Hi all,

It's been a while since the last update, and as more people are joining and 
Gitter is getting more active, I thought I'd send a summary of what's been 
going on and the main areas that need more work. If you're looking for a way to 
help, just jump to the 2nd part fo the email!

I can feel the pace increasing both in terms of development (love these pull 
requests!) and research. In no particular order:
- Confidential Assets proposal from Andrew [1]
- Ethan chimed in to raise some challenges but also promises in being able to 
cut-through any block at any time (aka Frankenblocks :P) [2]
- The compact blocks proposal seems to have reached some consensus. [3]
- Published a technical Intro to MimWimble and Grin [4]
- Multiple increments are leading to a fairly credible way to support lightning 
networks.
- John Tromp outlined how transactions building can generally and safely work 
with Schnorr signatures when we have them [5]
- Merope dropped the first version of a Merkle sum tree implementation [6]
- Myrtle is still working on a transaction pool implementation which seems to 
be converging.
- Various cleanups in core crate from Jacob Payne and I.
- Small but welcome contributions from Rob and Mr. Greybeard.

I haven't had as much time as I'd like to to write code in the past couple 
months, I was also busy writing and reviewing proposals, but I'm hoping to get 
more time in the next couple months. And anyone reading this and willing can 
help!

Here's what I'm thinking in terms of high level roadmap and 
features/improvements we need for each milestone. Please say if you're 
interested in any one of these or have any question (I'll eventually put all of 
that in github).

Devnet
- Transaction pool implementation (which Myrtle is working on).
- Some way to build transactions at least for development (started in [7] but 
need a fair amount more attention).
- UTXO MMR would be nice, but could be delayed to testnet.
- Better retargeting algo (I'm thinking Digishield now).

Testnet
- Better DoS protection, peers sending too much data, too large messages, etc.
- Schnorr would be nice, but could be delayed if necessary.
- Compact blocks
- Figure out the fee structure (price per output created/destroyed, etc.).
- Full MMR structures (UTXO, range proofs, etc.)
- Fast chain sync (header+UTXO).
- Some decent mining software that can handle multiple GPUs.
- A wallet server that can handle building transactions interactively in a 
secure way.

The Real Deal
- Confidential assets
- Some lightning prototype
- Cut-through in transaction pool
- Fully audited wallet server.

Documentation, written specs and additional tests are always good. Hopefully I 
haven't forgotten anything too important. Also if you're looking for smaller 
tasks, grepping the code for TODO is always a good idea. Don't hesitate to ask 
here or file an issue to get more information.

Thanks all for the continuing great work!
- Igno

[1] https://lists.launchpad.net/mimblewimble/msg00103.html
[2] https://lists.launchpad.net/mimblewimble/msg00058.html
[3] https://lists.launchpad.net/mimblewimble/msg00039.html
[4] https://github.com/ignopeverell/grin/blob/master/doc/intro.md
[5] https://lists.launchpad.net/mimblewimble/msg00091.html
[6] https://github.com/ignopeverell/grin/pull/40
[7] https://github.com/ignopeverell/grin/pull/36
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