Doug 
All right, just tweeting it out right now. Justin, what's going on, man? 

Justin 
Nothing much, nothing much. How you doing? 

Doug 
Good, man. Good, good. Hanging in there, enjoying Cloud Worlds. It's freaking entertaining as hell, man. A little scary, right? It's unfortunately at a lot of people's costs, but entertaining nonetheless.

And I don't know, I'm just referring to a bunch of things, but I think first and foremost for me right now is the whole Trump coin thing as Trump is getting inaugurated. I mean, that's us being crypto people, right? To see that happening firsthand. We've been in this ecosystem for a while. I like to believe we're in it for the right reasons. And then to see this debauchery coming from the president himself. Yeah, man. What do you think about it? How do you feel about it? 

Justin 
I think um it's it's definitely something to see it's definitely something to see i think he's it's trump it's like it's trump trump stakes trump like nft nft like it's it's his uh it's him doing doing him as he like same guy he's kind of always been

Doug 
It's it's a dream. It's a dream product for him, right because now he doesn't even have to make the shitty cologne He doesn't even have to make this like source the sneakers or however He does it like there's never been an easier thing to throw your name on that kid grow In a more absurd way than a cryptocurrency called trump card, right?

Like it's like the ultimate pop and up

Justin 
I think I think what's really it's unfortunate that I mean this is the direction that the mainstream is viewing cryptocurrency that this that like that's that's it's uh that's the perspective that it's now you know just fueling completely versus like it's just we're moving further and further away from like a mainstream uh like principal perspective I'd say I mean to an extent like an extent of I mean it's different than the you know arrest everybody approach like and and they take people down and that's like like I've seen a lot of memes of like Gary Gensler like almost like we wish we still had Gary Gensler kind of coming from coming from people to like to stop this to stop this kind of thing when it's like yeah

Doug 
No, no, no, no, no, no, I think, listen, yeah, I want to make myself clear too. I'm totally for that anybody can create a coin thing. I mean, I don't know where you stand on this, I assume you kind of stand where I do it. Like, let's get rid of the overregulation with who can invest in what, who can create a cryptocurrency, who can't. Like, that's all bullshit.

Sure, let anybody create whatever coin they want, but the fact that you have the US president doing it, and then he's essentially selling it to his supporters, and what is it at the end of the day? It has no utility whatsoever. It's a trading card, it's a Trump trading card. And he's, you know, enriching himself with it. Like, it's fine for people to do it, but I mean, actually it's not, I don't think, but for Trump to do it, you know, if people want to go do it. 

Justin 
I certainly hear the argument of like he's like it's using using the political using a position of power to that to that like Advance this this mean coin type thing. It's it's a bad.

It's a bad taste It's definitely a bad leaves a bad taste for sure

Doug 
I do think there's positives, though, like we're saying, right? In my mind, it's kind of like saying, all right, guys, the wild west of crypto era is alive and well. It's never been more wild west than this. Do whatever you want. I love that aspect of it.

What I just don't like about it is the hypocrisy of where we're currently at, which is we could have Trump creating these meme coins. I saw the pastor who spoke at, I don't know if you saw this, the pastor who spoke at his inauguration, just launched his own meme coin. The reality is, you know, the pastor's meme coin is going to have a higher market cap than Monero in like two days, right? It's going to be it's going to be listed on more exchanges than Monero. Like, that's my problem. Like, if we're going to do this, let's let everything fairly compete. All right. If I could, if, you know, Joe Schmo can go on his phone and buy Trump coin with Apple Pay, he should be able to do the same thing with Monero. If the market wants that, but it's the opposite. They're preventing people from getting these positive utilities, things like Monero that are going to have a positive impact on liberty and people's lives overall and just spoon feeding them the shit coins. 

Justin 
Yep, certainly that and there's a level of, you know, like conservatives espouse traditional principles and like, it's like, I had so many, so many, so many aspects of what conservatives talk about are like, cultural, like enriched, like cultural, a strong cultural foundation of like, like, rooted in principles. And then like this, this kind of thing is like, it doesn't, it doesn't fit within that at all.

So it's just like, it's just, it's another interesting road he's taking that's just like, different than what even like, you would think that like, the right would be, would sign up for. And it's, and like, and I've also, it's just, it's just a complete, it's just another sign of like, society moving in a bad direction, I would say like, it's another, it's a sign of the times of like, a more distilling of, of bad, bad principles of like, I'm and I'm not a fan, not a fan of. 

Doug 
Yeah, it just it just doesn't feel good being a part of it too. It's like it's like you want you want to stop the train, right?

It's it's I like I don't want my my kids growing up in this in the in this world that we're heading towards like that That's the problem that like you would think if you were if you were trump and you're the free You know the free leader, you know the leader of the free world Uh, you'd be cognizant of the fact that you're having an impact on the culture of the world and you know And of the country that's supposed to be you know It's kind of setting the standard of what an open and free society should be and here you're still

Justin 
All I'm being said of like, it's like a cultural degradation to an extent, like, I'm also in the camp of like, let people do what they want type of type of libertarian philosophy. So like, save here. From that, from the perspective of like the direction we're now heading towards versus what it was in the in the cryptocurrency sphere, I would I would guess I'm just getting it's still a guess. But like, there's at least there's going to be more live and let live type, I'd say within the cryptocurrency space.

I mean, is it a good thing if like someone like SPF would be allowed to do whatever? No, I don't think, personally, but like, there's it does seem like, like, well, I would imagine Monero would thrive, for example, is like in a in a lazy, the maximal laissez-faire kind of approach. Like, yeah, it's it's bad that I think it's bad that Monero is not allowed to be traded on exchanges. And it's just it's a sign of poor regulation and poor policy. I think that the the clampdown is more likely to be like loosened a bit in the in the current trajectory that in the current direction we're headed on, I'd say. So like, there's some there's some cause and within that with with that opening with that, then you have like, then you have an opening for the foundation to be set, like, as long as that foundation is set and there, then like, the code will will will talk in the end, I'd say like that the product will improve and it has the space in the breathing room to improve and gets in more people's hands and user experience improves of cryptocurrency and Monero specifically, then you have and like, that's that's all that's I'm happier with that. I'm more content with that for leading towards an effecting change in the long run. So there's some there's some room for optimism on at least on the cryptocurrency side with how with with with things still that say that's still worth it. 

Doug 
Yeah, no, that's what I see is the silver lining. Like I said, I think he's trying to say, you know, it's in my mind It's the wild west of crypto, right? So if that's the case then we should see Monero getting listed on exchanges. We should see them getting rid of the bit license in New York I'm trying to start a proper initiative towards that by the way.

I tweeted out the other day, you know I'm gonna make this another project. I'm trying to find people that could come you know Anybody that wants to work on this contact me Monero topia pro Tom mail comm maybe you're you're an attorney Maybe you work in the political sector you work, you know how to lobby right there We got to use our resources guys, so I'm gonna try to organize this effort. There's been like attempts this in the past but We haven't really got anything done in the Monero community to that regard to it to a large degree And part of the reason is there's this sentiment that You know where we are a lot of us are you know, we're crypto anarchists, right? So why are we trying to go integrate with political system? We should be focusing on just building tech outside of their system ignoring them. I've said this many times I think we should take a two-pronged approach and you know I think there's people in the community that are better suited for that task to like they're not they're not coders they can't build the code right so let's let's let's take advantage of the political atmosphere and try to You know push push push the regulators in a direction that will help Monero. Yes. Yes We want people to ideally obtain Monero like with cash without KYC But I also want to see an environment where people can just as easily access Monero as Trump coin, right? I think that's I think that's a good goal But what do you think I kind of ask people this all the time and I get got a different feels in the Monero community Some people are like very extreme like anarchists agarists. They're like Doug you're wasting your time I personally think it's it's worth the effort, especially now given the current political climate

Justin 
No. I'm supportive of a two-pronged approach, I would say.

