Manta Network has released Dolphin V2 Testnet today, enabling more product features that give users back their right to privacy in a faster, more secure way. Developments include shielded fully reusable addresses, faster hash processes, more compliance functionality and an optimized more efficient user interface. The Manta team has been hard at work to develop more robust functionality and we’re excited to announce that V2 is ready! Here is an overview of the most important updates.
Convenient Reusable Shielded Addresses
Dolphin V2 has some major updates to the MantaPay protocol; changing the shielded addresses format from single-use keys to reusable keys. To ensure that each transaction is unique in MantaPay, a special single-use key is used. In the previous version of the protocol, this key was part of the public key infrastructure associated with the users involved in the transaction. Once the public key was used, it had to be discarded or the ledger would not accept future transactions. However, in Dolphin V2, the unique one-time-use key is still kept secret but is derived from the user's long-term public key plus some randomness. As long as this randomness is different, the transaction will not be blocked by the ledger and the public key can still be reused many times. This means that you will be able to share the public key of your private wallet with others to receive transactions directly on already privatized assets, resulting in a better user experience.
10x Faster Wallet
We have updated the wallet protocol for MantaPay, our decentralized multi-asset private payment protocol, to include some important UX & memory improvements, as well as focused on optimizing the modularity and robustness of its performance. As a result, the time your computer spends is ten times less to generate zero-knowledge proofs with Signer.
Our wallet protocol is a 3-part asynchronous protocol; it is divided into three parts that communicate asynchronously with each other:
1. The signer connection
2. The ledger connection
3. The wallet controller
The wallet performs a call and response protocol with the signer and ledger to give users access to their private balances, as well as give the rights to send and receive assets. In this configuration, the signer stores the user’s secrets, such as spending keys and private status; the UTXOs that the user can spend in the future. Through this new modular structure, we were able to improve the execution time, per session, while the user is interacting with the blockchain.
Faster Hash Processing
Time is the true value in this type of operation, and the most expensive factor in any ZKP circuit is the time cost of all the hash function invocations. Improving the speed of the hash function is always a win for process performance, especially for users of our protocol. In this case, we focused a lot on improving the hash function and decided to migrate from the Pedersen Hash Function to the Poseidon Hash Function.
By switching functions, we were able to make our hash function faster per invocation, we were also able to utilize the fact that Poseidon operates directly on the underlying data type of the circuit, the scalar field. This also reduces the cost of connecting all the different parts of the circuit and allows us to act directly from within the circuit.
Enhanced Viewing Keys for Better Compliance
Along with reusable shielded addresses, we have also split the functions of creating UTXOs and decrypting encrypted notes into two separate keys. We have separated the “view” rights from the “spend” rights, so you can have regulatory compliance without the regulators stealing your funds. Where the transaction data is encrypted within a zero-knowledge system but with a note that allows read-only values and with a VN factor that is used to guarantee that UTXOs are spent only once and the chain can continue without revealing which UTXO they correspond to.
The ability to create UTXOs is the privilege to “spend” the asset of a transaction while decrypting the note is the privilege to “view” that transaction. Having the “view” privilege means that you can read all incoming transactions that belong to the wallet address owner, but it does not allow you to spend the underlying assets, which would require the “spend” privilege, which would be your own private key.
These viewing keys can be used to ensure regulatory compliance. By simply giving an auditor your viewing keys, they will be able to read your transaction history.
Self-Updating Signer
The signer desktop application has also received several enhancements along with a redesign to fit the new wallet protocol. The signer now stores the state that the user needs to interact with the ledger, so it can stay in sync with the most recent transactions. This reduces the execution time per session. The signer can now also perform updates as new versions are released to keep up to date automatically. Lastly, you will also be able to recover your password in case you have lost it so you can try again to test this brand-new version right away.
Manta is committed to offering the best quality products and solutions to make privacy truly effective and available for you, however, we are always looking to improve and we value your feedback. Start testing our new Dolphin V2 by clicking here.
