MoneroKon Podcast

MoneroKon Podcast@MoneroKonPodcast

0 followers
Follow

Season 2025 episodes (6)

Aaron Feickert - Rings and trees: how to prove coin ownership (MoneroKon 2025)
S2025:E06

Aaron Feickert - Rings and trees: how to prove coin ownership (MoneroKon 2025)

The current Monero protocol uses linkable ring signatures to prove coin ownership in a way that doesn’t leak the specific coin. But other designs do things differently! In this talk, we’ll look at different approaches to proving ownership in digital asset protocols: Monero (today and tomorrow!), Firo, and Zcash. Each offers a unique and interesting look at how we can use different cryptographic techniques toward the same goal. About the Speaker: Aaron Feickert is a cryptographer, mathematician, and physicist whose current research focuses on privacy-preserving signature and proof constructions.

Anhdres - Hooks & Loops (MoneroKon 2025)
S2025:E05

Anhdres - Hooks & Loops (MoneroKon 2025)

This talk begins with a dissection of life’s winding paths, exploring the choices and paths that brought each of us to MoneroKon. We’ll look at how well-known members of the Monero community first discovered Monero, pinpointing the specific moments or details that made it stick to them. Then we’ll explore nature’s design: the hooks and loops that help burrs spread their seeds far and wide, and how that mirrors human attitudes. Some of us are mostly hooks, creating tiny signals and events that invite others in. Others are mostly loops, passive consumers of media and tools. I’ll focus on practical strategies to increase the hook ratio. Because Monero needs more Velcro: more connections, people staying around, and maybe a bit more noise. Life’s too short to walk around with just loops hanging out. About the Speaker: Visual artist based in Buenos Aires, with a background in storytelling, animation, and design, anhdres specializes in educational content, trying to bridge the technical and the emotional (when he succeeds). A Monero believer since 2017, he is the non-coding half of the Monerujo team. He creates visuals for Cypher Stack and co-hosts weekly Spaces for Cake Wallet. Conflict of interests is his middle name. He’s the author of the Monero Garden project and the illustrator of “Mastering Monero”. He hosts Café Monero and previously co-hosted the Spanish-language podcast El Monero. He has spoken at Monerokon, Monerotopia, Labitconf, and the Greyhat Conference. Basically, he happily and clumsily jumps on stage to speak about things he cares about, in the hope it’ll do some good.

Rucknium - OSPEAD: Optimal Ring Signatures (MoneroKon 2025)
S2025:E04

Rucknium - OSPEAD: Optimal Ring Signatures (MoneroKon 2025)

OSPEAD estimates the age distribution of the real spend in Monero’s ring signatures. Monero’s decoy selection algorithm could be changed to closely mimic the real spend age distribution, yet an anti-privacy adversary can also use the real spend distribution to execute the MAP Decoder attack on past ring signature data. The attack raises the probability of correctly guessing the real spend in a 16-member ring from 6.25% to 23.5%, on average. Multiple nonstandard decoy distributions are modeled as repeated measurements drawn from unknown distributions components, then estimated by the method of Bonhomme, Jochmans, & Robin (2016). The age distribution of ring signatures associated with a given decoy distribution is modeled as a two-component mixture distribution. The decoy distribution is subtracted from the on-chain data distribution to obtain the real spend distribution.

Justin Ehrenhofer - Overview of the Last Year of Audits, Reviews, and Proofs (MoneroKon 2025)
S2025:E03

Justin Ehrenhofer - Overview of the Last Year of Audits, Reviews, and Proofs (MoneroKon 2025)

This presentation gives an overview of Monero reviews and audits related to FCMP++ and Serai. Justin from MAGIC Grants will discuss the importance of these reviews, how the vendors were selected, what their outcomes were, and what is next. Founder of Moonstone Research, senior director at NAXO, Justin Ehrenhofer is Board Member and President of MAGIC Grants, a 501(c)(3) public charity that provides scholarships for students interested in cryptocurrencies and privacy, supports public cryptocurrency infrastructure, and promotes privacy. magicgrants.org

Rucknium, Boog900, xenu - Defeating Spy Nodes on the Monero Network (MoneroKon 2025)
S2025:E02

Rucknium, Boog900, xenu - Defeating Spy Nodes on the Monero Network (MoneroKon 2025)

According to recent analysis by the Monero Research Lab, one or more anti-privacy adversaries have set up many spy nodes on the Monero network, composing up to 40 percent of reachable node addresses. Connections to these spy nodes would make up an estimated 15 percent of the privacy-sensitive outbound connections established by honest nodes that use the default configuration. This talk will quantitatively estimate the privacy impact of spy nodes even when Monero’s Dandelion++ protocol is used. The following countermeasures will be evaluated: opt-in IP address ban lists, anonymity networks like Tor and I2P, a Dandelion++ alternative called Clover, subnet de-duplication, and protocols that verify that an internet address is really operating a distinct node. The Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability triad in information security will guide comparisons of these countermeasures.

Luke Szramowski - FCMP Divisors: The Inside Scoop (MoneroKon 2025)
S2025:E01

Luke Szramowski - FCMP Divisors: The Inside Scoop (MoneroKon 2025)

Luke Szramowski from Cypher Stack talks about some of the difficulties regarding the research into divisors. Luke Szramowski is a mathematical researcher, with a Bachelor’s Degree in Mathematics and two Master’s Degrees, one in Math, with a focus in Number Theory and another in Math with a focus in Coding Theory. In his free time, Luke works on a litany of different math problems, mainly regarding Number Theoretic conjectures and playing all different types of games.