I think that, I mean, for me, I just imagine that it all stems from the actual product and the actual code is where is the like the kernel. I'd say that it's so it's like, I don't I just I don't think that as long as you're not like taking away from that to an extent. Yeah. Like as long as it's not as long as it's not, for example, we need we need XYZ, we need this to appease regulators. Like as long as there's no like like feedback into that of like we need transparent addresses for to to get on it. Like like as long as it's like as long as you know it's like kernel and then outward then like yeah I'm all for that like it's um

Doug 
Yeah, of course with that caveat right with we're not changing the code You know where it's digital cash But we believe that people should be able to obtain this on a centralized exchange Just like they could get Trump coin They should be able to buy as it currently exists right without any new view keys or addresses for for exchanges to use Let the people buy Monero

Justin 
I also would hold the view that by creating the strongest user experience and making it easiest as possible with the code to use Monero and acquire it, then you get more people on board, more people able to use it, more people able to come to learn why the principles matter and why and just basically are then brought in that way. And then they're like key stakeholders themselves and then you get a grassroots type movement and then the political stuff comes outward from there.

Like I'd say grassroots type stuff stems from that. A change in political outcomes would come from a mass of people using the software and recognizing its value. Now, do I think that there's a place for trying to angle politically before you have your critical mass of people who are shouting at sure. I think like rules on the books are wrong and there's room to potentially right those wrongs and getting those rules off the books. So yeah, I'm totally also for the two broad approach there. 

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Doug 
We have 123 live viewers right now. Guys like and retweet, share, let's get the word out. There's a lot of people hanging out on X right now all excited about what's going on.

Trump being inaugurated. Trump coined his past, his new coin. So let's, you know, we're out there right now. People that are on X, I don't know, let's help them stumble upon Monero talk. Maybe we could save a noob today. So like and retweet, maybe we could help somebody find Monero faster than they eventually will. Because I do think all roads lead to Monero. I do believe Monero is here to stay. We will have a true digital cash protocol. I think Monero's our best bet at that in its current form and given where we're currently at. Before I proceed with questions, let's let Justin quickly kind of intro. So I do think we have kind of a new crowd, which is good, right? I think there's new people coming into Monero now all the time. We just kind of assumed that everybody knows Justin because those of us that have been in Monero for any significant amount of time, know Justin Berman. He's a contributor to the Monero code. He's been working full time on the code for a couple of years now, making some big contributions. He's participated in the last couple of Monero topias and the Monero cons. And he's just one of the big guys out there that's actually doing big stuff for Monero. So if you don't know who he is, Justin, why don't you quickly kind of give an intro and explain what you do in terms of development, what you focus on, all that stuff. 

Justin 
So yeah, you covered a good bit there. Three years, three and a half years now, I've been working on Monero full time. So it's been awesome.

I've been, I'm community crowdfunded. I go by Jay Berman on GitHub and in the Matrix and IRC chat channels. So I use the community crowdfunding system to get funded by the Monero community to work on various tasks within Monero that I feel are highest priority. My latest, most recently, I've been working on the full chain membership proof plus plus upgrade for Monero. I've been working on that now for, I wanna say over six months at this point. And it's nearing, it's nearing, I could see the light at the end of the tunnel. I'm working on the integration. So Luke Parker has been on the show. Kai Benner, it goes by Kai Benner. He wrote up the paper on how we can, how we would integrate it, how we would implement it. And so I'm pulling from that paper and integrating it into the Monero code base. So Luke wrote a lot of stuff in Rust, a lot of the core of the full chain membership proof plus plus math. And then so I'm taking that from the C plus plus side in the Monero that calls into the Rust and basically gluing it into the Monero protocol today. So that's what I've been working on. Worked on other, I've worked on other stuff in the past, working on speeding up while it's syncing and just various bug fixes and things of that nature. So that's been my role in Monero. 

Doug 
How's it been man? I mean now that now that you've been doing this for a couple of years Is it living up to your expectations? Is it less exciting more exciting that you thought it would be? Your honest take on things

Justin 
It's been awesome. People talk about how things move fast in Monero, which, like, they kind of do, but also, like, I mean, I've been working on this code for many months now. It's like, this will be the largest, this will be the most significant thing I worked on, I'd say. And it'll be the most significant thing I've worked on in my career, I would say. And to get to this point, it's awesome.

When I first discovered Monero and first learned about it, it was, I don't know, 20, I don't want to say around 2016, 2017, when I first got exposed to it. And one of the things that affected my perception of it, one of them was ring signatures, and also the other one was quantum resistance. Both of those were things that were things I looked at with Monero and thought, oh, okay, it would be awesome if these areas were improved, too. And now to be on the side of improving them, especially with getting rid of ring signatures, moving on to full chain membership groups, it's really awesome. It's really cool to be part of that. It's very, it's just, it's humbling to also, like, it's just, it's cool in every aspect. And I'm grateful every day to have this chance to work on what I feel is the most, right now, there's nothing in the world I would rather be doing.

I love getting up and coding every day. I love it. It's awesome. 

Doug 
You are you are building, you know the spear too. That's that's going to do utterly disrupt the current system I mean, it's it's it's pretty exciting stuff Like there's there's really no better way to for one to spend their time, right if they kind of believe in these ideals You're the one actually building the tech and the most impactful version of it that we have Street I mean, yeah, you must must be extremely excited And did you ever think we would get to something like full chain membership proofs as fast as we did?

I mean because when you first came on right like things were I wouldn't say bleak back then but like the Pragmatic view was like we got some ring signatures or we're just gonna be improving it over time We're just gonna add a lot more rings and you know Like it didn't see it felt like something like a full chain membership proofs was like a pie in the sky at that point It wasn't gonna happen anytime soon. Yeah

Justin 
Yeah, I think, so Co, Co came up with Serifist, like, it was around the time that I, that I showed up, and that was, he co-designed it to have, with full chain membership proofs in mind, to be able to slot in, to, into Serifist itself. And so for people who don't know, Co is another contributor to, to Monero.

And the Serifist protocol is, was a prior proposed upgrade to Monero that would in its first instantiation be able to increase Monero's ring signature size to a much higher level. Right now it's 16, and it would be, the initial plan was to bump it to 128. However, it was also designed in modular fashion with good engineering decisions and good choices to be able to then slot full chain membership proofs in, was the, was the thinking behind Serif. So that, and then, so like my thinking was, okay, so, so we have a, we have a path here. Like when, with, when I first heard that, it was like, okay, maybe at some point in five years, we, something comes along and, and Luke came along and. Look at that, Luke Park. 

Doug 
He's like, nah, nah, nah, we're gonna do a lot, we're gonna do a lot. Let's say remember some riffs. 

Justin 
And definitely accelerated the timeline and has also done a fantastic job there.

No, I didn't think, I didn't think it would be coming on this timeline when I was first, when I first stepped in, so that. 

Doug 
and it's just awesome. Extremely exciting.

So give us insight into that. So what, you know, obviously this is like the question, the most annoying question, but this is what the people wanted out, right? Like, when are we using, what are we sending full chain membership proof transactions on our take? Well, obviously I had to lose this last time, but I think you have a little bit of different insight too because you're the nuts and bolts guy. You're the one that's actually like now implementing this stuff. So from your perspective, obviously we're not going to hold you to anything, but you know, when do you think? 

Justin 
I would be, I would be very upset if we don't have it before the end of this year. Wow, that's awesome. Like, I would be, I would be upset.

