Highlights[ ]

• Bulletproofs can use "batch verification" which can greatly speed things up
  • Perhaps a reduction to just ~15% of the normal time complexity
• If you're interested in Monero Debian packages, please join the discussion at https://github.com/monero-project/monero/issues/2395
• Monero GUI
  • Merged in sub-addresses.
  • Removed the ability for a user to generate payment id's and integrated addresses
  • There is a new "--bootstrap-daemon-address" flag that hopes to speed up syncs
• March 2018 Hardfork
  • As previously noted, Bulletproofs need additional study before a full public implementation. As such, they will not be included in the March 2018 HF.
  • There are plans to lower the fee model. How it will impact the network is being studied.

Full Log[ ]

12:00 PM <rehrar> agenda: https://github.com/monero-project/meta/issues/166
12:00 PM <rehrar> as always, start with 1. Greetings
12:00 PM <sarang> yo
12:00 PM <msvb-lab> Hi there.
12:00 PM <+hyc> hey
12:00 PM <rbrunner> Hoi zämme
12:01 PM <iDunk> Hi
12:01 PM <pebx> hi
12:01 PM <rehrar> ArticMine fluffypony luigi1111 luigi1111w smooth NoodleDoodle anonimal anonimobile endogenic gingeropolous vtnerd pigeons
12:01 PM <pigeons> hi
12:01 PM <vtnerd> hi
12:01 PM → bmeynell joined (~bmeynell@142.197.108.175)
12:02 PM <rehrar> dEBRUYNE Jaquee dsc_ dsc2 ?
12:02 PM <gingeropolous> oh theres a meeting?
12:02 PM <rehrar> anyone else?
12:02 PM <endogenic> no ginger
12:02 PM <iDunk> moneromooo
12:02 PM <dEBRUYNE> I am her
12:02 PM <dEBRUYNE> e
12:02 PM <rehrar> medusa_ moneromooo othe
12:02 PM <@smooth> 1
12:03 PM <rehrar> Well, welcome everyone! :)
12:03 PM <rehrar> 2. Brief review of what's been completed since the previous meeting
12:03 PM ⇐ dnaleor quit (~dnaleor@host-im1adb.cbn1.zeelandnet.nl) Quit: Leaving
12:03 PM <rehrar> Anyone have any exciting stuff to report for development?
12:03 PM <medusa_> hi
12:03 PM <sarang> MRL Goes To Stanford
12:04 PM <sarang> It was observed that bulletproofs can have batch verification, which will be great time savings even between separate transaction
12:05 PM <@ArticMine> hi
12:05 PM <bearretinjapan> hi
12:05 PM bearretinjapan → ferretinjapan
12:05 PM <+hyc> batching is always interesting. have to balance batch size vs latency, waiting for enough txs to arrive to fill a batch
12:06 PM <sarang> This can be useful for new nodes
12:06 PM <@smooth> currently the code waits for all the txs before doing anythign with them anyway, although that could change
12:07 PM <sarang> Initial testing by andytoshi indicated that subsequent proofs were only ~15% of the time complexity of a separate verification
12:07 PM <+hyc> nice
12:07 PM <sarang> Yeah, it merges all the multiexp operations into one
12:07 PM <sarang> effectively replacing group operations with scalar operations
12:08 PM <sarang> So the time savings really depend on the relative timing between those ops
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12:08 PM <sarang> Anyway, mostly excellent talks at the conference, and good lessons learned
12:09 PM — sarang will be quiet now
12:10 PM <rehrar> Anyone else? :) GUI have anything?
12:11 PM <medusa_> the GUI project has merged sub addresses. also we removed the ability for the user to generate payment ids and integrated addresses
12:11 PM — xmrscott[m] sent a long message: xmrscott[m]_2018-01-28_17:11:27.txt <https://matrix.org/_matrix/media/v1/download/matrix.org/RqFKwypdZwaYrPPAWeCCziLo>
12:11 PM <medusa_> in addition, there is a new monerod start up flag, called --boostrap daemon 8https://github.com/monero-project/monero/pull/3165)
12:12 PM <+hyc> ^^ this looks very good. I wonder if the GUI should use that by default
12:12 PM <medusa_> the GUi will make use of this too, so there dont exist several implementations of the same thing
12:12 PM <gingeropolous> is that supplanting Jaquee 's thing?
