Just a quick dev update on Overwinter and Sapling this week. I’ll elaborate on more community related updates next week but as a reminder: Zcon0 & Consensus Scholar program applications are open!
Overwinter Release
This week we made the go decision for moving forward with the Overwinter release without inserting a buffer release. We received reports back from auditors of Overwinter changes and while some issues were found, they were not consensus related and therefore addressable in subsequent releases. This go decision essentially means that we plan to release 1.1.0 next week which will have include the target block height for activation on the main network. As always, you can keep track of the countdown to Overwinter activation on the information portal. We haven’t made the decision for the exact block height, yet but as mentioned previously, we’ll be targeting June 25th of this year and will obviously share that height when we decide.
We’ve packaged a 1.1.0 release candidate and will do some testing before cutting the main release which is scheduled for Monday but could be pushed back a day or two to make sure we have the RC testing fully covered.
Results from the Overwinter audit review will be published in the near future.
Sapling
This week we packaged up and tested the parameters generated from phase 1 of the MPC (aka Powers of Tau) and will be announcing them along with a coordinator report in the coming days. We also finished the verification tool for those parameters and released the code for phase 2 of the MPC for the Sapling circuit which we’ll probably start this weekend.
Audits of the Sapling libraries are also underway and we’ve decided to move forward with a shielded ZEC accounting turnstyle. This means that when users migrate their ZEC from version 1 (Sprout/Overwinter) to version 2 (Sapling) shielded addresses, the value within that transfer is temporarily revealed. We’re discussing how to do this so that users maintain the most optimal privacy but the goal here is to address the lack of accounting ability for the shielded ZEC pool that so many people are concerned about. We have time to consider the best approach to do this accounting while maintaining the most optimal privacy for users and of course, always welcome community input.
I am excited to hear back about the Consensus Scholar program! I just joined the Zcash forum and I plan on becoming a more active member in this community.