I think, I think, okay, on my end, the integration work is I'd say about, I've actually, I've said this before, I've given the same, the similar timeline and things have pushed it out. So, but from where I'm sitting now, I'd say I could, it could have like a little private test date that's separate just for full chain membership groups within, within one to two months, I think is, I think is within the realm of possibility. That's, however, not including carrot, which is also another large component to the upgrade and combining the bringing in bringing the two together. And Jeff, Jeff row 256 is working on care, doing a great job there. And Jeff says his work is mostly is, is pretty close to the finish line. Also, I think, I think it'll be done before me with that segment, then we'll have to merge them together. And then there's a bit more auditing that has to be done as well. And then all this code also needs to be audited. So there's that there are still some steps for like code complete, ready to go. I'm hoping, I'm hoping code complete by, by the summer is what is what I'm hoping for. And then all the audits and everything would be awesome by the fall. I'll throw I'm throwing out a timeline, which I shouldn't do, but and I feel like it bites me in the butt. 

Doug 
So so Monero Con and the Monero topia for the No, that would be amazing 

Justin 
I'd say before I ended this, I would be really upset if it's not before the end of 2025. If we're not, if we're not sending full chain membership proof plus plus transactions, uh, before it's 20, 25, before the end of 2025, I would just. 

Doug 
That is very, very exciting to hear. Is there anything keeping you up at night with regards to this stuff? 

Justin 
It's getting really solid eyes on it. It's getting highly competent.

I would be bringing Sering has come back and has contributed Suray is can come back and is in his contribute not come back in the sense of that they're doing In the same role as they were before but have contributed to to vetting Oh, that's great. And and so like the the power players are coming back And and like there's there's highly competent eyes that are pouring in on this stuff like date so like from that front I'm My confidence level is definitely rising In in the underlying math and and and that so like that. I'm a confidence level is pretty solid on it so and like the level of testing that I'm writing also is is Extremely extensive on on my on my work Specifically, so like it's like this is gonna be pretty ironclad And this is this is gonna be like high high quality code So I'm pretty pretty excited

Doug 
Dude, we are all very excited. Just going back to the absurdity of the situations where you have Trump coin is like 20 times or the market cap of Monero or something and seeing what you guys are achieving, what we've achieved, the actual utility we have sitting before us.

The way the market is currently valuing it to what it is accomplishing in terms of its utility, do you agree that things seem to be completely out of whack there? 

Justin 
Yeah, I've felt that from the beginning of getting into Monero. It's like, it's highly undervalued. 

Doug 
I mean I think I mean personally I'm or everything else is just super highly inflated and I've been arrow It's the only thing that's fairly valued, but I know it's everything else 

Justin 
At this point. Yeah, I would even say I would probably I think Bitcoin is even undervalued I'm gonna be honest and so I think I think relative to Bitcoin Monero is like what is just crazily undervalued?

It's like it's like the whole whole world is just it it's just looking at like speculative assets So that like Bitcoin is just this kind of speculative Posito and it's and it's not the underlying value. That's really driving this the cryptocurrency space it's like it's just the speculative frenzy and It just the need the need really hasn't fully come to fruition And so it's when when that happens, which I think will happen eventually, I think the Lynn Alden's nothing stops this train is Is is accurate. I think I think it's a likely Which so when she says nothing stops this train she's referring to like the national debt continuing to explode and Government's basically inability to put the genie back in the bottle of getting spending under control I think I have a hard time seeing that in the law zooming out that that's That's likely where we're at it so I think that cryptocurrency is is eventually the need for digital money that nobody can print more of is just going to be It just become such an obvious thing that people need and want in a digital in a digital world where?

Where people would want money that nobody can print more of so I think and and it's just Monero is going to be the Easiest one to use in a in a normal saying way without sharing your your financial information with everybody you like when you're when you're using it and so it's Yeah, I think and when we're talking about an asset That's like everyone's I would imagine potentially at some point using day-to-day. It's like it's Monero is just like this a little like It's a spec of what it in terms of value today what what that is what what that would be so Yeah, the product

Doug 
Are there other digital cash projects that you respect or think are doing interesting things? 

Justin 
I mean, it's interesting, it's always interesting to watch what the Bitcoin space is doing, what some people on the side, like Lee and Egan and their Alpin Labs are trying to do there of different solutions for like shielded assets and potential ways to send Bitcoin in a private way and on a layer two type thing. Like that, those things peak are interesting to see and I think are worth watching.

I'd say, I mean, I'm good shout out and see cash in terms of developing extremely solid tech. No question of that. Exactly, right. So like, that's awesome. There's another approach there of people pursuing private censorship resistant money in the way that they're doing it, which I'm not necessarily. Like there's a reason I'm interested in Monero in particular, that it's more of a community led effort, a bunch of other reasons, but shout out to them for the tech and what they're doing there.

And as far as the others, I mean, I came from Haven, so I'll mention that. I found the concept interesting. Haven was, you could, it was basically like Luna, where you could burn the native token and get Terra tokens, like Terra USD tokens. But with Haven, it was all done privately. You jumped. 

Doug 
off that ship early you saw that it was impossible shift to continue to float right I guess you saw that it techno technologically it just wasn't working right 

Justin 
Yeah, I mean it was failing on the core front was it was just bad there. It was bad code So like that from that front.

Yeah, they had they had multiple inflation bugs and hidden inflation bugs so like From that front and then and then the Luna thing happened too so and that's like Luna demonstrating that how dangerous an algorithmic stable coin is Which was already I mean other projects had done something similar to but like that the it's not so much that I think The tech of something like Haven is was where it was flawed as much as which you obviously was but also the concept has serious issues that the context of the of the algorithmic stable coin so like that

Doug 
Do you think it's possible? Do you think it is an achievable concept? 

Justin 
Definitely not as designed and would be consistently weak as a kind of algorithmic. I think it's worth straying away from.

I think the experiment has kind of been tried well enough with solid enough attempts that I don't know. I'll leave the speculation there. 

Doug 
No, it's just interesting to get your take on that, obviously, from a technical spirit. Obviously, you would have better thoughts on this than anybody, right?

Whether or not it's something like that is even feasible. 

Justin 
Um, yeah, it's tough, tough to say. 

Doug 
Is there any like private private stable coins in general that concept? Is there any you think there's anything interesting in that area that's being done? 

Justin 
So, um, okay. The, um, and like a private asset. So I'm, okay. So the idea of a centralized issuer is, um, another, that's another aspect to like the, an algorithmic that is, uh, it's, has a similar characteristic of you'd always have to rely on an oracle, um, for an algorithmic stable coin. Now with a, with an actual stable coin where you have a centralized issuer like USDC, like Tether, um, who, that centralized issuer has the, I mean, they can run away with, with the underlying. So it's like, you're, you're, you're, you're kind of, you're trusting them fully to not, uh, take actions against the protocol.

And for that, I, I mean, I think like, I don't know, it's just for math, right? I was not on it. Not, not super, not super interested in centralized issued stable clients. Agreed. Agreed. 

Doug 
Yeah, I just want to get your take on those things. I forgot the Haven. The Haven participated in the first Monerotopia, so that's become a tax loss. They were one of the sponsors.

We never sold it since it went to... I think it's basically like Haven is completely gone, right? It's not even a tip, right? 

Justin 
I think most recently they had an inflation bug that was definitely exploited. They did some sort of audit and somebody seemed to be perpetually selling yourself something. 

Doug 
Yeah. No, but I think they like completely walked away from the project at this point.

But it's amazing that you found your way to Monero, you know, from that, right? Obviously, you're already into Monero at the time. You already understood Monero well. How did that transition even happen? I don't remember. I guess you just started looking at the Monero code base and seeing what you could

Justin 
Yeah, so Haven was a fork. So I basically learned to navigate the Monero codebase during that time. And the reason I even was got interested in Haven in the first place was because I was interested in Monero prior. So like I from and I heard about it. Someone mentioned that it's you can make these synthetic assets and with Monero privacy. So then I dug into it more and was like, okay, this is this is pretty cool. And then once so Haven got hacked. A flare like three, three months into when I was working on it, maybe something like around that. And there was a hidden inflation vulnerability. And I just I'd lost interest in continuing, continuing working on Haven.