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12:12 PM <medusa_> PR is allready here hyc https://github.com/monero-project/monero-gui/pull/1091
12:13 PM <medusa_> gingeropolous:as far as i understand it, yes
12:13 PM <rehrar> I'll repaste xmrscott[m]'s message so people who don't want to click don't have to
12:13 PM <rehrar> David Mirza Ahmad, president of Subgraph OS, has put together a byte-for-byte matching Debian package and is requesting comment on some final pieces: "There some decisions to make for us, like: where does the blockchain data go? Do we start the daemon with systemd by default (feeling like no, as it can be started in GUI)? Appreciate thoughts on this." No one has provided comments on these matters so if anyone here could do so it woul
12:13 PM <rehrar> d be appreciated. https://github.com/monero-project/monero/issues/2395
12:14 PM <rehrar> ^
12:14 PM <pebx> thanks for the update medusa_! this looks very good. we shouldn't forget that GUI is the interface to the rest of the world...
12:14 PM <msvb-lab> rehrar: Byte for byte matching, you mean as in reproducible build? Gitian?
12:15 PM — rehrar applauds the GUI people for their consistent quality work
12:15 PM <pigeons> I looked at his repo and i didnt see the debian control files to reproduce
12:15 PM <rehrar> xmrscott[m] ^ msvb-lab's question
12:16 PM <@ArticMine> Any idea on timeline from an update at out end to the repo?
12:16 PM <xmrscott[m]> I believe so. I'm not familliar with build terminoogy,
12:17 PM ⇐ scl quit (~scl@unaffiliated/scl) Ping timeout: 265 seconds
12:18 PM <xmrscott[m]> The sha256 sums match: d5b0295d55f9951a6995e2ecc1516898799b22686ed81ca07b05b493175f2f66
12:18 PM <xmrscott[m]> (THis is shown on the comments in the GitHub issue)
12:20 PM <rehrar> Any answer for ArticMine's question?
12:20 PM <+hyc> unknowable
12:20 PM <rehrar> bam
12:20 PM <+hyc> distro release schedules are seldom anywhere near upstream release cycles
12:21 PM <@ArticMine> My concern is stale Monero in the distro
12:21 PM <+hyc> yes
12:21 PM <+hyc> it's a frequent occurrence in distro packages
12:21 PM <@ArticMine> With a six month hard for cycle
12:21 PM <@ArticMine> fork
12:22 PM <+hyc> which is why I've never put much priority on distrok packaging. reproducible builds are a good thing in and of themself though.
12:23 PM <rehrar> Alright, if nothing else, we can move on to 3. March hardfork items + code freeze
12:24 PM <rehrar> Anything to be discussed about the upcoming hard fork? Is there a code freeze date yet?
12:25 PM <dEBRUYNE> Preferably very soon. Then we don't have to rush stuff
12:25 PM <@ArticMine> ... and bulletproofs
12:25 PM <sarang> What about BPs?
12:26 PM <+hyc> seems they're off the table for March, since audits haven't been completed
12:26 PM <+hyc> 3rd party audits
12:26 PM <sarang> Correct
12:26 PM <rehrar> missed the meeting last week ArticMine
12:26 PM <rbrunner> Have any been *started* in the meantime?
12:26 PM <sarang> I'm waiting on a formal SoW from one of the groups
12:27 PM <sarang> Then I'll present my recommendations among all groups
12:27 PM <medusa_> since BP seems to be off the table, is the new wallet option the only planned change to address current high fee situation ?
12:27 PM <sarang> We're looking at ~40K per professional audit
12:27 PM <sarang> and hopefully get benedikt to do a review of at least the Java since he wrote the damn thing
12:27 PM <sarang> for $
12:28 PM <rehrar> medusa_: we should crash the price in the meantime
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12:28 PM <sarang> Should we include batch BP verification in the audited code?
12:28 PM <sarang> Or put that aside
12:28 PM <endogenic> rehrar: was that a preannouncement? :)
12:28 PM <endogenic> sarang: perhaps as optional extra credit?
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12:29 PM <+hyc> we should audit whatever we hope to release in Sept.
12:29 PM <+hyc> otherwise we'll just need to do all this again for each incremental improvement. ??
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12:30 PM <sarang> It'll be included in an updated whitepaper in Feb
12:30 PM <sarang> by benedikt et al., not by me
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12:31 PM <rbrunner> Well, maybe plan in a way that makes pretty damn sure we will be ready in September :)
12:31 PM <pebx> what about the fees medusa_ mentioned? it's also something the average user sees first and complains about... if we don't release BPs there should be some lowering of fees beside the low to standard thing
12:32 PM <dEBRUYNE> I suppose we can discuss lowering the low priority level since it's arbitrary anyway, but we can't lower the default because we'd have to tweak the penalty as well
12:32 PM <ferretinjapan> BPs being released in March was also cited as a reason for onot loweiring fees.
