Brainstorm of potential grant concepts/ideas

Community Grants
25

looking for the community’s thoughts on wrapped.com as a ZcashOMG grant applicant for implementing shielded support using viewing keys…

Here’s some quotes for context from a recent tweet exchange I had…

“ we’re only able to run $wzec at @WrappedFi due to the existence of the t-addr. Otherwise anchorage, Gemini and other custodian / exchanges would delist overnight.”

“ There are four flavors of support:

  1. Depositing into an exchange z-addr → t-addr
  2. Depositing into an exchange z-addr → z-addr
  3. Withdrawing from an exchange z-addr → z-addr
  4. Withdrawing from an exchange t-addr → z-addr

wrapped.com can do number 1.

z-addr support (2 and 3) are the most interesting to me, as it properly takes advantage of the viewing keys, however I don’t see a reality where most people put in the effort to figure this out.”

One last thought I’d like to discuss is the role Gemini could play in making this a reality as they have already started down the shielded Zcash support path…

26

Not sure if they want a grant to do it.

1 Like
27

I would like to implement this idea: Programmatically through a wallet or through an application, create a master key (USB), which includes a read / write-protected portable wallet that has the ability to connect to a closed and secure gateway to perform transactions on any computer. On practice: I create a USB flash drive that gives me access to my zcash that are on it, password entry, work as a narrow client on different operating systems.

2 Likes
28

I’ll put a link to an idea I submitted in another post here, that I believe simplifies uses and could push private address use by default.

29

There are currently two proposals on the forum, and three on the Grant platform.

Unfortunately no teams have stepped up yet to address making more wallets that support shielded transactions.

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30

Those offers are just people’s earnings, there will be 0 benefit from them, if ZOMG will sit and wait for great offers in an unpopular (of course popular but in a very narrow circle) coin, then apparently you need to wait a very long time, now ZOMG has about 700 thousand on its account dollars in zec, a lot of things can already be done with this money, it would not be bad to define directions and look for teams to implement them, don’t you think? You can sit and wait endlessly, and will we spend money on gateways at 13,000 per unit for 3 months?

2 Likes
31

Whether to be proactive or reactive in finding grant applicants was a topic that came up during the MGRC debates to decide who would be on the MGRC (now ZOMG). There were arguments for both sides, and I think what most people came to was that we need to see the number and quality of grants coming down the pipeline the first few months before deciding if there needs to be proactive outreach. Personally, I think there needs to be proactive outreach and the Zcash community/ZOMG/other entities can greatly help with that in the new year.

5 Likes
32

I also agree that we need to proactively seek out applicants.

3 Likes
33

Regarding if we need a mixnet:

Zcash can’t scale if it requires every user to scan the entire blockchain for payments.
So, we need some other way to notify most users they received a payment.

One option is build a mixnet. Problem is, this can’t be a zcash specific mixnet. Because anonymity in mixnets is a function of concurrent users (to a first approximation your anonymity set is all concurrent users), you’d have much less privacy. And much less than Zcash’s on chain privacy which is, to a first approximation, based on all users of Zcash ever. So we need to get into an existing mixnet with usage. This might happen and there certainly are some promising projects out there.

The other option is for the majority of users to spend payment notifications out of band. @tromer and I have been working on one particular version of this on and off since the last Zcon. And thanks to @gmale @str4d and others it finally has the low level details in it. [Draft] Liberated Payments by gmale · Pull Request #420 · zcash/zips · GitHub. This lets you pay someone ZEC even if you don’t have their address (and even if they don’t have a wallet yet and have never heard of ZEC). It also avoids the nasty fat fingered an address/ sent to the wrong address problem : you’re sending a message over the whatsAp/signal/telegram account you already use with them. And until they confirm the funds, it’s reversible. And they never have to scan the blockchain

This proposal defines a mechanism for sending a Zcash payment encapsulated in a URI string. This enables sending Zcash funds over any secure channel, such as via a messaging app, even if the recipient does not yet have Zcash software installed and does not have a Zcash payment address. This is implemented by having the URI convey the secret spending key of an ephemeral Zcash “wallet address”, to which the funds have been transferred. Anyone who learns the URI can accept this payment, by a “finalization” process which uses the key given in the URI to transfer the encapsulated funds to their own wallet. After the payment is finalized, via a suitable on-chain transaction by the recipient, it becomes irrevocable.

This handles p2p payments. For merchants on the web, you can submit payment notification information /txid as part of the payment process. This should be automated, but is doable.

