1. What exactly do Bulletproofs do on the Monero blockchain?
Bulletproofs reduce the size of cryptographic proofs in Confidential Transactions, thereby increasing privacy and decreasing transaction size.
2. Which other projects are the Bulletproof authors connected to? (hint: do some googling)
Blockstream, Chaincode Labs
3. How do Bulletproofs compare to zk-SNARKs?
Bulletproofs, unlike zk-SNARKs, do not require a trusted setup for parameter generation, making them potentially more secure. However, verifying a Bulletproof is more time-consuming than zk-SNARKs.
4. How do Bulletproofs improve scalability of multi-output transactions on Monero?
Bulletproofs change the scaling of transaction sizes from mostly linear (based on the number of outputs) to logarithmic, significantly reducing the size of transactions, especially for those with multiple outputs. This contributes greatly to Monero’s scalability.