ring signature.

A lot of work was done to get composable sigma-protocols implementation, papers are silent about that. Thankfuly, a Boston University Prof. helped us to get a working and secure scheme (not rocket science but solid crypto-engineering though).

thanks for the kind words!

Community members got a lot of DeFi schemes, some of them are involving synthetics, e.g.

"Bonds based on Ergo (or the “Yield protocol”)" https://www.ergoforum.org/t/bonds-based-on-ergo-or-the-yield-protocol/128
"Interest-Free Loan Contract" https://www.ergoforum.org/t/interest-free-loan-contract/67

+ I can imagine that after IEO decline we'll have a new wave of experimentation with projects funding on-chain. Hopefully Ergo innovations will play out here. 
+ Maybe with bigger community we'll have externally provided stablecoins (USDT/USDC/tUSD, USDN at least)

Ergo Platform Ecosystem Digest - January 2020




   *  Ergo Foundation has been established (https://ergoplatform.org/en/foundation/)

    * Security audit of most critical parts of the reference protocol client is done, report is available (https://ergoplatform.org/en/blog/2020_01_12_security_audit/)

    * New paper is out, “Bypassing Non-Outsourceable Proof-of-Work Schemes Using Collateralized Smart Contracts” (https://eprint.iacr.org/2020/044.pdf). This paper describes how to build a pool for Ergo based on smart contracts with collaterals.

    * Public Discord server has been created (https://discordapp.com/invite/gYrVrjS), please join!

    * Ergo Platform reference protocol client 3.2.0 released (https://github.com/ergoplatform/ergo/releases/tag/v3.2.0). Updates are coming reguralry!

    * CoinBarn wallet is still under review in ChromeStore, but released a desktop version (https://twitter.com/coinbarn/status/1211026427686064133). CoinBarn is the simplest wallet for Ergo, and it is supporting custom tokens!

    * Ergo now has a command-line wallet also, called ErgoTool. An introductory article on the ErgoTool: https://ergoplatform.org/en/blog/2019_12_31_ergo_tool/

    * ErgoCast #2 published: https://ergocast.io/

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