Zchain explorer has been down since block 1978923 24 days ago. This is the primary explorer used by Coinbase and others. Any service using this site to monitor confirmations will be stuck until they update.
While it is annoying to me the site is down, it raises a bigger problem of change management in the ecosystem. I would think that as a community that we wouldn’t necessarily want everyone to know that which version of code a service is running, only that it is a valid version. I know that zchain is running version 5.3.0 because their node stopped 129024 blocks after block 1849900. A related problem happened with zecwallet recently because they are running zcashd under the hood and users need to update at the same cadence.
Is it possible to get alerts thorough email, the forum, twitter, or somewhere when new versions are released and old versions will depreciate?
I understand that everyone should be checking their node and for 14 days prior to depreciation it gives alerts. This is clearly not adequate.
Pls fix
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There’s been a couple of times when I’ve almost missed an upgrade for the ZGo nodes.
Even a simple RSS feed of the zcashd releases would be an improvement.
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The release lifetime is 16 weeks, the ECC blog has an rss feed but a node deprecation alert would be really cool on that as well
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do you have the link to the blog RSS? I can’t find it on the website.
Its neat that the RSS feed are out there.
That doesn’t help with the broader issue.
Who contacts exchanges, pools, wallets and explorers when they need to upgrade?
Flypool shutdown in September, I am assuming they will not update their explorer. Ywallet, coinbase, cointracker, and others use this service for their default. Any users of those platforms are helpless until they add support for another explorer.
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How are you sure that this is out of ignorance essentially of the impending EOS halt date and not because that they simply chose this course?
Also use zcashblockexplorer.com
Im not sure and frankly i dont think anyone knows the answer. I do know the block reward goes to people who should know this answer and have a list of services to check heartbeats on. Unlike other blockchains, zec can’t just throw out a “we’re decentralized, yolo” Every block is taxed.
I run my own nodes and other infra so i don’t use public explorers or monitor them. Businesses, users, and our wallets do. That pain point is what needs to be solved.
I’d put this in my top 5 biggest risks to zcash.
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An internal block explorer would be killer, like a particular flavor of a node build that contains it. The zcashblockexplorer repo is open and there are build instructions but it takes elixr, don’t have any experience with that. I can’t speak to what these providers might define as incentivization for providing these services.
I should clarify all of this is my own opinion and not the view wrt ZCG
The lightwalletd docker-compose stack is great. It spins up zcashd, zcash exporter, lightwalletd, prometheus, graphana. You go from zero to self sovereign zodler with one
docker-compose up Highly recommended for advanced users.
With a little extra work you can setup alerts, count nodes, count miner distribution(
), and auto rotate containers when new releases come out.
Improving the change management (or my complaints with it) is about supporting ecosystem partners that are self-funded and on the frontline of user experience.
In my world view, everyone understands zcash is a work in progress. Its super niche tech and the development is ongoing and funded. Making big changes is ok if communication is loud and often. From what I can see; communication is at best ‘the ol’ college try’ right now for non-dev fund projects.
Things going well:
- Arborist calls and community calls are great,
- rss feeds are neat
- the ambassadors are rockin rolling.
- wallets are syncing
- trusted setup is gone
- ZSA’s are coming
- unified addresses are being used
Risks:(in no real order)
- No self funded wallets or development exist.
- No exchanges support unified addresses. (rfp exists now)
- No hardware wallets support sheilded assets (wip eventually)
- One mining pool pays 55-60% of all miners (Zcash (ZEC) Equihash | Mining Pools)
- Services seemingly have no support for change management (<-- we are here)
- Node size expectations are not communicated well (there is an entire thread on this)
- Layer2 tech is not being actively used
8 Likes
Im not sure and frankly i dont think anyone knows the answer. I do know the block reward goes to people who should know this answer and have a list of services to check heartbeats on. Unlike other blockchains, zec can’t just throw out a “we’re decentralized, yolo” Every block is taxed.
Seconds this notion