12:32 PM <@smooth> we can lower the default a little i think, but no one has taken the time to study it
12:32 PM <@smooth> so actually no, we can't
12:33 PM <sarang> As to BP funding, I plan to open an FFS with "checkpoints" for an amount covering at least one pro audit and another for a review by one of the paper authors
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12:33 PM <endogenic> i was just going to ask about that, smooth
12:33 PM <@smooth> 'default' isn't really the right term though. the pending PR changes the 'default' to be dynamic
12:33 PM <dEBRUYNE> old default then? :P
12:33 PM <@smooth> yeah "medium" whatever you want to call it
12:33 PM <@smooth> "normal"
12:33 PM <rbrunner> base fee?
12:33 PM <dEBRUYNE> smooth: any opinion about lowering the lowest level?
12:33 PM <@smooth> etc.
12:34 PM <rehrar> Base fee sounds good
12:34 PM <@smooth> base fee doesn't seem like the best term to me
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12:34 PM <@smooth> implies that is actually the fee you pay
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12:34 PM <@smooth> it is more like a 'fee reference value' or something
12:34 PM <rehrar> I think it should be more than 'medium' though, because it's the one that will increase the block size. Something a little more souped up than 'medium'?
12:35 PM <ferretinjapan> floating reference fee?
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12:35 PM <rehrar> Either way, thoughts on lowering the arbitrary 'Low Fee'?
12:35 PM <@ArticMine> We have to be careful with the low fee level relative to the 1 tx at penalty (default)
12:36 PM <@ArticMine> Spam attacks becomes possible if the probability of mining becomes too low
12:36 PM <pebx> the crypto "market" might crash in the meantime, but it also might not and what if monero's market price until september rises like within the last 8 months?
12:36 PM <@smooth> ArticMine: but doesn't the probability of mining just depend on how many of each there are and not the fee amount?
12:37 PM <pebx> the minimum fee is a good protection but also a pain...
12:38 PM <@smooth> the issue i see with too much of a gap between levels is the incentive to circumvent (just bump up your own fee a little so you are above all the others in the same level but not all the way to the next level)
12:38 PM <dEBRUYNE> pebx: I'd leave any price predictions out of this discussion. Tomorrow's price is most likely today's price
12:38 PM <@smooth> the more gap the greater the incentive to do that
12:38 PM <pebx> dEBU
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12:39 PM <pebx> is it not about price when it comes to fees?
12:39 PM <@smooth> other than that the low level seems aalmost comletely arbitrary to me
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12:39 PM <dEBRUYNE> Price surely influence fees (as they are denominated in XMR). I was just saying that we should leave *price* prediction out of it
12:39 PM <rehrar> Well if we want a code freeze "soon", we should try to decide this "soon" too, no? Or would this not be affected really by the freeze?
12:39 PM <dEBRUYNE> *prediction*
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12:40 PM <@ArticMine> I mean how low on the min fee do people want to go?
12:40 PM <endogenic> can we put together a study on fees and spam? having a shared model (and simulated results) we can reference and improve collectively would be great… certainly would ease the knowledge gap
12:40 PM <pebx> i didn't want to include any prediction, so i told it might continue or not
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12:40 PM <dEBRUYNE> smooth: I guess if we had 1/5th or 1/6th (current is 1/4th) the gap would be still sufficiently small? Also people would have to tweak the code and compile it themselves to make use of the gap
12:40 PM <@smooth> endogenic: it has been done. we can do another one but until it is done we can't rely on it
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12:41 PM <endogenic> smooth: do you mean the recent writeup?
12:41 PM <@smooth> endogenic: that one, the older one. whatever is done we can rely on. we can't rely on something that is 'can we do' especially with an imminent freeze
12:42 PM <@smooth> of course we can do more studies
12:42 PM <endogenic> smooth: i would only suggest inaction until after study/ confirmation
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12:42 PM <@ArticMine> and then nothing for March, after which we will have BP
12:43 PM <rehrar> Which brings us full circle :P
12:43 PM <+moneromooo> Can we finish the meeting first, and go back to the fee stuff ?
12:43 PM <endogenic> lol mooo
12:43 PM <rehrar> Alright. Moving on then! 4. Code + ticket discussion / Q & A
12:43 PM <pebx> nice to see you, mooo
12:43 PM <dEBRUYNE> pebx: Your sentence sounded like that, hence my statement. I could've misinterpreted you though.
