Last Month at QRL - November 2022
Table of Contents
Highlights
QRL Bug Bounty Programme
The QRL Foundation is excited to launch the QRL Bug Bounty Programme, an experimental and discretionary rewards programme designed for our active community that aims to encourage and reward platform improvements. This will build upon the work of third-party auditors by offering rewards to individuals who work as white-hat security researchers. These individuals often have the same level of knowledge and approach to solving problems as hackers.
The QRL Bug Bounty Programme offers increased vulnerability detection and realistic threat simulation on a continuous basis in addition to the depth of third-party audits that are performed.
Any vulnerability that poses a threat to the security of the network, the security of classical clients, the soundness of protocols, or the security of cryptographic primitives may be eligible for a reward.
More information can be found in our Bug Bounty Programme blog and QRL Bug Bounty Programme page.
QRL Games - Winter Hackathon 2022
It gave us great pleasure to announce the forthcoming QRL Games - Winter Hackathon 2022.
The success of our QRL Hackathon 2022 in Amsterdam, during which we unveiled our public devnet equipped with Proof-of-Stake (PoS) and EVM-compatible smart contract functionality, serves as the foundation for this development.
The primary focus of this hackathon is, as may be inferred from the event’s name, on games. It doesn’t matter what it is as long as it has to do with QRL and games, which might mean anything from making a QRL game to gamifying any component of the project.
This is the perfect opportunity to work together and rack up some Quanta (QRL) in the process!
The QRL Games - Winter Hackathon 2022 event will begin shortly on Wednesday, December 14th, and will continue until Wednesday, January 4th, 2023, which is just a few days after the New Year.
More information can be found on the QRL Games - Winter Hackathon 2022 events page.
Be sure to check out our events page from time to time for new events. Want to run your own community event? Get in touch!
Development updates
Project Zond
The public devnet of project Zond has been successfully running for over 2 1/2 months and has surpassed a block height of 100,000! This is a testament to the quality of work our lead core blockchain developer Kaushal Kumar Singh and two golang devs have put into the next major milestone of QRL.
For the last month, CRYSTALS-Dilithium in golang (go-qrllib) has been going through an upgrade to CRYSTALS-Dilithium 5 to match the latest NIST requirements and is in the final stages of testing (bug fixes & unit tests). Next step is the implementation of a new address format (similar to the QRL mainnet address format), which will require further work in the solidity compiler and CRYSTALS-Dilithium 5 code.
If you’re interested in joining us to test, you can do so by installing a Zond public devnet node. From there you can create smart contracts, stake, and send transactions using CRYSTALS-Dilithium 5 and XMSS.
Changelog
theQRL/QRL
PR 1764: Updated testnet, added code to get seed block for alt chain & updated dependencies version
- Added config for new testnet
- Different ports for testnet node compared to mainnet, so that one can run both on same machine without port conflict
- Updated dependencies versions to make it compatible with Ubuntu 22+
- get_seed_block now also finds the seed block for the alt chain
- Updated integration tests
- [4955a] Merge pull request #1749 from theQRL/dev
- [4f933] Updated dependencies version
- [447f0] Added code to get seed_block for alt chain
- [a9bcf] import Set from collections.abc for compatibility with Python 3.10+
- [d4df4] Updated dependencies version
- [cccbb] Removed support for Ubuntu trusty and xenial
- [41cbd] Updated pytest version
- [728e6] Fix for tests_integration
- [89cbb] added apt-get update for integration_tests
- [56edc] updated mock version restriction in requirements.txt
- [5adb4] Updated integration_tests
- [0f93b] Updated mock version in setup.cfg
- [124fc] generate_genesis.py token migration file is now made optional
- [0c783] Added new testnet genesis file & config
- [105be] Updated testnet hardfork block details
- [95a5b] Config for testnet to begin with randomx mining algo
- [4f933] Updated dependencies version
- [447f0] Added code to get seed_block for alt chain
- [a9bcf] import Set from collections.abc for compatibility with Python 3.10+
- [d4df4] Updated dependencies version
- [cccbb] Removed support for Ubuntu trusty and xenial