And then from there, I wanted to work on Monero, like I had now developed the skills, like I learned the code. And I now I then felt what attracted me to Haven to is this feeling that I could contribute, they didn't have a lot of, there wasn't a lot of people working on it. So it's like I knew I could immediately help and have an have an impact with Monero. Once I had learned that once I'd learned the codebase, and I already knew the codebase at that point, I felt I could find a way to contribute to Monero too. So I dug in. And I sat in the matrix IRC channels and just listened to conversations contributed from time to time, ping ping different people to figure out ways of contributing. And what ultimately what did it was I was sitting in the channel and someone someone, Ian from sec param, he goes by sec param on Twitter, he worked on zcash was one of the original authors of the zcash original white paper. And one of the original mentors zcash, he found a flaw in what looked like a flaw in Monero's decoy selection algorithm. And then I went I went down the rabbit hole chasing it and seeing if there were if there was issues in it were any issues in it. And then found some issues turns out I actually had missed a pretty glaring issue in it that was then later discovered rediscovered to but I found two other issues with it. And so that's and then from there, like demonstrated I'm capable of finding stuff in the Monero codebase and capable of proposing, finding solutions. And, and so then that segued into my first proposal to work on the decoy selection.

So my initial start into into Monero was trying to improve the decoy selection algorithm and like spending so much time and effort resources there. And so now it's, it's nice to, to finally like move beyond it with full chain membership proofs. Actually, this decoy selection algorithm might still play a role in later on, but I won't get into that. I'm

Doug 
Yeah, well get it to a little really how is it with even with all chain membership proofs and ring signatures are gone They'll still be a decoy selection algorithm 

Justin 
So, okay, so not in the first iteration of the of the hard fork, so there's this, there's this light wallet tier that is was part of Jamptist, the Jamptist spec. So Jamptist came along from, so Serif has presented an opportunity to bring new addresses into Monero. So everybody would have to migrate to new addresses to receive new Monero. This was an opportunity to create an address scheme that solves a lot of issues in Monero and potentially brings new features.

And so one of those features is this tier that I find really, really awesome, and I've presented on it before too at MoneroCon a couple years ago. It is a, it's a new light wallet tier. So, current light wallets, the way they work is you send your viewkey to a light wallet server, and so you could be running your own light wallet servers. I know you have the the Monero nodo and the nodo. 

Doug 
Yes, let me run the batter actually reminded me go ahead continue. So 

Justin 
So with a light wallet server, you send that server your view key. So with that view key, the server is able to see all of your incoming transactions and the amounts in those transactions.

And it could also today with ring signatures deduce when you're spending. With a high degree of accuracy, it can deduce. So basically, giving up your view key today to a light wallet server, or giving it to the light wallet server, that light wallet server, you should assume it knows your balance and knows every transaction you made. So that's the current status of the light wallet. 

Doug 
Right, which is why we we implemented it in the notice that people could run their own light wild server So they don't have to worry about it being you know Giving their view key up to my Monero or some other host, right?

Yeah, you're saying but yeah continue you're saying potentially in the future this it won't even be like this so there's key

Justin 
Yeah, so there's this new, oh, okay. And so, yeah, there's this problem of, you know, with my Monero or running a massive server that a lot of new people come into Monero, they download this wallet, and without realizing they're giving up, they're basically giving up their privacy to a third party without, and it's not fully obvious that that's what's happening. And that also affects other people's privacy. It weakens the anonymity set in Monero.

So this new light wallet tier is, here, it's privacy profile is, you would give the key, Jeffrey has dubbed this a filter assist key. So with that key, a server can filter a ton of your transactions out. So like, it knows a ton of transactions that aren't yours out, and it gets a smaller subset of transactions. Some of those are yours, some aren't. And with that key, it wouldn't be able to deduce with certainty which ones are yours in a lot of cases. So, and it also wouldn't be able to decrypt any of the amounts. So, I mean, there are some caveats with it, as with everything, it has, it still has some asterisks of like situations in which your privacy could be harmed using it with a third party, with a trusted third party, court timing attacks, for example, to try and deduce when you open up your app and you construct a transaction, and you send that transaction to the server or it's out to the network, that that server can potentially deduce, okay, this was definitely your transaction among everybody else's. So there's certain situations where that's an edge to watch out for with that server. So it's still like, even if there was some massive server farm, there's still some caveats with it. However, if you have this Monero Nodo, you could run it for your family with running this new light wallet tier, family and friends, and your friends would be able to use it and you wouldn't be able to see there, how much is in their accounts. You would potentially be able to see transactions of theirs, but you wouldn't be able to know with certainty what the details of those transactions. So that's a step up from the current light wallet tier for sure, I would say. 

Doug 
And when is this this is happening with full chain reimbursement proof implementation? This is down the road. This is 

Justin 
It's not, it's down the road. Ideally, I believe it wouldn't require, it shouldn't require a hard fork. I could be wrong on that. I'd have to double, you'd have to go back and double check.

But it's, that's a long, that's a longer term eventual tier to work on. And where the decoy selection comes into play is, so currently, in order to be able to construct for your wallet to be able to make the full chain membership, Ruth, you need to download all of the, like essentially this tree of outputs in the blockchain or E-notes, as this has been recently dubbed. So you create a Monero transaction, you receive Monero E-notes in that transaction. Those E-notes go into this global tree. And I presented on this at Monero Topi as well. Yes, yes, yes. The Berkel tree, the curve tree. Yes, so every Monero output that has ever been sensed and constructed is in this tree. And so when you construct your full chain membership, Ruth, you are making a proof that it's a member of this tree. And so you have to, from the point of time you open your wallet, you have to download every output in the tree from that point forward, in order to even be able to construct the proof, if you're a full wallet.

However, you could use the decoy selection algorithm to get decoy paths in the tree. And you can download it, like so, you can download a small segment, small subset of the tree, which reveals to this server that you're requesting this information from, oh, this person is requesting this smaller subset of the tree, rather than the whole tree. And so we can try and maybe we could potentially try and narrow in on which is theirs, which of the subset is theirs, maybe use some statistical inferences. So it would reintroduce a decoy selection algorithm and its potential weakness is there for people who would be using the like wallet tier. And so that's where it could... 

Doug 
Because it would speed up, for a speed perp, like... 

Justin 
What is the... Oh, right. Sorry. It didn't make the main point there. So rather than having to download the whole tree... 

Doug 
Kind of like a prune, like a prune node almost, right? Like same thing. Yeah. 

Justin 
But it could be instantaneous. At the point of when you make your transaction, you download exactly what you need there. It takes a few seconds to download what you need.

And maybe you get, like, 100 elements in this tree that you download. And you would use a decoy selection algorithm to say, don't just pick random parts of the tree. Pick ones that would be able to hide, and I could potentially hide, and I could possibly have spent from. Which bias is a bit more recent. So it's like, it's this algorithm, it's a statistical algorithm that will bias more recent to manage. 

Doug 
But effectively, it would allow you to sync a lot faster, right? You open up your wallet. 

Justin 
It's be instantaneous you would you would it that's like a wah wah 

Doug 
a true wallet-like cake that's connecting to a node, it would now be instantaneous, as opposed to... 

Justin 
Wow with this light what which is the same as Turk today's light wallets. That's how 

Doug 
And you're still using this key, but you're doing it now in a way that's more secure. More private. More private. Yeah. Very cool.

Very cool. And now, wait. And I just want to make sure I didn't miss something. But the MyMineros of the world, with this new system, does that now improve, get rid of their ability to gain information from users that are giving up their view key to the MyMineros servers? Or it doesn't totally solve that problem? 

Justin 
It improves it. Rather than giving up this key that could deduce your entire transaction history essentially, it introduces a key that they wouldn't be able to determine amounts and they wouldn't have certainty on which transactions are used. 

