Unless specified otherwise the following months refer to 2023

• July: Leo finds out SDR in the cost model is more resilient than we thought
• New analysis
• Corollary: you can remove a few top layers without losing anything
• August: Matteo’s audit/summary of Leo’s proof
• available here
• From there on we targeted better constructions:
• in the latency model
• faster decoding
• we targeted (with limited success) the problem of SealStacking that comes with faster decoding
• September-November (main highlights)
• Looking more at DRG (for latency model):
• Starting conversations with Susanna de Rezende
• Alternative constructions for fast decoding:
• We looked at DRG-PoRep from Proofs of Catalytic Space (also in Ben’s paper)
• These constructions are not good enough.
• On Single-Layer DRG approaches
• Other approaches we half-explored:
• Experimental approaches to analysis of graph based PoReps
• Source here
• We used it to verify Leo’s results. (Done)
• But this approach can be promising for future designs and their exploration.
• New techniques Leo for analyzing SDR in the latency model
• we never went too far with this. They still have potential. We just did not explore them enough.
• November/December:
• Improved rational analysis
• Leo started adding storage to the rationality-based analysis of PoRep Better Cost Analysis via Adding Costs of Storage and Computation
• Motivation on analysis of studying DRG/Pred robustness Why Better Predecessor Robustness or Depth Robustness are Crucial

Current status (as of January 2024)

The next hot thing we converged on is answering this question. (To see why this is plausibly the most important direction see last bullet point above)

A short-to-state but important research question for better PoS