12:43 PM <@ArticMine> I sugest we leave fees aslon for March or at most introduce the wallet side adaptive fee between default and min
12:44 PM <@ArticMine> alone
12:44 PM <medusa_> thats allready merged afaik ArticMine
12:44 PM <@smooth> the adaptive should go in if at all possible from a stability perspective imo
12:44 PM <@smooth> oh i didn't know it was merged. great
12:44 PM <pebx> dEBRUYNE my point is, that at some point fees can get insane like they have been / are in bitcoin
12:44 PM <@ArticMine> Then if it is merged that is all
12:44 PM <gingeropolous> ^^
12:45 PM <medusa_> this one no ? https://github.com/monero-project/monero/pull/3123
12:45 PM <@smooth> yes. lets move on: rehrar> Alright. Moving on then! 4. Code + ticket discussion / Q & A
12:45 PM <rbrunner> I have a little thing: The Windows installer missed the Fall releases. But surely the March release is a perfect opportunity to finally put it into service ...?
12:45 PM <+hyc> yeah sounds like we're fine for now on fee
12:46 PM <gingeropolous> all this code and ticket discussion
12:47 PM <iDunk> 3186 and 3198 need merging to fix some builds.
12:47 PM <rbrunner> I hope it's not itself controversial that having a Windows installer would be nice
12:47 PM <medusa_> absolutely rbrunner, the worlk load regarding that is mostly on the shoulder of the binary builder (pony). we cant really do anything to speed it up i fear
12:48 PM <rbrunner> Ah well, March is early enough :)
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12:48 PM <rbrunner> Just do not forget it :)
12:48 PM <@luigi1111> I personally prefer portable exe but both are fine with me
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12:49 PM <+moneromooo> "portable" and "exe", hmmm :)
12:49 PM <+hyc> lol
12:49 PM <dEBRUYNE> pebx: I surely hope the dynamic fee algo has kicked in by then. Anyway, I'll refrain from commenting on fees now.
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12:50 PM <@luigi1111> :)
12:50 PM <pebx> dEBRUYNE hope is good... but i'll also not comment fees in this meeting any more.
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12:51 PM <rehrar> Anything else for code and ticket discussion?
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12:51 PM <rehrar> 5. Any additional meeting items (besides fees)?
12:52 PM <msvb-lab> Or hardware questions.
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12:52 PM <rehrar> did you want to share something msvb-lab?
12:53 PM <msvb-lab> Nothing to share. We're working on the next gen prototype.
12:53 PM <msvb-lab> Questions are welcome in any case.
12:53 PM <rehrar> Alright then.
12:54 PM <rehrar> 6. Confirm next meeting date/time
12:54 PM <rehrar> Feb 11th?
12:54 PM ⇐ scl quit (~scl@unaffiliated/scl) Ping timeout: 276 seconds
12:54 PM <+hyc> sounds right
12:54 PM <rehrar> luigi has mentioned a couple times about switching the time
12:54 PM <+hyc> btw, I'll be at FOSDEM next week. anyone else going?
12:54 PM <medusa_> i want to thank everyone that is working on making the build envs green. you guys are heros  <3
12:54 PM <rehrar> don't know if he was serious, but does anyone else agree?
12:54 PM <+hyc> switch to what time?
12:54 PM <msvb-lab> hyc: I'll be there too, at FOSDEM in Bruxelles.
12:55 PM <rehrar> luigi1111 luigi1111w?
12:55 PM <rehrar> I guess just as a general question, is this time inconvenient for other people?
12:55 PM <+hyc> seems ok to me
12:55 PM <rehrar> hyc has spoken
12:55 PM <+moneromooo> IIRC ArticMine objected.
12:56 PM <rehrar> I'll probably open a meta issue and ask for opinions.
12:56 PM <@ArticMine> I would prefer an hour earlier
12:56 PM <+hyc> good idea
12:56 PM <rehrar> For now we can have next dev meeting same time, and see about moving others.
12:56 PM <endogenic> i'm fine with an hour earlier
12:56 PM <rehrar> Sound ok for everyone?
12:56 PM <pebx> hyc can't wait for your talk to see it at least online!
12:57 PM <rbrunner> Yes, one hour earlier is ok as well
12:57 PM <rehrar> Hmmm...ok, tentative next meeting time Feb 11 at 16:00 UTC
12:57 PM <rehrar> The time will be open for discussion on the meeting issue
12:58 PM <rehrar> Meeting over. Thanks for coming everyone. You're all the best, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise.