added to Nomos monthly, updated weekly formatting.

content/nomos/monthly-reports/2023-sept.md

@@ -1,7 +1,7 @@
 ---
 title: 2023 September Nomos Monthly Report
-draft: false
-lastmod: 2023-09-13
+draft: true
+lastmod: 2023-09-27
 ---
 
 ## Executive Summary
@@ -9,10 +9,61 @@ lastmod: 2023-09-13
 ## Key Updates
 
 ### Personel
-- 
+- Filip has joined as a Project Manager to assist in various activities. His position is to sit in between the Insights team and the Nomos project to facilitate development tracking and resource allocation. It is anticipated that his involvement will speed up development as current resources are then freed to focus on research and development. Until demands within Nomos require full-time engagement from him, he will also be assisting with Vac Program Management. 
+- After a lot of candidate interviews, Mehmet was offered a position and accepted to focus on the privacy and cryptography research needs within the project. His background in cryptography and security auditing of popular zero-knowledge platforms is expected to be very useful in aiding to architect Nomos. Mehmet's expecting starting date is ???
+	- Another candidate for this role that was considered, Ramses, has joined the Vac team and will initially be aiding in this work and growing the relationship with their [[vac/acz/index|Applied Crypto and Zero-Knowledge]] team. Ramses expecting starting data is ???
+- An offer has been extended to Sergi for the open role of Applied Network Researcher. He passed all interview rounds and we are waiting on a response. 
+- The role of [Distributed Systems Researcher](https://jobs.status.im/?gh_jid=5310504) is still open and candidates are being interviewed. 
 
 ### Milestones
+Nomos' roadmap is currently composed of five main sections, each of which is broken up into `Research` and `Development`. Obviously, `Development` lags behind the `Research` section. These five areas are as follows:
+- `Whitepapers`
+- `Network Privacy and Mixnet`
+- `Testnet`
+- `Private PoS`
+- `Data Availability`
 
+The Milestone definitions and timelines are not yet ported to this site, and as such, are private to Logos. They are planned to be publicized on this site by the end of the this month, potentially bleeding into the beginning of October. For those with Notion access, you can view the Milestone definitions [here](https://www.notion.so/Work-In-Progress-9949ac425fd240b1a14006eeca03d874). 
+
+The following sections will outline key activity across these milestones. If more information and detail is desired, links can be found under the associated heading among the [[#Sources and Useful Links]] Weekly updates section.
+
+#### Whitepapers
+The current drafts are almost ready for publication. They require only "beautification" and a listing of detailed "current unsolved problems" that need to be explored later in the total project. This will be done following the current prioritization of mixnet specification.  
+
+#### Network Privacy and Mixnet
+The specification of the mixnet is currently underway and expected to wrap up soon (next month??). This is chosen to be critical path based on all the depending architectural decisions that stem from decisions of the networking layer. 
+
+Review and analysis of current mixnet literature continues. One conclusion found was that the probability of an anonymity failure:
+- decreases when increasing the number of layers 
+- increases when increasing the number of nodes within a single layer. 
+ 
+Analysis details can be found in [the overleaf document](https://www.overleaf.com/read/rybwvjftfrrg).
+
+While research explores subtleties in the mixnet specification, development has tackled the foundations of its implementation on top of `libp2p` within the `nomos-node` repository. They've logically setup how it connects to the rest of the pieces of the node, setup testing frameworks and node monitoring hooks, and generally got it provisioned for the upcoming testnet. 
+
+#### Testnet
+A PoC/Draft Testnet was created and merged via Docker-Compose, then general exploration was done to identify what to measure and how to do it within the `nomos-node` software. 
+
+Simulations of the branch overlay with 1 committee was conducted. Initial results discovered a bug  in reproducibility that was fixed. Additional simulations resulted in discovery of inter-module errors with the leader selection. This is currently being explored along with integration of mixnet developments. 
+
+NEED ESTIMATION OF TIMING HERE
+
+#### Private PoS
+Research was conducted in a variety of areas around a Private Proof of Stake spec relevant to the architecture of Nomos. All details can be found in the Whitepaper descriptions. 
+
+The initial design was created based on Zcash designs with section details around how "stake" is considered for the Base Layer of Nomos, how "restaking" could work, and various consensus modifications around Carnot. An introduction of "shadows" was done which presents the ideas around the initial voting process. The logic of these "shadows" is currently being fleshed out so that they're more intuitive to understand. One result is that they're now called "Validators" in an effort to keep naming conventions reasonable across the industry. 
+
+Much attention was spent on a discovered issue with vote propagation within this construction. This issue is around the implications of vote withholding and how they change as you move up the overlay. The solution being to propagate a map of seen votes upstream alongside the vote, thus increasing transparency of participation. 
+
+The concept of "Hastiness" has been introduced to describe the leader's ability to decide whether or not to include votes from the root committee if the threshold is reached before they've had the opportunity to conclude. More research is underway to detail the implications of this decisions with respect to payout, latency, and security. 
+
+Most notably, an extension (or more constrained parameterization) of Carnot was initiated and is underway (expected by end of Oct) as a consequence of needing to mitigate a signature aggregation issue. This extension requires 2/3 votes to be collected before a decisions is made. 
+#### Data Availability
+Research continues on the various available Data Availability schemes and their trade-offs which resulted in the ability to make some decisions on the Nomos specification and identified a more specific personnel requirement for specialized cryptographic expertise. This demand will be a lower priority to filling privacy expertise requirements. 
+
+An analysis of the impact of node decay in Data Availability [was performed](https://www.overleaf.com/read/gzqvbbmfnxyp) and presented in a [Logos Research Seminar](https://minutes.logos.co/logos/logos-research-call-notes#september-13). This research resulted in a draft specification of [private DA](https://www.notion.so/Data-Availability-Specification-c3961b681eba4ccdab2be9181e4207b4?d=d4e8d1bcd6224682ba74737100106e48#0c70202794214cbab626e51f7f1f7c24). This then lead to the [first draft](https://www.notion.so/Practical-Private-Addressing-Network-Privacy-Component-2-2b9b4923124a4fdb81dba5d2bba1d289?d=99166164267a46589c5715175e1b3657#5e27d2010d30468f9d8f0d0928b9c639) of a complete privacy solution for the networking layer for consensus and DA. 
+
+The architecture of Data Availability services was fleshed out within `nomos-node` software. Data dissemination implementation was completed and the mempool for certificates is currently in progress.
 ## Perceived Changes in Project Risk
 
 ## Future Plans

content/nomos/updates/2023-09-11.md

@@ -0,0 +1,62 @@
+---
+title: 2023-09-11 Nomos weekly
+tags:
+  - nomos-updates
+date: 2023-09-11
+lastmod: 2023-09-27
+draft: false
+description: 2023-09-11 Weekly update of Nomos
+---
+## `nomos:`
+---
+
+### `network privacy and mixnet:`
+
+#### `research:`
+
+- Revised mathematical methods, such as the Poisson point process, etc., used in analysis of mixnets.
+- Explored literature related to mixnets where approaches from differential privacy are used. The latter could lead to a more general privacy guarantee which is relevant to not only current but also future attacks on privacy.
+
+#### `development:`
+
+- Fixed a bug in the connection pool implementation https://github.com/logos-co/nomos-node/pull/373 
+- Fixed Cargo.toml for nomos-network https://github.com/logos-co/nomos-node/pull/380 
+- Added defaults to libp2p settings https://github.com/logos-co/nomos-node/pull/388 
+- Fixed request handling in mixnode: https://github.com/logos-co/nomos-node/pull/372 
+- Added benchmark code (in localhost): https://github.com/logos-co/nomos-node/pull/375 
+- After trying to find existing solutions to routing strategies (routing first, privacy later), and not finding a proper solution, moved to thinking about a naive approach:  https://www.notion.so/WIP-Proposal-Routing-7b034dcac64940eda25ee415806d0ec8 
+- Found using sync Mutex will lead to a block. https://github.com/logos-co/nomos-node/pull/370 
+- Finish implementing the first version of retry for mixnode and mixclient https://github.com/logos-co/nomos-node/pull/386
+
+---
+### `testnet:`
+
+#### `development:`
+
+- Node config via environment variables: https://github.com/logos-co/nomos-node/pull/382 
+- Observability and node configuration in testnet work in progress: https://github.com/logos-co/nomos-node/pull/364 (Same draft PR as last week WIP).
+- Resolving more GH Actions related issues: 
+	- https://github.com/logos-co/nomos-node/pull/385 
+	- https://github.com/logos-co/nomos-node/pull/389 
+
+---
+### `private PoS:`
+
+#### `research:`
+
+- Found an issue in vote propagation of the PPoS construction: When a vote is propagated upstream to the higher committee there is a chance that a malicious shadow in committee decides not to broadcast their vote to the committee members and send it only upstream. Then this "unseen" vote will block the possibility of reconstructing the most common committee_vote, and at the same time prove that other shadows have voted. The solution for that is to propagate a map of seen votes upstream alongside the vote, this enables the higher committee to select only the votes that are most commonly seen for building the committee_vote thus making that kind of malicious behavior detectable.
+- Improving the PPoS description: working on selecting proper naming conventions, as currently there are voters, shadows, coins which are confusing. That is done in pair with revising the logic. 
+
+---
+### `data availability:`
+
+#### `research:`
+
+- A draft for private DA can be found here: https://www.notion.so/Data-Availability-Specification-c3961b681eba4ccdab2be9181e4207b4?d=d4e8d1bcd6224682ba74737100106e48#0c70202794214cbab626e51f7f1f7c24
+
+
+#### `development:`
+
+- Blobs in block: https://github.com/logos-co/nomos-node/pull/368  
+- DA service architecture: https://github.com/logos-co/nomos-node/pull/376 
+- Da service backend implementation: https://github.com/logos-co/nomos-node/pull/381

content/nomos/updates/2023-09-19.md

@@ -30,7 +30,7 @@ description: 2023-09-19 Weekly update of Nomos
 - Finish the concrete error implementation for mixnet and ready for merge: https://github.com/logos-co/nomos-node/pull/405 
 - WIP: fan-in message passing model for mixnode: https://github.com/logos-co/nomos-node/tree/mixnet-fan-in 
 
-
+---
 ### `testnet:`
 
 #### `development:`
@@ -46,6 +46,7 @@ description: 2023-09-19 Weekly update of Nomos
 	- https://github.com/logos-co/nomos-node/pull/412 
 - Minor improvements to remove annoying red x's from our CI
 
+---
 ### `private PoS:`
 
 #### `research:`
@@ -53,6 +54,7 @@ description: 2023-09-19 Weekly update of Nomos
 - **Shadows logic:** Looking at how to describe the logic of the shadow in the most clear way: It will be divided into a set of modules, each module taking care of processing a separate communication channel.
 - All channels have their logic described in adequate modules and with references to self-descripting functions. However, some of them (like how exactly to aggregate votes)  must yet to be defined.
 - **Hastiness issues:** In short, the leader, in order to limit the cost of vote aggregation can decide to not to include votes from top committees (and root in particular). This is an acceptable strategy and will lead to a correctly formed aggregation proof. The proof will include a global threshold of votes from lower committees but not from the top committees (and root committee in particular). The impact of this leader's hastiness does not break the security of the protocol as a threshold of votes is correctly gathered. However, it may limit rewards from the top committees (and root in particular), as the votes from those committees may not be needed to reach the threshold. More on that under the issues section of the PPoS doc.
+---
 ### `data availability:`
 
 #### `research:`

content/nomos/updates/2023-09-26.md

@@ -8,6 +8,7 @@ draft: false
 description: 2023-09-26 Weekly update of Nomos
 ---
 ## `nomos:`
+---
 
 ### `network privacy and mixnet:`
 
@@ -32,6 +33,7 @@ description: 2023-09-26 Weekly update of Nomos
 - New mixnet message handle PR: https://github.com/logos-co/nomos-node/pull/435 
 - QC checks: https://github.com/logos-co/nomos-node/pull/430
 
+---
 ### `testnet:`
 
 #### `development:`
@@ -44,6 +46,7 @@ description: 2023-09-26 Weekly update of Nomos
 - Work on the mixnet node in testnet continues. Ongoing inter-team discussions in regards to how we should monitor and extract info from the network. The PR for libp2p metrics might be the way to go.
 - CI chores: https://github.com/logos-co/nomos-node/pull/432 
 
+---
 ### `private PoS:`
 
 #### `research:`
@@ -56,9 +59,10 @@ description: 2023-09-26 Weekly update of Nomos
 - Readability: the specification part was updated. The rest of the document is out of sync and needs to be revised as the focus was put on the specification.
 - Critical analysis: an issue was identified and described (under the issues section) that touches on a problem where insufficient number of votes are aggregated and the need for an additional voting round before commencing an overlay tree reconstruction. This can be mitigated with an additional votes collection from late voters (before the tree timeout) or increased level of votes that are collected during initial voting collection.
 - Review of the Delegation and Validation rewards document by Frederico.
+---
 ### `data availability:`
 
-#### `:development`
+#### `development:`
 
 - Dissemination ready
 	- https://github.com/logos-co/nomos-node/pull/416