Doug 
So there's a lot of information, but they wouldn't be able to perfectly know your ascension while it balances. Yeah, exactly. Interesting. Okay. Yeah, that's very exciting. That's awesome, man.

And so that would be after full chain membership proofs. 

Justin 
give us. And also, I will say also, it's not even like the default ideal is still like if we can improve the sync time as fast as possible to connect to a node, which is also what I'm working on, too. So I'm also working on and prioritizing that.

Improving sync time to its maximal degree so that it downloads and does the syncing as fast as it possibly can and downloads this tree as fast as it possibly can and builds it in this most secure way possible. So bringing the best user experience to the default of that user experience and then long-term improving that light wallet potential also. 

Doug 
That's how good how good do you think we can make just the you know? Wallet connecting to a node down.

You know without using a view key without using a light wallet How fast do you think that can become? Obviously, you know like with full chain membership proofs now, they're much larger, right? So people are that you know, it's it's becoming there's there's more data to download now, right? But you're saying that there's essentially ways around this but how fast yeah

Justin 
There actually is not more data to download with full chain membership proofs necessarily. The way I'm implementing it right now is there's more work that the wallet will have to do. It's going to have to build this tree locally as if that's how it's currently implemented in its work in progress. There is an approach to download more, which is a potential route also. And it's actually downloading not that much more. It's like a few percent more. So full chain membership proofs ideally should not have a significant impact in slowing down wallet sync.

Different from node sync. If you're running a node, full chain membership proofs would affect slowing down sync time. Wallet sync, it should have minimal, it's the goal for it to have minimal impact on wallet sync from today's wallet sync. As far as how much we can improve wallet sync. So prior to this, I was working on bringing in a component, a section of code from the therapist's library. So co had written up, she wrote out the protocol, he also wrote a ton of code, basically re-implemented a wallet library. And so it did a great job there. I took that, built from that, and we found we could improve sync time just from a better design by as much as like 20 to 50 percent. Something in that range is on the table. Just from improving the download time. And there's also room to improve how the local client does the operations it needs to do when syncing. So there's room on the 20 to 50 percent, in the 20 to 50 percent, around there. There's also room, so Carrot, the work that Jeff is doing in Carrot, he is changing the algorithm that we use to do the syncing also, the actual cryptography to check which output is yours, which veneer is your receipt. And that change should also, in some preliminary tests, I believe it's something like 30 percent, benchmarking 30 percent faster. So we're talking a pretty solid, like 60 percent, 70 percent faster, I think, is what we could realize with the current syncing experience. I think it could be at least 60 to 70 percent faster. There's room I was able to get at the end. 

Doug 
That's faster than what we have now. Wow. Even with the implementation of full chain. That's amazing.

Wow. That's great. What are, for those just like real, real, if you like just zoom it out, simplifying things for like the real noobs out there that are just kind of like getting into Monero. What do they need to expect from a user perspective once full chain membership proofs is fully implemented and they're, you know, let's say this is a cake wallet user, Monero's you want. Will anything change in their life? I mean, obviously the wallet addresses aren't changing. What's going to change in their in their life with regards to how they use them, how they use Monero, what they do, like the keys that currently exist? Like is there anything that they need to know from a user perspective? 

Justin 
No, just after the update. Maybe some we will see in the V1 implementation. Maybe sync time might be affected. There's a chance.

There's a chance that it could affect it a bit. There's a chance that the actual transaction construction might be a little bit slower, but also maybe not. Certain things like a cold wallet, hot wallet setup for some power users who might do that. Honestly, no, none of that should be like there's nothing that it's all mostly under the hood stuff from full chain membership. You'll have larger transactions. So potentially larger fees, maybe a little bit because the transactions are larger. So like maybe like a small increment, the incremental change, but it should mostly be pretty seamless for just full chain membership.

And then for Carrot, it's also fairly seamless. I think you would need a new seed to leverage the Carrot benefits, I believe, could be wrong. I'm forgetting in there. I need to dig deeper into Carrot and get a stronger. But for full chain membership, Bruce,

Doug 
There's no. And the benefits of Carrot would just be using different address, from the user perspective, what's going to change, what new features they'll get with Carrot. 

Justin 
The biggest, I'd say the biggest is, uh, and I would also refer to Jeffrey's presentation from Monerotopia, uh, on it. Um, the biggest, the biggest benefit is, uh, forward secrecy, um, from, for quantum computers from, so, as long as you're giving your address, making it public, um, quantum computer wouldn't be able to, uh, go and decrypt past trend or the, and get rid of the privacy of, uh, of Monerot transactions. Uh, that's probably, that's the biggest.

There's also sync time. It will also improve sync time, uh, because of the, for the property that I mentioned prior. Um, that's huge. Uh, the Janus attack, um, is also solved in Carrot. So that's, that attack, um, is a kind of, it's an interesting one with sub addresses. So, um, if it's essentially, if somebody has a guess of what a sub address is yours, they can, uh, send you some Monero and they can find out that that sub address is yours if you confirm that you receive this Monero. Um, even if you give them a different, a different one of your sub addresses. So, and they can do it undetectably. Uh, that's the Janus attack, uh, is, is this, and it's like a niche kind of attack that, um, could affect sub addresses. So the, the security of sub addresses would improve with Carrot as well. Um, those are, those I think are the core, the core things there.

Um, so yeah, I'd say, I'd say those from what I remember. Awesome. Um, oh, there's also a separate, I'd generate address here. That's another, that's another cool one. That is, uh, this new tier of being able to give your key to like a server or something that, and all that can do is generate addresses, generate new addresses. It can't, uh, see your incoming Monero or do any of that. It just can generate new addresses on the fly for you. So like a payment processor type service can give it that key. 

Doug 
So what attacks still will exist, right? So we'll have full chain membership proofs, we'll have carrot, you know, like the E-Valice-Eve attack goes away, my understanding, right? Like all the problems we had with ring signatures go away.

What attacks potentially still exist where if somebody wants to, they could try to pinpoint, go after somebody and figure out things about them as they're using Monero. Like what can chain analysis companies still gather with regards to Monero? Or are they no longer at this point offering any services with regards to Monero? 

Justin 
So one of the things that I think Chain Analysis did was they were running their own nodes. They were running nodes, and they're running it on trusted domains that they acquired. So they were prior community trusted domains and hadn't expired.

And then Chain Analysis swooped in, bought them, and then were running nodes. And so people who were connecting to those nodes, sending their transactions through that node. And then Chain Analysis can log IP to your IP address to your transaction and connect the two. And that's especially not great with ring signatures. It's much worse with ring signatures, because then let's say they have multiple transactions that are tied to your IP address that came from your IP address, and then they see ring members shared across those transactions. That then enables them to say, OK, they're spending from here to here. And so it's worse with ring signatures, but ring signatures, full-chain version proofs don't fully solve that problem.

If you're connecting to a Chain Analysis nodes, you're sending them your transactions. They're going to log your transactions. And then they are going to log your transactions. 

Doug 
Get your Monero Nodos people get your Monero Nodos. Yeah, so is is that the only major real attack that remains is just malicious nodes or 

Justin 
There's there's more. Well, I guess it's still really so dandelion Has put some potential there's potential weaknesses and dandelion For being able to if if there's a lot of malicious nodes on the network Even so if you are running Monero node out and not to I still think it's it's absolutely optimal So still be running your own node however, if chain analysis or whoever is Running tons of nodes that are malicious on the Monero network And so your node is connecting to them Dandelion is an is a mitigation For being able to do deduce the origin node of a transaction however, it's not a perfect mitigation if if there's like a Bajillion bad nodes and so your node only connects to their to their nodes then Dandelion is not gonna help you much.

It's not gonna help at all They're all they're gonna know what which the originating transact originating node is So there's potential room to explore improving on that front then

Doug 
That would improve improving dandelion itself. Yeah 

Justin 
potentially another protocol to improving worst case scenarios, improve the mitigation risk of that. Then there's still quantum, the threat of quantum computers. 

