A privacy coin that hides amounts,
senders and recipients.
Nocturnal is a Monero-style chain in Rust. Confidential amounts, ring signatures over a fixed ring of 16, one-time stealth addresses, and proof of work that runs on the CPU you already own.
What it is
Amounts are hidden by Pedersen commitments with Bulletproofs+ range proofs, senders by CLSAG ring signatures, and recipients by one-time stealth addresses derived per output. Proof of work is RandomX, designed to run on ordinary CPUs rather than specialised hardware.
The cryptography is deliberately not novel. It uses the monero-oxide
crates, which are Monero's reviewed construction, so it can be audited by comparison against a
system that has been attacked for a decade. What is new here is the surrounding chain, and
that is the part being tested.
Confidential amounts
Pedersen commitments, aggregated Bulletproofs+ range proofs.
Sender ambiguity
CLSAG ring signatures over exactly 16 members, so the ring size is not itself a fingerprint.
Unlinkable recipients
One-time stealth keys; subaddresses under a single view key.
CPU mining
RandomX, 120-second target, ~1,000,000 NOCT asymptote.
Where it stands
Stated plainly, because you should not have to dig for it.
- Not launched. This is a testnet. Coins have no value and the chain will be reset.
- Unaudited. Nineteen internal review passes and one independent model review found and fixed real bugs, including an 8.79-second denial of service and a fork-choice rule that disagreed with consensus. No professional audit has been commissioned.
- 50% premine. The planned mainnet genesis mints 500,000 NOCT to the founder, half the supply parameter, earmarked for an audit, community work, marketing and running costs. That is a stated intention with no mechanism yet enforcing it — argued in full, both ways, in the whitepaper.
The full internal security review is published in the repository, including the bugs found and the conclusions that later turned out to be wrong.