Required reading for @zooko et al:
Zcash could benefit from adding more elements of “fun”.
Currently, it has a serious and mission-driven attitude, larping as some purported savior of humanity.
ZECpages has been the closest thing to “fun”, I’ve seen, but nothing else has come close. This is what drew myself and others in.
tl;dr: more fun, less boring
Maybe I’ve been around this space for too long but personally I’d be a lot more excited by something useful.
As someone actually using Zcash, one feature that I would enjoy is to be able to schedule recurrent transactions in the wallet. For instance, I donate ZEC monthly to projects such as GrapheneOS. If I’d use Paypal it’d be all automatic, but with Zcash I have to spend more time than I’d like.
Not sure if it would be difficult. Just pick a start date, a frequency (weekly, monthly, etc), a recipient address and a memo note. Could end up being useful for subscriptions and such too. I guess that’s another thing that would benefit from Android hardened wallets given it wouldn’t work on offline devices.
Recurring payments was attempted a few years ago by @adityapk00 in ZecWallet but abandoned because of security reasons. Recurring Payments in ZecWallet (Testnet) - #3 by adityapk00?
Why not put a payment uri in a recurrent calendar appointment?
He said “safely” and by that, it looks like he meant “reliably”; I do not find any security related issues in what he says. I’m pretty sure now is a good time to revisit this as Android as evolved and has everything we need to make this work, reliably.
Yeah, what’s even the business model of Paypal (recurring payments) and Patreon. 
Kidding aside, I don’t know about you but I have 20+ recurring payments every month, and I am pretty sure I’m not alone in this situation. Thankfully there are solutions that are helping me automate this so I don’t have to rely on my calendar and my bare hands to do this every time a payment is due. Currently, there are zero such solutions working with Zcash. I see it as something useful.
Actually the same thing that could be used for this, could also solve the UX issue of regular wallet synchronization. I don’t know of a single app that uses the Android scheduler to synchronize quietly in the background, why? Signal and WhatsApp are using the scheduler for backup purposes, with the latter even offering the options to do it… you guessed it… Daily, Weekly, and Monthly.
Besides, some people were looking for a way to help fund wallet development. That’d be a swell way to suggest users to do it; a little USD$1 ZEC equivalent per month, or more for those feeling generous. Simple, respectful, elegant.
yeah wat if wallet synced in background every hour your phone is online?
dat way it wud take super little time and resources.
and any time u open wallet its already synced.
Phone apps don’t naturally run in the background. They get switched on and off. At best they can request to run a background service but more often than not, the OS will kill them to save battery.
See implementation in ywallet:
Scheduler works perfectly fine on a Pixel phone. I am missing zero backup on Signal or WhatsApp.
Automatic synchronization would work perfectly fine on those phones, and probably many others. A daily quick sync might be exactly what we need for better user UX. Let’s not ignore the potential solutions that can solve our serious UX issues.
Ywallet does not rely on the scheduler, the same way Signal and WhatsApp do.
There, it’s right here: Schedule alarms | Background work | Android Developers
Maybe. Personally I would be into a daily sync at like 3am when I hopefully sleep, the phone is plugged, and I am generally on WiFi. It feels like a reasonable compromise that would not bother most people and keep the wallet mostly up to date and ready to use anytime it is needed.
The issue here is that most places don’t accept ZEC. Chicken and egg problem.
You are probably within 1% of the population on Earth that has that many recurring payments.
Well, given we’re talking about a problem I am experiencing, I can tell you that the chicken and egg problem has nothing to do with it here. It’s about ease of use. I am given two options to make recurrent donations every months. One has automatic recurring payments (Paypal), the other (ZEC) is does not. Most users will pick what is most practical for them. If we want Zcash to succeed, we have to take those things into consideration to hopefully address this someday. That does not mean it should be addressed today. That only means what I just said: it should be taken into consideration.
I almost exclusively donate in Zcash. Some projects have heard of Zcash only because I contact them to donate but only wish to do so using our project. Which ends up having Zcash mentioned as a simple donation address. It’s not much, but it matters. Just like automated recurrent transactions.
I wonder if a ZGo integration into the Shopify App store would make sense: https://apps.shopify.com
cc @pitmutt 
You are comparing a centralized solution (PayPal) to a decentralized one (Crypto / Zcash).
Would you be able to make recurrent payments in Bitcoin? AFAIK, it’s not offered by any wallet.
Honestly not sure where you are going with your points. I’m suggesting improvements, and you’re saying it’s pointless because nobody has done it before. Like, really?
I am trying to hint that there is a good reason why people haven’t done it.
It can’t be done securely and reliably (one or the other but not both).
I mean, thank you for the hint but I’d really appreciate if you would elaborate a bit so we all understand in why we can only have one of security or reliability.
Shopify is a walled garden, unfortunately:
It also has a policy for refund functionality that would be difficult to comply with.
However, I am in touch with the devs working on Magpie Market, a federated alternative to Etsy and they are fully on board with having an integration with ZGo. I didn’t include this in our grant application because the project is in its early stages so there is no solid timeline for launch yet.
Do you have a list? I’d love to reach out to see how we could make it easier for them to get support with ZEC.
This derailed quickly from Pkr’s original topic. Recurring Payments are not fun.
Something that I’ve posited that could be fun and would also tickle the brains of our world-class software engineers.
Can we open source/ operate a private lottery in the Zcash protocol layer?
Overview:
The obvious challenges would be auditability of both the code, per lottery participants/ ZEC lottery amounts, and the trailing outcomes (to assure that over time, randomness is true)
I apologize @pitmutt, but I won’t be able to answer this question as sharing this has negative privacy implications for me. If there are some things you believe I should suggest to them in order to make it easier for them, please feel free to let me know.
Even if you audit everything, I don’t see how you can guarantee that whoever runs the lottery is really using that code.