Doug 
Sure, yeah, that's a whole nother topic, but before we even get into that anything else is from like a chain analysis perspective in terms of, you know, how somebody can be pinpointed and attacked. 

Justin 
Well, there's another issue of if you're not running your own node, they can also tell you your, give you a fee to use that you, you then, if you're not paying close attention to the confirmation, you end up using a high fee, which has happened. So that's a tricky, tricky one to mitigate fully.

And so there's another attack as far as pinpointing your transactions, maybe giving you like a fee that's identifiable. And from the

Doug 
I'm thinking like you like it, you know like in terms of terms of people that will be like let's say people that are you know Buying, you know buying Monero and centralized exchanges. They're getting KY seed. They're pulling the Monero off even as things stand now It's like you're pretty much going into the ether at that point It's like you just took cash out of a bank now with the implementation of full chain membership proofs It's even more foolproof right like eval sieve attacks go away But yes, is there really anything else that they'll be gleaning off people? 

Justin 
amount. So this is a famous example of someone made a bet of being able to trace a Zcash transaction. And so they did a shielded transaction which uses the equivalent of full chain membership proof. And the reason that somebody was able to deduce the originating transaction was because they saw an amount go in, I believe, and then an amount come out on the transparent side of things.

So if you were, which I would recommend against using a KYC exchange, ideal is always to not. But if you do, you take an amount out of the exchange and then you send it to somebody and it's the same amount that you just withdrew, then there's like, that's, it's a pretty, you're leaving a footprint there through the amount. 

Doug 
Send it to your own wallet first and then send transactions out from there not right like well that this is free 

Justin 
For sure. That's good practice.

For sure. But also, like, let's say, okay, let's say somebody wants 4.5 Monero for whatever. So you have your Monero in the exchange, you pull out 4.5 Monero, and then you immediately send 4.5 Monero to somebody else. That other person deposits that 4.5 Monero back into an exchange like 15 or like 30 minutes later or whatever. Then the exchange can make this kind of inference, okay, we're seeing this transaction of 4.5 Monero out and 4.5 in. We don't see this denomination ever, really. This is a 4.5 is an amount, I mean, 4.5. 

Doug 
be the equivalent if I went to my bank account, I took out $10,632.96.

And then that exact amount pops up in your bank account as cash that you just deposited on that day. All right, chances are Doug Tooman just took cash out of his bank and then gave it to Justin and Justin put it into his bank. So yeah, that's not a digital cash problem at that point, right? That's just a cash problem in general. 

Justin 
Yep. I'd say so.

But then the digital aspect could come into play of the IP tracking type situation of if they're seeing, okay, this IP just withdrew, now this IP sent here, it's like another element that's added into the mix that digital has. I mean, if they're tracking serial numbers in the cache, true. That would be the same. 

Doug 
So then, yeah, next big topic, the quantum stuff. Like you even said that was one of the things that kind of originally caught your interest with regards to Monero or things that you would want to work on for Monero, making it, you know, post-quantum.

So what are your thoughts on that? I know Luke is very excited about that as well. He thinks, you know, it's like a real threat. It's not pie in the sky. Like we need to think about what we can do to basically have Monero prepared. For the inevitable quantum attacks that will come at some point. Yeah. 

Justin 
So I think, okay, I'll explain my rationale from when I first learned about Monero. My view is like, okay, if I'm doing these activities on Monero, but I'm sending money, digital cash on Monero, and then it's eventually decrypted, completely decrypted, what's the point kind of thing? If someone will eventually be able to see all of it on everything I'm doing, then, and I should expect that, then I had hesitation there.

And then I actually went to go wanna use Bitcoin to buy something, and then was like, wait, but I actually want privacy right now. I want the best option that I can get right now for being able to use digital money. Like, what is that best option? It's Monero. And that was the strong light bulb moment for me when it was like, okay, I'm trying to use Bitcoin privately right now, this is really hard, and has similar issues of, there's quantum issues regardless, and I wanna use money that nobody can print more of today. So that was the turn to Monero, like, okay, I'm gonna use this even, because it's the best we have right now, even if this eventual threat might come to fruition in the future. It's still a might. Like, for a very long time now, it's been five years away. There's progress, looks like there's progress, the Google announcement seemed like it was something. So it's definitely a threat to, I think, worth taking seriously, and putting resources toward. So I'm definitely on board with allocating resources towards a quantum resistant protocol, and developing it, having it ready, and putting solid priority in that. I think that's absolutely worth it. Whether it's five years from now, 10 years, 15 years from now is an open question. It will continue to be an open question, but it's better to be prepared for it in the event of the worst case, quantum computer comes along and just prints Monero out of thin air and the whole thing's broken. So it's worth it as an insurance to focus on protecting against the threat, for sure. Hey, so give us some insight. 

Doug 
Yeah, give us some insight into where Monero currently is, and then where it will be with full chain membership proofs, and then where you think we can take it with regards to being 

Justin 
Sure. So, um, where Monero currently is, is, uh, nowhere.

Um, like, it, the worst, if a quantum computer that could quickly do, um, the break elliptic cryptography, it would be able to break Monero, be able to break its privacy, it would be able to print Monero, um, and

Doug 
problem Bitcoin would have as well that's just you know at that point you get derive a private key from a public it 

Justin 
Right. Well, in Bitcoin's case, they hash addresses, but if you're trying to spend Bitcoin, it goes to the public Bitcoin transaction pool today, their mempool, and then you'd be revealing your public address. And at that point, a quantum computer could steal the Bitcoin, so you'd need a trusted miner, basically, for Bitcoin to be able to survive that.

A quantum computer that is really strong. And so that can churn out these computations really quickly. With Monero, it's like, okay, they can just run it for however long they need to just create this one transaction that prints a ton of Monero, and nobody would know. So there's like, it's a different risk, but at the end of the day, if quantum computers materialize to be able to instantly crack a Bitcoin address and recover and take the Bitcoin, it breaks Bitcoin too. So both are similarly at risk and should be focusing on quantum resistance, I think is absolutely the case. Sorry, what was your

Doug 
So, post-quantum resistance, where we're at today, where we'll be once full-shaped proof is implemented, and then where we can potentially go. 

Justin 
Well, it's not full chain membership proofs that would that necessarily change the quantum. 

Doug 
That gives us forward secrecy on some, well, I guess that's the, that's. 

Justin 
I will say it is planned for the hard fork that includes full-chain membership groups to include care to you which which gets forward secrecy So be able to so having privacy on past transactions. There's also a plan to Integrate what are called switch commitments?

into Monero for the hard for two which would allow us to switch to Being able to construct Monero transactions that nobody can be able to print more Monero From so that's you would want to computers. So like that's a step another step

Doug 
That's happening like the full chain membership proofs for. 

Justin 
Yes, so you care is supposed to include switch commitments. But not it's not right at the at the fork that it would be it that we would have the property of nobody able to print more. So that's but it would enable us to switch to that property in the future, essentially. So and then there's there's other there's still other algorithms that are necessary to have a fully quantum resistant protocol that that is where that Luke wrote up that whole proposal discussing what we're put let put some focus into into developing that protocol and people what people have indicated interest in working on it.

So that is that would be I take some a few years, maybe, probably, I guess, maybe, maybe longer, to actually develop and implement and then have it ready for for launch. So that's that's essentially where we're at on that on that front, I would say, maybe two, two to three years of focused effort, maybe with heightened urgency, it could be done faster, but it's pretty hard to

Doug 
That's pretty exciting. I mean, I think that that kind of puts us out on the cutting edge, you know, comparing maybe there's, you know, that there's that one, like, you know, there's maybe one or two cryptos that are like focusing on being quantum resistant from day one. But if we start working on it now, right, I mean, that kind of puts us on the cutting edge of being post quantum with, you know, relative to other cryptos.

