Zcash Shielded News | Volume 2
''Your Friend Zashi'' ECC Updates, Keystone & Zashi Integration, Webᙇjs Ready to Receive Wallet Support, Zebra Release Candidate NU6 & ZK AV Club Announces Core Team!
Zcash Shielded News is a community article format based on the weekly Zcash Ecosystem Digest Newsletter.
Providing insight on current events and informing the community about important news in the Zcash ecosystem.
Check out the best Highlights below
Last week, we were introduced to Tesla's latest roadmap, which includes plans for its product: Optimus Buddy.
With an estimated price of $20,000 to $30,000, Optimus is designed to assist with daily tasks, ranging from doing dishes to playing board games with children, allowing adults to focus on more important matters.
In a joking manner, Elon stated that there is an 80% chance that Tesla will not include a self-driving AI that shoots lasers at your face and steals your Dogecoin while you sleep.
Josh wondered, “What if these robots are as intelligent as they seem they will be? They will likely be Zcashers and our new Zashi friends. A man can dream, right?”
Building on Tesla's momentum, ECC also released its Q4 2024 Roadmap for Zashi & Zcash, updating the community on its future steps.
Titled "Your Friend Zashi," this week's analogy refers to how software development works, where progress is divided into numbered versions (such as 1.x, 2.x, 3.x), with each version representing a different stage of development, incorporating improvements and new features over time.
This analogy also emphasizes the idea of continuous evolution and adaptation to user needs, demonstrating the team's commitment to constantly enhancing the experience and functionalities of Zashi. It reflects the normal cycle of product development, where each new version responds to market demands and user feedback.
Learn more here.
Progress of the Week
Zashi 📱
Continuing Transaction History redesign - implementing feedback from team review
Progressing with Onboarding redesign
Updated the splash screen design to allow for authentication on app launch
iOS 🍎
Unique Installs: 3.59k
Total Downloads: 4.24k
Rating: 4.9 ★
Version 1.2.1 for iOS will be available Monday and includes an address book, a cool new receive ZEC feature, and bug fixes
Send Feedback screen implemented + fallback to scenarios when users don’t have Apple email app setup
Flexa:
Initialization moved to the point when users truly need/want it
A biometric check was added to confirm a payment
Feature Flagging system implemented, Flexa code is the first instance merged
SplashScreen enhanced to act as a biometric checkpoint for app launch and app foregrounds (ask again after 15 minutes)
Working on adding an address to the memo for easy Reply-to
Android 🤖
Total Install Base: 2.16k
Total Installs (incl. Open Beta): 7.69k
Rating: 4.7 ★
Redesigned/Unified buttons and paddings across the whole app based on the new Design System
Updated Zashi’s Welcome screen background
Added new Integrations screen to the Settings
Working on Address Book with remote storage using Google Drive
Debugged and prepared a fix for a bug with “BadBlockHeight” blocking syncing in cooperation with the Core Team - to be tested with affected users
Fixed “unsupported address type” issue blocking syncing
Fixed a crash on lower Android versions caused by the ZIP 321 library
Working on the Request ZEC flow
Others 🌐
Brave is still cranking! The shielded wallet code will be audited in late October, and they are still working on implementing the full transaction history. It will then move into beta for four weeks before being pushed into production. They are also continuing to work on adding FIL storage to the memo field, which will be launched later.
Some of the team met with NYM to review the current state and potential for integration with Zashi. While much is done, the team have some concerns about adding latency, especially while syncing. ECC will explore this further in the coming months.
ECC is planning to hire another core team member and are drafting the job description. This person will primarily focus on Zashi-related needs and developer ecosystem support.
Josh had previously planned to attend and speak at Devcon next month. He canceled his trip due to a heavy travel load, his desire is to continue to focus on delivery, and anticipated funding and governance discussions coming soon. He will be in DC late next week to speak at the DC Privacy Summit.
Speaking of governance, @daira, @decentralistdan, @aquietinvestor, and Josh met with Justine (she’s awesome), who leads governance for the Optimism Foundation, to learn more about the current state of governance, their objectives, and lessons learned. She’s connecting me with some other communities and resources. I’ll share more on that soon.
Josh caught up with Radom and Raise about the progress toward adding Zcash support. Raise is ready to move forward, but Radom’s development team has been delayed. ECC is hoping to receive an updated timeline as early as next week.
Josh has been in contact with Mercado Bitcoin about adding Zcash support. They have a proposal that includes payments for various marketing activities. Josh will review it next week, but it’s likely something we can't afford. If anyone from ZCG is interested in taking a look, I have permission to share the details with you.
Keystone published its seventh update last week on its integration with Zcash.
The progress involves a data structure called PCZT (Partially Created Zcash Transaction), which allows any hardware wallet to connect to Zashi or other wallets, enabling mobile phones to conduct transactions without QR code connections.
The Zashi team will share ideas about the PCZT structure.
The Zcash community received a final update on WebZjs, a library developed by ChainSafe to support wallet development. The work is complete, and the library now has the necessary functionalities.
The team is handing off the project to the next group, which will focus on creating a MetaMask Snap for Zcash, along with a production-ready web wallet.
The library is available for community use and contributions, though the team expects to encounter bugs in the first few weeks. A project repository, documentation, and a wallet demo have been made available, but the team advises against using the demo to store significant amounts.
Key project milestones include:
Key Generation: Initial implementation of key derivation functions.
Storage Abstraction: Creation of an in-memory backend for browser use, allowing flexible persistence.
Wallet Synchronization: Support for synchronization strategies using WebWorkers, keeping the page responsive.
Transaction Proofs: Transaction proofs in a browser context, with support for background operations.
Demo and Documentation: Development of a demo wallet showcasing WebZjs functionalities.
ChainSafe is excited about the achievement and looks forward to seeing the library evolve over time.
We know that ECC has played a fundamental role in building NU6 through PRs, ZIPs, and many meetings to ensure everything runs smoothly. However, the Zcash Foundation is also constantly working to deliver new features to NU6 for this compatibility, having recently released the first release candidate for Network Upgrade 6.
This release includes all the consensus rules, functionality, and tests necessary for the new network upgrade to come in full force!
Technically, this version includes some updates to the getmininginfo RPC method response and two new generate and stop RPC methods, which are valid only for regtest networks. Other updates for the regtest mode included adding a halving interval to match zcashd, as well as a configurable halving interval for custom testnets.
Other notable changes include the addition of Docker Scout to scan vulnerabilities in Docker images.
You can view a complete copy of all changes included in the v2.0.0-rc.0 Release Notes on GitHub.
After a few months of planning, the ZK AV Club project (formerly ZF AV Club), created by Ryan Taylor, has received a core team to lead the project.
With a collective and clear narrative, the team will consist of six members whose individual responsibilities will be assigned to help expand the project. The members are: Squirrel, Dan, Gordones, Aura Brito, Robmar, and Autonafish.
If you're new to the community, ZK AV Club is an audio-visual (AV) project responsible for organizing notable events like Zcon Voices (Brazil), Zcon4 (Barcelona), Zcon5 (Virtual), and Dweb Camp, an annual gathering hosted in various countries focused on globalizing the decentralization of the web.
Expectations for a bright future in ZK AV are high! Interested? Join the community on Discord!