And then anyone who wants maximal privacy can run a full node and scan. And you should do that anyway.

8 Likes
34

I am not as deep in the technical weeds, but I am pretty sure that there is a way in Ethereum to prove your account balance and previous transactions by checking the most recent X blocks (I think you do stuff with patricia tree merkle roots?). Is that an option?

1 Like
35

It’s probably similar to Ethereum other than you can’t ask someone else to do it. “scan the entire blockchain” is once. You do this incrementally, checking if each block contains payments to you. If you’ve already checked the block or your address was made after that block, then you don’t need to scan it again.

So its an ongoing thing you do work on. It’s never finished. But you never have to repeat work unless something goes wrong.

1 Like
36

It’s easier for Ethereum to do this, because they use an account-based model. You only need to know that the current chain state is valid, and then you can just take the most recent balance as the correct current balance. In UTXO-based chains like Zcash, where your balance is the sum of unspent notes you’ve received, you need a whole-chain view to obtain a correct balance. Even if you used some kind of “save-point” mechanism for the notes you know about, anyone (who knows your address) can send you a new note at any time, which requires a notification mechanism as @secparam described.

5 Likes
37

Ive seen some chatter about ZEC for gaming recently…

So what does everyone think about Zebedee, which the creator of the Zcash Zepio wallet is apart of as a potential @ZcashGrants grant applicant?

@andrerfneves is this something you would consider?!

https://zebedee.io/

1 Like
38

My team is planning to develop an open source, efficient Zcash specific block explorer software. What features would you like to see in such a project?

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39

is there a thread for this — so forum folks can share their ideas/suggestions.

40

I’ve started a thread here Zcash Block Explorer Grant @tokidoki

1 Like
41

Another community sentiment inquiry from me…

a Decred Politeia fork for Zcash? Would it be useful? Needed? Possible to implement?

@cburniske any thoughts?

42

Hi all,

Long time fan of ZEC, first time community member here on the Zcash forums.

Little bit of my background: been fascinated with the internet since the mid 90s. Got my start building progs in VB in the form of faders and scrollers for AOL chatrooms (mm, zerver, cerver, server, etc., https://web.archive.org/web/20010616223757/http://www.aol-files.com/downloads/people/parker.html). Then acquired a cracked version of a Photoshop 5.5 and fell in love with building websites (although most were just basic JS, HTML, and some CGI via Newspro back then).

After that, I got more into building personal websites. Hipster or Homeless was a satirical version of Hot or Not (I see you eyeballin' my Huffy - Hipster or Homeless) which got me my first job out of college by the former engineering head at Hot or Not, somehow ended up creating the 2girls1cup website and various other meme offshoot websites. Additionally, created /r/lifeprotips on reddit and was subsequently banned for setting an AutoModerator rule to only allow link-based submissions go through my domain lifeprotips(.com) in an effort to bring traffic to the website. I even pitched to YCombinator back in 2014-ish, was invited to the reddit offices to explore the expansion of the LPT brand through a mini video series, although was shadowbanned for my promotion tactic upon launching the website, and eventually had my account purged. Lesson from that is to never build on top of centralized platforms (even though I knew this from the start!)

In any case, I’ve also worked as an engineer (full stack but a focus on the frontend) for various tech companies in the bay area for the past 10 years.

I’m posting this in hopes to find someone else that would be interested to build a new private social network on the Zcash platform (although maybe we don’t market it as a “social network” as I’m a bit tired of that moniker).

I’ve spoken in the past to @holmesworcester and I really liked what he was doing with Zbay. I’ve also taken a look at ZECPages and it seems like there may be some cohesion between the two projects.

I truly think that there is no better time than now to start building on Zcash and take control of our privacy.

Cheers

9 Likes
43

I have a project that is social media and currently utilizes stripe for a location based marketplace.

It would be great to replace stripe with a privacy based payment system to reduce transaction fees. But it needs backend / payment system with a stable coin. And I think swapping out of the stablecoin into zcash would be optional. Last, most people need an ability to cheaply ultimately convert into their local currency.

Is this feasible?

1 Like
44

Atomic Swaps b/w Bitcoin and Shielded Zcash?

I think this is a very important tool that needs to be implemented in the ecosystem. I spoke about this briefly in my MGRC candidacy post & am curious if it could be possible?

I reached out to Ruben Somsen who published “Succinct Atomic Swaps” & he wasn’t sure if it would be possible using this since he is not very familiar with Zcash but I’m hoping some more tech savvy folks on here could shed some light.

Here is the link to Ruben’s GitHub: