We were going to wait for Kucoin to list BBR but now that relations with supporting services have been normalized we decided to get the project reveal out before the month of December. This is so that our work is on everyone's radar during the upcoming holiday period. Although we are still refining the some of the designs we’d like to share what we have so far.
First, I’d like to personally thank everyone who has stuck by the project during this rough patch without an exchange. I’d also like to thank all the researchers, developers, designers and other contributors that have stuck with the project during this period. It shows a real commitment to the future success of this project. I’d also like to thank CZ for making himself available to resolve any technical questions related to the project and provide sound advisement in other areas related to the project. We hope to see him join us in this adventure.
When we first approached this project our main priority was to fix the database issue although once the decision was made to use the latest version of Bytecoin as a base for the hard fork it became clear that we’d have to do a lot more to gain a foothold in the competitive privacy vertical. This included recruiting a top tier team of researchers and developers to help us achieve something truly unique. We looked at the entire protocol with a healthy skepticism to see where we could improve. This effort ended up snowballing into a complete overhaul the Cryptonote protocol.
Rebranding with launch of the new codebase
To mark this new era for the project we’ll be rebranding from Boolberry[BBR] to Doubloon[XDB] when we fork to the new codebase. This will be a fresh start for the project with improved branding and marketing efforts. We chose the name Doubloon since it has a significant history in numismatics as one of the first decentralized currencies used during the time of colonial expansion before the introduction of the Miller Dollar.
https://coinsite.com/brasher-doubloon/
Itsuku
We initially brought Dr. Fabien Coelho on board to peer review the Cryptonight and Wild Keccak algorithms to see if they could be improved and also to review other promising algorithms as candidates to replace WC. We discovered the MTP algorithm design by Biryukov et al. of Equihash and Zcash fame. This is the same algorithm planned for integration into ZCoin project. Professor Coelho spent the last 4 months reviewing and redesigning that algorithm which has now taken the form in a hardened version called Itsuku.
Our research into designing and peer reviewing this algorithm has been shared with the ZCoin team as part of their bounty program as an attempt to unify and peer review the design. Marc Bevand has also been crucial is helping with these efforts.
One of the primary benefits of Itsuku is that the miners bear the resources burden while verifiers do not. This is a true egalitarian mining algorithm and unlike the current CN mining algorithms, one that has seen a substantial amount of active research and peer review from within the academic community. Dr. Coehlo is a professor of Computer Science at the prestigious MINES ParisTech, PSL Research University. His research into Merkle Tree Proofs and Proof-of-work algorithms dates back to 2007 before Bitcoin was launched. It goes without saying he is a true pioneer and leader in this field.
A few of Fabien’s student have written a Python implementation that can be used a reference for anyone interested in exploring the design. Our C++ implementation will be made public in the near future along with GPU miner contest we’ll be holding to make sure everyone has access to the same competitive mining software.
Relative links:
Merkle Proof -
http://www.hashcash.org/papers/merkle-proof.pdfEquihash -
https://eprint.iacr.org/2015/946MTP -
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1606.03588v1.pdfMTP Attack -
https://eprint.iacr.org/2017/497ZCoin Bounty -
https://github.com/zcoinofficial/zcoin/wiki/MTP-Audit-and-Implementation-Bounty-SubmissionsMarc Bevand's Blog covering MTP -
http://blog.zorinaq.com/attacks-on-mtp/Itsuku Whitepaper -
http://docdro.id/gxDifaI (design is in section 4.3)
Itusku Python Implementation -
https://github.com/baptistecolin/itsukuShortRingCCT - Short Ring Compact Confidential Transactions
A combined effort from leading professors around the world has resulted in the next generation of ring signature based privacy. We have advanced this area of research to pioneer ring signatures of an O(log n) size where
N is the number of members in the ring. This improvement reduces the size by orders of magnitude resulting in a 91.8% reduction with 1000 members and 99.984% with 1M members over traditional O(n) signatures deployed in CN based projects. This is a massive improvement for privacy and allows us to scale to millions of members in our rings for the same computation cost as 1000s of members in other CN projects.
Our Compact Confidential Transactions design provides transaction value privacy while reducing proof sizes to 86% over traditional CT design. This research is on going and if further improvements are made we should be able to reach the 90 percentile range with regards to efficiency.
In addition, our Cryptographers have also provided design for multi-signatures which will be included in the new codebase. Once the final CCT revision is completed we will be submitting our paper to IACR and releasing it to the general public.
Native i2pd routing - Transmission Privacy
In an effort to provide transmission privacy we’ve integrated the i2pd router into the new codebase with advisement from the i2p team. 1776, the developer spearheading this effort has made a massive amount of progress in this area of the project and we will have a true i2p design available at launch. He has a ton of experience in this area and has brought that into this project for peace of mind. In the future he will be submitting an improvement proposal to i2p team to increase efficiency.
Robust Stealth Addresses
We are currently working on an improvement to the original Stealth Address design deployed by Cryptonote that is resistant to compromise of several (up to m-1) private spending keys. This improvement is purely security based and will not impact privacy in any regard. We are still waiting for final peer review on this design and if cleared will be included in the new codebase and outlined in the upcoming whitepaper.
Boolberry Legacy
Staying true to the original Boolberry improvements pioneered by Zoidberg our developers have made sure that all those unique improvements are included in the new codebase. This includes address aliasing, pruning and the special output flag for guaranteed privacy that originally solved the CN's unlinkability flaw.
Boolberry presentation explaining advanced anonymity -
http://www.slideshare.net/boolberry/boolberry-solves-cryptonoteflaws-37055246 Boolberry presentation explaining smaller blockchain -
http://www.slideshare.net/boolberry/boolberry-reduces-blockchain-bloatUpgraded Cryptonote Codebase
The project will also benefit from the improvements made to the CN protocol in v2 of Bytecoin which include depreciation of the payment ID requirement in place of Multi-Aggregate Addresses, RocksDB and various API improvements. Below is a example of the depreciation of the payment ID.
Improved GUI
Boolberry pioneered the CN space by providing the first GUI for any CN project. We’ve continued this legacy by improving upon it with new features like address book, in wallet explorer and mining.
New Website
Lastly we've also built a new modern website that reflects the new branding, project information and also lists the team of contributors which will be sharing in the coming days.
All in all our efforts here represent the biggest overhaul of the protocol since the release of Boolberry and original release of Cryptonote. One could view our new design as gen 3 of the protocol. As stated earlier, we’ll be sharing our ShortRingCCT research in the form a technical white paper as soon as the revisions to the CCT component are finalized along with a condensed overview of the entire protocol.
Again, a big thanks to everyone who has stuck with the project during this period and another big welcome to all the newcomers who have joined the community. We're planning the hardfork for sometime in Q1 of 2018 to give everyone a chance who has BBR trapped on Poloniex and Bittrex to participate. We’ve got an uphill battle ahead of us and stiff competition but I believe our research and development will reestablish this project as the benchmark Cryptonote project.
