Equilibrium's Infra Bulletin #1: Customisable constraint systems, liquid staking modules, storage proofs and more!
Welcome to Equilibrium’s Infra Bulletin!
Equilibrium Labs builds the state-of-the-art of decentralised infrastructure. We are a global team of ~35 people who tackle challenges around security, privacy and scaling.
This newsletter allows us to share more about what we read, what excites us and what we think is relevant to the space. In addition, you will get a glimpse into the organisation and our culture.
We hope you enjoy it, and thanks for reading!
Research, Articles and Industry News:
🤓 Customisable constraint systems for succinct arguments (Research paper) - Recommended by Niklas and Vesa-Ville:
Customisable constraint system (CCS) is a generalisation of R1CS, that can simultaneously capture R1CS, Plonkish, and AIR without overhead. Unlike existing descriptions of Plonkish and AIR, CCS is not tied to any particular proof system. This increases flexibility for developers as they don’t have to choose one particular proof system to build on.
The paper also suggests that existing R1CS-SNARKs can be turned into CCS-SNARKs with new properties, which the authors demonstrate with SuperSpartan and SuperMarlin.
Takeaway: CCS offers more flexibility for developers with seemingly no immediate drawbacks. Additionally, it’s faster to prove than StarkWare’s STARKs as well as being quantum-proof.
📚Governance proposal to add liquid staking module to Cosmos (passed) - Recommended by Joakim:
Liquid Staking Module (LSM) can be thought of as a form of regulation on liquid staking providers. It gives L1s the power to enforce specific parameters, such as what percentage of native tokens can be liquid staked or the amount that validators need to provide themselves.
A key benefit of the LSM being a native part of the protocol is that it enables existing stakers to switch directly to liquid staking, rather than having to unstake first. This allows validators to avoid the unbonding period where they don’t earn any rewards (varies by the chain - on Cosmos, it’s 21 days).
Takeaway: While LSM doesn’t solve the problem of liquidity fragmentation with different liquid staking tokens, it does give more control to the L1. A similar module could be implemented across other Delegated Proof of Stake (DPoS) networks, such as Aptos, Sui or Solana.
📚What are storage proofs and how can they improve on oracles? - Recommended by Hannes:
Our data is increasingly spread across multiple chains. Existing solutions like oracles or L1 -> L2 messaging systems require trusted third parties. Storage proofs are a way to cryptographically prove and verify that some on-chain data is true (either current or historical state), offering a trustless alternative.
Storage proofs can be combined with zero-knowledge proofs to optimise performance and keep the size of the proof manageable. This also makes it cheaper and faster to verify the proof. One example of a protocol using SNARKs to do this is Herodotus.
Takeaway: Storage proofs offer a trustless alternative to cross-chain messaging. This could for example enable voting on chain A, without having to bridge your tokens over from chain B.
News from our partners:
🔥Aleo launches the finalize feature on testnet and gets one step closer to mainnet:
Finalize is a key feature that allows developers to take advantage of both on-chain and off-chain execution on a single VM. Aleo is the first blockchain to enable this.
Equilibrium has been working with Aleo for 3 years, so this is a huge milestone for us as well and we’re really excited about the launch!
Personal recommendations from our team:
📚Reading: Amazon Is Being Flooded With Books Entirely Written by AI: This article caused some debate internally on whether there is any point in reading AI-generated books since they lack human connection. What do you think?
🎧Listening: How Many Bitcoins Does It Take To Get Some Goddamn Respect In This Town: Is it 350? 615? Or less than 10? The all-important questions in life🫡
💡Other: The Imperfectionist - Rules To Live By: In a world dominated by social media where most people try to give a perfect picture of themselves, this post serves as a welcome change with a more realistic tone.