Absolutely. Yep. That's exciting. It does seem like more people are coming to work on Monero. I think I even DMD today, right? I'll bring it up over here. I don't know. Do you know who this guy is? It seems like he's coming from the I've seen some tweets. This guy I identify as RNG. Bitcoin is done. Should I work for Monero? And then I quickly posted, you should post Monero CCS here. We'll get you funded if you're the real deal. 

Justin 
I assume he, I've seen some of his tweets in the past and I've, I mean the joinster project, this person seems to have like their head on of, have the principles of wanting to create censorship resistant digital cash and I think that's the awesome, more of the marriage. 

Doug 
So now is he a Bitcoin dev? Do you know like what he's been working on? I mean, it's a cute 

Justin 
created joinster, which, as I understand it, is a protocol. OK, so are you familiar with join market? 

Doug 
Uh, I never used it, but yeah, general concept. 

Justin 
Yeah, like the decentralized mixing pool on, or market to, to coin join, basically, I mean, that's a join market, a decentralized market to be able to find other people that coin join with. And then joinster was is doing that and noster or something.

Yeah, exactly. And the communication for all of it on noster, which is like, so I mean, they're focused on, I mean, they want privacy, and they want, and they're focused on decentralization too. So like, from a principal perspective, that's. 

Doug 
Maybe he would want to come build something like integrated with no stirs for Monero or something, right? Who knows some 

Justin 
Yeah, I mean, I have nose Thursday. Okay, so those are like a public network.

So that's that's a it's a little bit of a It's that it seems tricky. It would seem tricky to integrate something I mean I tips tips would be quiet. I think I think people did tips on noser over noser I don't know if they're capable developers interested in the principles of like digital cash Generally wouldn't even have to do something noser related unless they I don't know but yeah

Doug 
this, this dev wants to join? Wow.

Yeah, exactly. I mean, it's exciting to see that like Bitcoiners, you know, Bitcoin devs are like fed up. I don't know what exactly ticked him off, but it seemed like he's just kind of fed up with the environment over there that, you know, the, for the most part, Bitcoiners aren't really interested in, you know, building it out to be untraceable digital cash. They're, they're more interested in keeping it as the number go up coin, right? And building towards that. 

Justin 
Yeah, I've seen he's put in he's put in some effort to try and get opinions across the Bitcoin sphere from a bunch of Bitcoin developers on the space to XMR, I wonder how they do that. 

Doug 
Yeah, I bet this is saying it allows XMR tips on us. I never tried that. I don't really I don't use no sure We have like a Monero talk account there, but I'm not actively on it 

Justin 
Um, so they, I remember he was trying to get, gather opinions for everyone on one of the potential covenants upgrades to Bitcoin. Uh, and so it's just, it just seems like so many, so many trade-offs on niche things that it's going to be tough to get consensus in the Bitcoin space on that front.

And I could understand frustration for not being able to arrive at a consensus there. Um, yeah. 

Doug 
It was exciting to see that those people are like seeing the narrow as the default Project to end up at if you're into those things, right? Absolutely. Yeah, I think 

Justin 
are like good there's I guess there's a concern that there's one argument of like okay because bitcoin is so big it's it's like inevitable that it's you're gonna have so many wide-ranging opinions because you have so many people involved versus Monero is relatively smaller less people involved but that being said like it's so it's so obvious it just seems pretty clear cut on a path like a solid path forward for Monero in line with the principle of digital cash that like everyone is pretty on board for that I think it's that should translate to an easier easier time consensus building even as Monero grows so

Doug 
From your perspective, are you seeing more devs, people helping out with Monero, coming to ask questions? Yeah. 

Justin 
The whole Rust, the whole Cuprate thing is, that's a cool, that's especially cool to see. More people, I mean, it's coming going on the C++ side, but the Cuprate push seems to be sticking pretty solidly for attracting a lot of new developers, new side of keeping something running. The Cuprate is the Rust implementation of the current Monero daemon, and that's attracting a whole new segment of also extremely competent, highly competent developers, and that's very cool to see. So that's a whole new segment that we were talking about in today's meeting, that it's not getting, doesn't seem to be getting as much attention lately, but that's something I would want to highlight also, for sure.

Shout out to Cuprate as a new space for, they don't have the disadvantage of carrying as much technical debt as the core Monero repository carries currently, and so they're able to, with that, they should be able to move faster and be able to Cuprate. So Cuprate is, yeah, it's a node written in Rust from scratch. That's an alternative of the current Monero. 

Doug 
Yeah, cool. And there's kind of new people working on that. 

Justin 
Yup, Boog, 900, is the username of the, the baleen of that, of the Cuprate initiative. And there's a few more people that Hinto is involved, Synthetic Bird is also involved. And both Hinto and Boog have been community funded now, they've been full time working on Cuprate. So yeah, that's a cool, that's a, that's an awesome initiative.

They've been taking, they were, so Boog created a document, documentation for the Consensus out for Monero's Consensus protocol. And that's a great initiative to bring in new people to you and to, for a ton. So yeah, shout out to them. 

Doug 
Fantastic, man. Fantastic.

Well, for people that are listening, I don't know, maybe we catch a genius out there that I'm about to get involved. I'm sure they would have kind of figured it out already on their own, but like, what is the advice you'd give people that, you know, maybe do you have the skills or the ability to kind of learn about these things on a higher level? How would you recommend people start to get involved in a Monero from a development standpoint? 

Justin 
follow along in the chat channels. Monero Research Lab is on Matrix and IRC. There are meetings every Wednesday. You could also go back and review meeting logs for every meeting on the GitHub meta, Monero meta repository. And so you can go back and read past meetings and read the logs there. And there's also the no wallet left behind Matrix Group meetings on Mondays. If you go in and you can just join the channels, the Monero dev channel as well. Watch, see what people are saying. There's also the cup break channel, there's just another one of it in there. So like if you're interested in Rust and you only wanna write in Rust, that'd be a good place to go. So join the channels, follow along, listen in and gather the heartbeat of Monero from there on the technical side.

And then if you're highly skilled, you could ask, you could reach out of like what are things you might wanna do or just listen, follow along, it's just also what I did. And you'll see probably pretty quickly like tasks that maybe there's room to jump in on, pick up different things and help push forward different tasks or pick up a project yourself and run that for like quadrant resistance type stuff if you have a particular inclination towards that. You'll see different pain points, things discussed in there and if you have an initiative, find things that interest you to push forward from there. So I'd recommend joining the channels, following along. Reading through issues on GitHub as well is another route but number one recommendation, we should follow along in the channels. Or just read the code and use Monero. Read the code, use Monero, see what issues there are with using it that you find and try and fix it. Or if you think that certain things could be done in a better way or bring your ideas forward in chat channels and people will openly discuss them. 

Doug 
And maybe the next Luke Parker is listening. The 11-year-old Luke Parker is listening right now, like, hmm, I hope so, I hope so.

This is how it happens. Fantastic stuff, man. I always ask this one, and I'll be asking this one forever. The 20-minute lock time, man, do we see any hope avenue towards that ever getting deprecated or it's forever with us? You know, we're ready to make Monero quantum resistant, so it's gonna be, you know, full shape membership proof, so there's really no attacks from a privacy perspective, but how do we get rid of that frickin' lock time? 

Justin 
I don't see a way, a clean way that, I don't see a clean way right now on layer one, Monero's layer one. Maybe if it's some layer like payment channel type system, if that got any traction and anyone who actually wanted that in the Monero's face, maybe you could get like an instant settlement type thing on that. But it seems tricky, seems quite tricky to do cleanly at all on the layer one. So, I don't know, still an open question.

I don't see it. I'm not gonna figure it out. 

Doug 
Shit, man. I might just have to start studying Monero on a different side. I don't have the sho- I don't have the shops for that, guys. I'm sorry.

Um, shit. But do you think it will get solved on, like, a wallet level? You know, with, like, where you would just, from the perspective of the user, if it will feel like it exists anymore? 

