Arti: A pure-Rust Tor Implementation for Zcash and beyond

Hi! When the Tor Project received this grant last year, ZCF was ZOMG. We like to publicly recognize sponsors (who opt-in) on our sponsor’s page: Tor Project | Sponsors, to say a bit about their work and what about Tor they are supporting.

I’m wondering if there’s new ZCF branding and if we should update this blurb in any way? What do you think @ZcashGrants?

Blurb below screenshot below:

Blurb text:

Zcash Open Major Grants (ZOMG)

ZOMG (Zcash Open Major Grants) funds projects that advance the usability, security, privacy, and adoption of Zcash, a privacy-focused cryptocurrency which pioneered the use of zk-SNARKs. The Zcash ecosystem is driven to further individual privacy and freedom. ZOMG is funding a project to create an implementation of the Tor protocols in Rust (called “Arti”).

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The current Zcash Community Grants (ZCG) website is at zcashcommunitygrants.org. It currently uses the Zcash logo that can be found on z.cash/press/.

image

The website states:

The Zcash Community Grants program (formerly known as ZOMG) funds independent teams entering the Zcash ecosystem, to perform major ongoing development (or other work) for the public good of the Zcash ecosystem.

Note: I am not on ZCG board. Just sharing info published on ZCG website. Cheers.

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ZCG has a horizontal logo which I think is better to use when talking about the grants program on pages that are not zcash-related. So that people skimming* through the text can instantaneously see that this is funded by Zcash Community Grants. The previous ZOMG logo also had it spelled out which made grants awareness easier when not on their site.

I added it in here but maybe a member of @ZcashGrants can clarify how best to communicate about the program on other websites!

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Has @ZcashGrants responded to this?

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Apologies for the delay getting back to you on this, @alsmith. Thank you for asking. Also, thank you for reminding us to respond, @tokidoki.

Please update the blurb to reflect the following:

The Zcash Community Grants (ZCG) program (formerly known as ZOMG) funds independent teams entering the Zcash ecosystem to perform major ongoing development (or other work) for the public good of the Zcash ecosystem. Zcash is a privacy-focused cryptocurrency, which pioneered the use of zk-SNARKs. The Zcash ecosystem is driven to further individual privacy and freedom. ZCG is funding a project to create an implementation of the Tor protocols in Rust (called “Arti”).

Please use the following logo:

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Thank you!

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Hi @ZcashGrants & @aquietinvestor, we have updated the sponsors page to include the new blurb and new logo. Thanks for your help :slight_smile: Tor Project | Sponsors

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Quick update: I’ve just made a post about our ideas for year 2 of Arti development. Please have a look!

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Really nice to see Arti team delivering consistently since the grant was funded!

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We’ve reached our third milestone! Arti 1.0.0 is released: Our Rust Tor implementation is ready for production use. | The Tor Project

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Arti 1.0.0 means its ready for production use, and we’d love the community’s feedback on integrating Tor into your projects. Feel free to use this thread or contact @nickm_tor.

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Hi Al,

Zebra is currently focused on our first release candidate, then we’re hoping to add Zcash mining pool support.

We’re not sure when we’re going to get time to look at Tor support next. But if anyone in the community wants to use zebra-network with Tor connections, let us know, and we’ll see if we can make the time.

For example, we recently made some zebra-network changes to help create new DNS seeders.

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Hi! Update: For multiple reasons, (Tor’s in person meeting was a couple of weeks ago, team members’ vacations, etc.) we’re pushing our Oct 1 milestone back. We are aiming now for early November.

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Hi all, here’s an update.

Other interesting links related to work done on censorship circumvention are

Remaining bridge-and-pt APIs (!741) · Merge requests · The Tor Project / Core / Arti · GitLab Draft: Bridge APIs for Arti 1.1.0 (!704) · Merge requests · The Tor Project / Core / Arti · GitLab and Overview of issues with bridges in 1.1.0 (!686) · Merge requests · The Tor Project / Core / Arti · GitLab

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We’ve reached our fourth milestone!

Previous post:
The Arti team is wrapping up the last milestone of our year-one funding
from Zcash Community Grants. Initially, our plan was to be done with the
Arti 1.1.0 release in early November, but because of a larger org-wide
meeting in Ireland in September and some staff holiday afterward, we are
a bit delayed. We expect (with reasonably high confidence) the first
release of the Arti 1.1.0 series to be out around the 30th of November.
This release brings Tor’s current anti-censorship offerings to Arti,
which is a giant leap towards our more critical goal of replacing the
current C implementation of Tor with Arti.

The team managed today to establish connectivity from Arti to the Tor
network via our anti-censorship bridge infrastructure, so the end is now
in sight. We will spend most of our remaining time on tasks of smaller
size that will ensure correctness and stability in the new code. Our
Anti-censorship Team in Tor will likely also be involved in some testing
before we tag the release.

In December, we will switch our focus to the 1.2.0 series of Arti, which
will start Onion Services support as part of the year two funding. We
will return with a more detailed plan before the December holiday, which
should outline our roadmap plan for Arti 1.2.0 and later Arti 2.0.0.

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