General project assessment:

• Some big challenges in research, where we are prioritizing to mitigate the biggest new unknown. I'm optimistic.
• The research team has done a lot of great work and progress, all of which can be tracked and observed. If things take longer in this area is only because of the difficulty and novelty of many of the problems, not because of problems with the team or their underperformance. I'm personally confident this research team is able to deliver.
• The engineering progress is not sufficient, and at this point I'm certain we will not be able to deliver what I expected. Currently, there are 2 (Gusto + Daniel, who needs to spend time on other tasks). Since April, we have managed to hire 2 engineers, but both of them did not work out (Matt withdrew from participation from the beginning, Fabio did not have the skills or ability to learn). Keep in mind also that while we have 2 other engineers (one part time though), they are working in protocol design tasks with researchers, to provide support with PoCs or experiments. This has been pivotal for the rapid advance of research. In short: we really need to hire quality engineers and faster.

Consensus

General assessment: we found a big issue, and I'm putting as much personal energy on this as I can. We need to make Cryptarchia work because we know that there aren't other good alternatives for Private PoS. With this aside, ZK engineering work is making good progress.

• Research
  • PoL and PoV have been prototyped in ZK.
  • PoL is way to expensive to be practical, we will need to optimize substantially by using Circom. However, we are postponing this due to *MEV issue.
  • MEV issue + Lazy validator issue. We have recently discovered a fundamental issue with the class of algorithms that we use (Crypsinous) that affects also our variant. This is really big problem that we did not account for previously as we were using a proven protocol.
    • More info and potential solution: https://www.notion.so/Improving-Cryptarchia-1058f96fb65c8085ab16dc921d89fd77
    • This is the previous, flawed, solution: https://www.notion.so/What-Remains-to-Achieving-Great-UX-Zones-Finality-and-Preconfirmations-5c2e2684f9404a519c9b6a3c7a62bbef
• Development
  • We are slowly but steadily integrating the PoCs from Research.

Mixnet

General assessment: we are on track. In order to prove its properties, we will need to invest more time during 2025. But are able to start implementation with what we know for now, and build a prototype.

• Research
  • An implementable design is clear.
  • Key things missing
    • Results on bandwidth consumption (key for viability given bandwidth budget with consumer hardware and home networks)
    • Payments and rewards. This is key for incentivization, ensuring participation of nodes.
  • What remains:
    • Mathematical analysis is very challenging and will take at least a few months.
    • Experiments and simulations have been conducted, comparing different types of temporal mixing algorithms and parameters. This is an ongoing task.
• Development
  • Starting to develop the first blocks of the p2p stack for the mixnet.

Data Availability

General assessment

• Research
  • v1 ready. This means that we have all the components we believe we need, but we can't discard design issues as we integrate this further.
• Development
  • Implemented the different components.
  • What's missing: like in all these protocols, the first building blocks are relatively easy to implement (except the cryptographic components), however integration with other protocols, proper testing and progression towards production-quality take much longer.

Coordination Layer

General Assessment: While this is one of the most challenging areas, we have managed to make great research progress, particularly in reducing the biggest unknowns and feasibility questions. But not all is clear yet.

• Research
  • Currently prototyping the first Native Zone bridge, building all the functionalities that we require from Native Zones.
  • Atomic transactions successfully prototyped.
  • We have benchmarked and optimized it enough to have confidence in the viability of the architecture of Zones. While not perfect, it's feasible and we expect further improvements in the future.
  • Privacy in inter-Zone transactions is a hard problem. We don't know yet about it enough to assess.
  • Currently researching ledger implementations that can handle a large number of private transactions.
  • We have done a thorough review of all ZK VMs and compilers out there to have a comprehensive understanding of our options.
• Development
  • Slowly, some of the prototyped building blocks are planned to be embedded in the node. But this is not currently the priority.