Justin 
The best mitigating thing would be that can alleviate the pain of the experience is the pocket change feature Like sending broken up amounts so that when you do spend Monero It's not all of your Monero gets locked for 20 minutes You have different ones the different Monero outputs that you could still spend but that still is not That doesn't help someone who's receiving Monero for the first time. Yeah

Doug 
I mean, that's the problem. It's the person that's receiving the Monero for the first time. And you know, it's not the end of the world.

I mean, but in this day and age, with all these money options, people are expecting something that they can then just turn around and quickly spend, right? It's like, you know, they're used to Venmo, they're used to all these other cryptos. We're like, no, no, no, but it's completely private and you know, it's super secure. It's hard to express all those points to people and for them to understand why they have to sacrifice, you know, and not be able to send their Monero after receiving it instantly, right? 

Justin 
Yup, I hear you. That's an authority one, for sure. I think wallet sync time is another that I think is quite thorny. At least with the wallet sync, I see a path of like... 

Doug 
Yeah, wallet sync time, I don't think, from what you're telling me, it sounds like things are just going to get better on that front. I do feel like when somebody opens their wallet and it says sync, they have to wait. That's kind of intuitive, but being sent Monero for the first time and then being like, oh, it's a lot like you can't use it for X amount of time, I feel that's almost even less intuitive and it's just like this barrier that's there for them. And at the end of the day, it's not a big deal.

They're getting digital cash, it's extremely powerful. Somebody could send them $10 million from the other side of the world for a fraction of a cent. Super private, okay, not a big deal, you got to wait 20 minutes before you turn around and send it for the first time. But yeah, for noob, it's like, what the fuck, right? Yeah. We got to figure that one out, man, we got to figure it out. Sorry to end on that one. It's a classic, it's going to happen one day, guys, it's going to happen, we'll figure it out. Anything else you want to put out there, man, anything else you want to talk about? 

Justin 
Nothing I'm excited for this upgrade very 

Doug 
Yeah, it's super excited and hopefully by Monero con we'll hear something like you said maybe would just be kind of like a test That thing at that point 

Justin 
that's June, January. Hopefully the code is ready by then. Hopefully all the code is done by that point. Hopefully it's in the audit phase. So. 

Doug 
Do you think we see it get implemented somewhere first like like Wow narrow or just some other like koi? That's like you know that could just quickly just throw 

Justin 
I think they implemented triptych, so I haven't had it yet. Oh, okay. Sure, maybe. 

Doug 
Maybe. All right, buddy. Any... I guess just put out your info. People want to, I don't know, follow you and find you. Sure. 

Justin 
jberman, jdashberman on github, and then i'm on matrix, also at jberman without the dash, on the Monero matrix, the Monero.social, and then justinberman95 on twitter as well.

Fantastic. You think you're going to have a Monero card? I'm really a poster, more of a poll on twitter. I don't really push stuff out there. 

Doug 
Yeah, yeah, no, this guy, he's like, he's doing work, unlike us jackasses that are out on Twitter talking shit. So yeah, I mean, please, don't even let me influence you in that direction, man.

Get off, get off X, don't waste your time. What do you think? You think you're gonna go to Monerokam? 

Justin 
Uh, maybe, um, I think I actually, I need to respond to AJ, um, I will probably, if it's open for a presentation, like a remote presentation, um, I would, I would like to give a remote presentation, uh, if I, if I'm not able to make it is where, where my head is at. So. 

Doug 
I won't be able to make it this year because of the newborn, but I'm going to go to Porkfest. I don't know if you heard, we're going to try to do something at Port. We're going to do them in like a Monero topia. We're going to represent Monero in a large way at Porkfest. And I've done it in the past. I've done this like in the past years. I go there, sell coffee, teach people about Monero, and we've onboard a lot of people.

Are your people using it? Is that true? Yes. People use Monero. It's amazing because they use all cryptos, right? But pretty much anybody that's accepting crypto there is at least accepting Monero. And there's a lot of people that prefer Monero. I would say it's the top. I think it's the top used crypto at Porkfest. That's pretty cool. This year, we're going to team up with Aaron Day. And I always saw the fact that Monero Con falls on Porkfest as a bad thing. And it's been problems in the past. And I had the like you can choose. And this year, I can't go to Europe. But I'm thinking it's actually could be a good thing because what we're going to do is we're going to stream the Monero Con talks at Porkfest. And then we're going to have some calls at Porkfest and stream them over there. And we're getting a big tent. It's going to be like privacy tech projects and presentations, but at Porkfest and thousands of people go to Porkfest. So it should be pretty cool. So we're going to do like a big, big Monero splash of Porkfest this year during Monero Con stuff.

Very interesting. That's easier for you. I don't want to be responsible for pulling you away from Monero Con. But if you said you already weren't going, there's going to be a Monero Con hub in the US at Porkfest this year. And Porkfest already is absolutely noted. Bigger than Monero Topia and Monero Con combined. I mean, it's just delivered. You've never been, right? Obviously. It's pretty amazing thing. It's pretty cool. 

Justin 
That sounds pretty awesome. They've got, it's like, it's like general merchants like selling like different like food stuff, right? It's like a- 

Doug 
Yeah, I mean, Porkfest, it's because it's the Porkupine Festival, right? So it's the libertarians that started throwing this before Bitcoin even existed.

And they used to... The idea then was they were just like meeting up and using like gold coins and alternative forms of money, sound money, other than fiat. Bitcoin got created and like they were some of the earliest adopters, like Roger Ver kind of came out of Porkfest. A lot of those big guys first started using Bitcoin at Porkfest in like 2011, 2012, and now we're trying to have like the privacy coin moment at Porkfest. So we're trying to make that happen this year. Because I mean, everybody there, these are the people that understand the importance of... 

Justin 
what is it that like what is it that's like different tense of people like 

Doug 
It's, so it's at a, it's take place at Rogers Campground. It's a big, it's a campground. And so you go, you rent the camp spot and then you can sell whatever you want. So it's like, it's a libertarian, it's like kind of like a Burning Man for libertarians, right?

So we're Burning Man is like gift economy. This is like just pure, pure capitalism, right? So you'll see like, you could see like a six year old selling, you know, lemonade and like a 25 year old selling rifles, like, it's just pure market capitalism. And it's amazing. Like my daughter has the most amazing time there. She's like, and she knows we're going again this year. So like, there's a whole like kid element, like the adults are doing their thing, the kids are doing theirs, but everybody's basically just participating in open free, free market. 

Justin 
Do this have the right permits to be able to sell the lemonade? No, there are no permits. 

Doug 
Yeah, it's it's just the it's a libertarian dream, you know, very interesting as long as you're not hurting anybody right or you're not right you just like the golden mean right and like and it's the same weekend as Merida this year it is the same weekend and like I said, we're turning that we're making lemonade on 11 so turn making your positive so we'll have kind of a satellite conference and we'll stream and I talked to Monero con they're down with it because we'll hopefully we'll have some big talks. At the, you know, the Monero topia tent at pork fest and then we'll stream those over to the Monero con side. Very cool. Like Aaron is saying our day saying like Roger Ver might might show up or Ross. I mean Ross is supposed to free Ross right Ross is supposed to get out today. And here while we're on this. I don't I don't know. Yeah, guys, tweet a comment if anything happened but last I heard nothing. But Aaron's thinking he might come to pork fest. His mother was there last year. He you know, he's a lot of things he worked out in the early days came out of four, you know, were popular at pork fest. So he might come he might attend which would be super cool.

Sounds like a cool festival. Yep. All right, man. I will let you go. We're like an hour hour 40 minutes is fantastic talk as always. I appreciate you taking the time man. You got it. Thank you for having me on. Yeah, well, we'll be in touch. Be in touch. Let me let me sit the outro. All right, buddy. Adios. 

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