Happy to announce the first SimplicityHL smart contracts standard library release! The place for covenant patterns, math, crypto algorithms, data structures, and everything great that Simplicity can do.

Just released Simplex v0.0.10. Two big updates are that test execution is now ~50% faster and the SDK is now wasm-compatible. UTXO smart contract development UX is finally coming together.

Range proofs on Liquid bound confidential amounts in Pedersen commitments to 2**52 - 1. We're finalizing a pretty cool scheme where an "auditor" is required to find a discrete log of such a commitment for compliant privacy. Can be done in seconds btw.

Once the PoC is ready, there are a few things we want to improve in the next paper update: 1. Use the "Simplicity composition" pattern instead of SIGHASH_ALL in the User covenant to allow custom user authentication for asset transfers. 2. Figure out how to make the Verifier covenant input index variable and not fixed at position 0. 3. Clarify asset traceability in case of confidential amounts. Design a scheme where an "auditor" can decrypt the transfers for regulatory monitoring and reporting. 4. Propose and describe a concrete format for blacklists and whitelists. 5. Settle on the design that is good enough for an ecosystem-wide ELIP.

Simplicity things we've done over the last 6 months: - Shipped Simplex development framework - Wrote three ELIPs for dapp <> wallet communication - Wrote an ELIP for Simplicity clear signing - Added jet extensions support to Simplicity - Added Bitcoin jets to Simplicity - Refactored parser in SimplicityHL compiler - Implemented enums in SimplicityHL - Implemented modules and libs in SimplicityHL - Shipped SimplicityHL-std alpha - Developed Humid browser extension wallet - Developed p2p lending PoC (twice) - Developed Simplicity Unchained service - Developed p2p options PoC - Developed Simplicity CMR metadata service - Developed SimplicityHL formatter - Improved Simplicity website and documentation - Researched Simplicity-native multisig - Researched DAMP - Researched Simplicity-powered price oracle - Researched Simplicity-powered bridge - Fixed many UX issues and bugs across all products The next 6 months will be huge.

Introducing DAMP -- a decentralized asset management protocol for stablecoins and RWA on Liquid. Fully onchain and self-custodial. No cosigner service is needed, powered by Simplicity. Link to the full paper is below. Stay tuned for a PoC.