- [41cbd] Updated pytest version
- [728e6] Fix for tests_integration
- [89cbb] added apt-get update for integration_tests
- [56edc] updated mock version restriction in requirements.txt
- [5adb4] Updated integration_tests
- [0f93b] Updated mock version in setup.cfg
- [124fc] generate_genesis.py token migration file is now made optional
- [0c783] Added new testnet genesis file & config
- [105be] Updated testnet hardfork block details
- [95a5b] Config for testnet to begin with randomx mining algo
- [614cc] Merge pull request #1764 from cyyber/dev
theQRL/qrandomx
- [6f711] Fix: RandomX block verification while a block with different seed hash is mined
- [1b712] code cleanup
- [87841] Updated google test git link
- [aaef9] qrxminer store mainHeight and seedHeight params for threads
theQRL/theqrl.org
PR 327: New blog: Monthly Update for October
- [771fb] Separate images from quantum news text file. Add quantum news items
- [53bd0] Adjust formatting for GitHub updates
- [9267a] Large image for first news item in blogs
- [d6a5b] Header changes for better consistency
- [7fe81] New blog: Monthly Update for October
- [1edcd] Update image
- [6a9d3] Edits
PR 328: Add QRL Games - Winter Hackathon 2022
- [b5ffa] Header adjustments
- [5aae0] Events landing page style
- [fc78a] Add events landing page to footer
- [ea3b7] Add toc
- [48149] Events list improvements
- [777c8] Events page improvements / fixes
- [ff5b0] Add QRL Contributors Core Team
- [7fd5c] Add QRL Games Winter Hackathon 2022 Blog
- [83b40] Add QRL Games - Winter Hackathon 2022
- [3756b] Change date
- [76c6e] Slug adjustments
- [86662] Bug bounty draft for team discussion & agreement
- [68661] Bug bounty iteration
- [1dd0d] Add change
- [02f89] Further scope clarity
- [8187b] Intro field to article & TOC to bug bounty
- [721ac] Merge branch ’theQRL:main’ into main
- [3b6ee] Add HoF historical bug hunters (thanks Jack!)
- [596fe] Add links to footer
- [59baa] Link fix
PR 330: QRL Bug Bounty Programme blog
- [3343c] QRL Bug Bounty Programme blog
- [47ff1] Add youtube video to top of events landing page
- [1a0ab] Lowercase hackathon
- [f1ed2] Merge remote-tracking branch ‘upstream/main’
Latest advances in quantum computing
IBM unveils its 433 qubit Osprey quantum computer
On 2022-11-09: IBM's Osprey quantum processor has 433 qubits, up from the 127 qubits of its 2021 Eagle processor. The company plans to hit the 4,000-qubit stage with its Kookaburra processor in 2025. - techcrunch
Centralized finance will be ready, decentralized finance will be ready with QRL.
MIT researchers use quantum computing to observe entanglement
On 2022-12-01: Quantum information traveled across a quantum system in what could be understood as traversing a wormhole. A wormhole is a bridge between two remote spacetime regions. This experiment performed on the Sycamore quantum processor device at Google opens the doors to future experiments with quantum computers. The Sycamore 53-qubit quantum processor allows researchers to send signals "through the wormhole".
This opens up the possibility of future quantum gravity experiments with larger quantum computers. The work is supported by a Department of Energy Office of High Energy Physics QuantISED program grant. - mit
A quantum computer has simulated a wormhole for the first time
On 2022-11-30: A quantum computer has been used to simulate a holographic wormhole for the first time. The simulation used only nine quantum bits, or qubits, so it was very low-resolution.
Using a more powerful quantum computer could help bring the image into focus. That is crucial because some theories of quantum gravity are difficult or even impossible to completely understand using only classical computing. - newscientist
IBM quantum computer runs largest quantum program yet
On 2022-11-17: A quantum computer has run the largest quantum program yet. The computer made errors, but a mathematical method was able to extract a meaningful result anyway. This error-mitigation technique could help quantum computers become more useful than their imperfect hardware would otherwise allow them to be. IBM's quantum computer had qubits made from tiny wires that conduct electricity perfectly. Superconducting qubits are typically programmed by being hit with pulses of microwaves, so running the new program was equivalent to programming a microwave pulse sequence.
Previously, the team's largest meaningful quantum circuit used 26 qubits and contained 1080 individual operations. Now, the researchers have run a quantum circuit with 127 qubits and over 1700 individual operations. - newscientist
