Brainbot Update for August 2024

Shutter DAO
1

Purpose

brainbot is sharing this update regarding the grant of $233K from Shutter DAO 0x36 received on 15 August 2024. It covers use of funds, activities and accomplishments in August 2024.

Highlights

brainbot made solid progress on Shutter technical development and community building in August 2024. We laid a strong foundation for future growth by optimizing existing implementations and researching future implementations. We are now moving forward confidently into the next phase, which will involve scaling Shielded Trading on Gnosis Chain and Shielded Voting on Snapshot. We are also preparing for Shielded Trading on Ethereum L1.

A couple highlights:

  • Shielded Trading on Gnosis Chain: We focused on improving the robustness and performance of the current deployment. These optimizations are crucial for ensuring that the platform is reliable as we prepare for future scaling. We will be announcing these improvements and the Shutter Explorer - an extensive dashboard for devs and users - next week.

  • Shielded Trading on Ethereum Mainnet: One of the most exciting developments this month is our early exploration of strategies to bring Shielded Trading to Ethereum Mainnet. This would allow tapping into larger markets and could unlock new economic models. We also began investigating how advanced cryptographic techniques like Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE) can enhance Shutter.

Use of Funds

Values

  • Dev: $97.8K
  • Other: $34.6K
  • Biz Dev: $25K
  • RnD: $23.6K
  • Marketing: $17.6K
  • Admin: $16.5K
  • Unused: $12K
  • Legal: $6.3K

Total: $233.4

Percentages

Diagramm1182Ă—732 36.7 KB

Team

Current FTEs working on Shutter

  • 1 CEO
  • 1 Finance & Admin
  • 2 Business Development
  • 1.5 Marketing & Communications
  • 6 Protocol Developers
  • 1 Researcher
  • 0.5 Lawyer

Changes

Hired and onboarded Andreas Erwig, Cryptographic Researcher:

  • joining brainbot from TU Darmstadt, where he focused on secure cryptographic wallets, off-chain protocols, and threshold cryptography

  • working on extensions for the Shutter protocol, including: mechanisms to detect collusion among keypers or integrations of an advanced encryption scheme that allows certain computation on encrypted transactions

Offboarded Jacob Al Soori, Partnerships Manager:

  • focused on partnerships and marketing as an independent contractor

  • left brainbot to explore other opportunities, but he remains an active member of the Shutter community and Shutter DAO 0x36

  • we thank him for his many contributions

Shielded Trading on Gnosis Chain

Stability

Addressed stability challenges (while ensuring maximum decentralization) to ensure validators include 100% of decrypted user transactions:

  • identifying and addressing the root causes behind missed inclusions

  • strengthening communication between validators and keypers for more reliable performance

  • implementing the FloodSub discovery protocol to ensure more efficient discovery and interaction between network participants.

  • improving metrics collection from keypers and validators, to monitor and optimize the process

Performance

Improved performance, particularly reduced latency:

  • resolving network connectivity issues

  • ensuring decryption keys are now being received in as little as 0.5 seconds - a 8x improvement compared to previous performance

Shutter Explorer

Developed an explorer that offers a comprehensive view of Shutter’s metrics, thus providing clear insights into how the system operates.

The explorer will include:

  • system-wide statistics
  • real-time predictions of upcoming Shutterized slots
  • detailed transaction pages where users can track their transactions as they move through the encrypted mempool (similar to Etherscan)

The explorer will feature core components:

  • Observer: gathering both on-chain data and keyper activity, ensuring real-time accuracy

  • Backend and Public API: making specific information accessible, this layer will serve as the backbone for data collection and presentation

  • Frontend for Users: allowing end users to seamlessly access and navigate the data, ensuring they can track their transactions and monitor the protocol’s performance at any time

Shielded Voting on Snapshot

Collaborated with the Snapshot team:

  • reviewing current onboarding process and UX
  • ideating ways to increase adoptions
  • exploring potential revenue models
  • upgrading the Keyper set

Strategic Research

Shielded Trading on Ethereum L1

Initial research for implementation of Shielded Trading on Ethereum mainnet:

  • aligning with Proposer-Builder Separation (PBS)
  • exploring proposer commitments
  • forming R&D partnership with Chainbound

FHE

Investigating the integration of fully homomorphic encryption into Shutter:

  • research into transforming our threshold encryption into a “threshold-FHE” scheme

  • enhancing market efficiency while mitigating harmful behavior (in the context of Shielded Trading)

  • this has the potential to unlock entirely new use case fields for Shutter, including:

  • Shielded Trading: allowing transaction ordering through encryption (which opens up the field of back-running type MEV)

  • Shielded Voting: counting votes while the votes remain encrypted.

Advanced Cryptographic Techniques

Collaborated on research with TU Darmstadt and PolyCrypt GmbH:

  • exploring how to prevent collusion among keypers
  • combining Shutter with trusted execution environments for added security

Developer Relations

Shutter Network Members

Provided support and guidance to Shutter DAO 0x36 members on tasks, including:

  • transfering the unclaimed SHU to the Shutter DAO 0x36 Treasury

  • removing the VestingPoolManager as a module

  • implementing staking mechanism, economic parameters, indexing, and audit

  • closing the USDC.e/SHU pool, opening a XDAI/SHU pool on Swaper v3 on Gnosis Chain

  • confirming the SAFE on Gnosis Chain is controlled by Shutter DAO 0x36

  • bridging SHU to OP Mainnet

  • developing an AI agent driven MEV and transaction ordering simulator on Gnosis Chain

Hackathon Participants

Worked with Gnosis Chain to develop challenges, bounties, resources and workshops for EthGlobal Singapore hackathon participants.

Marketing & Communications

Awareness & Outreach

Launched our new Galxe campaign and incentive program:

  • onboarding retail users to the Shutter Network via a series of quizzes and quests

  • hosting a monthly lucky draw

Launched our new Retro Rewards program:

  • incentivising everyone to share Shutter on social media

  • empowering community members to vote on best content and rewards distribution

Developed an artificial intelligence and encryption article for pitching by Wachsman to crypto and tech media

Community Engagement

Engaged community via social media and community platforms:

  • posting updates and educational content on X / Twitter

  • encouraging and moderating discussion Discord and the Shutter Forum

  • hosting 3 community calls (1 Aug, 15 Aug, 29 Aug), focusing on an infotainment model (compelling topic + guest)

Website

Drafted content and images for 6 pages related to shutter.network: home, about, protocol, Shielded Trading, Shielded Voting, movement

3 Likes