Present: Vik, Rucknium, Kayaba, Deverick
ACK-J’s Grant (Security Audit of Ring Signature Resiliency Against Machine/Deep Learning Attacks)
This meeting was primarily focused on reviewing our first grant application as now fully submitted by ACK-J. While the grant in question has been agreed upon to be of importance (after discussion on what it represents, why certain decisions were made, the feedback given by the MRL, and how it should increase Monero’s value as a privacy protocol), the requested amount of funds represents almost 2/3rds of the committee’s budget. Once addresses are posted, a donation stream will hopefully follow, yet we can’t be sure of that at this time.
Multiple ideas were discussed to relieve the burden of this grant, from reducing scope to requesting a reduced rate to even splitting the grant into two separate grants. Then, later down the road when the Monero Fund hopefully has further funding, it’d be able to complete the grant in whole. Reducing scope was deemed as too reductive of the grant’s value to be worthwhile. Requesting a reduced rate is a possibility, yet it risks losing the applicant along with not paying according to value. Splitting the grant is reducing scope in the worst case, except that idea was dismissed as not sufficiently valuable, and it potentially leads the applicant on if we’re unable to fulfill the second grant when the time comes. Continuing discussion on requesting a reduced rate, the candidate’s position was considered, along with other posted rates for such work.
For now, it has been decided to postpone the decision until the next meeting, at least, while further questions occur and deliberations are made.