Chaos in time. A weekly update from ECC

Today sea waves thrash,
and tomorrow they quiet
Time and time again

To feel alive, one must flow within a space in time, receiving all that is incoming and moving with it.

The presence of the sea often brings me into that space. I recall standing on the deck of a boat in the sea, somewhere between Ireland and Scotland. The sky was dark. The sea was angry and black, seeking to pitch us overboard with its thrashing. I stood in its rage as its cold spray covered my face, and the rain drenched my clothes. I felt fully alive. When I pass from this world, I hope my ashes will be scattered there. Perhaps that says something about my nature.

I am transfixed by Hiroshi Sugimotoā€™s Seascapes. He has taken over 200 photos of seas all over the world. Four of his lithographs hang in my living room, prized possessions. One is of my beloved Irish Sea. Another image is tattooed on my arm.

In these photos, he tells a story of time. They are pictures of what is, of the same character as it was long ago when the sky separated from the seas. For this reason, and others that I wonā€™t detail here, I find in them something of my own soul.

The seas are chaos, even when still. They are very different from the neatly ordered blocks in a chain that arrive one after another, 75 seconds at a time. Seas move through time with less structure but with tremendous force and resiliency.

What we are trying to accomplish with this mission, with the messiness of decentralized governance, with the blockchain is more akin to the sea than the blockchain itself. Itā€™s in our fabric to create order from disorder and attempt to bend nature to our will. But we cannot tame the sea, and the sea would not stir the same awe and wonder in us if we could.

Nothing about our mission or crypto will be as nicely ordered as a blockchain. There will be times of stillness, and there will be times of chaos. We can choose to hide from the chaos and fight the seas, or we can choose to stand on the bow, spray in our face and drenched in the rain, undeterred and feeling alive, knowing that it is good and we were part of this storyā€”time and time again. Iā€™m here for it.

ECCā€™s work this week

We plan to publish a revised roadmap early next week. Andrea, Lukas and Daira were out this week, and Iā€™d like them to review what we settled on once more before we publish it.

There are no updates on iOS this week other than Coinbase is working with Apple to resolve an issue before we can release the ā€œPurchase ZECā€ feature.

Android

Total Install Base: 1.42k

Rating: 4.455 ā˜…

  • 2.1.2 of the SDK was completed and will soon be released
  • Fixed issues and improved QR code scanning and an issue related to sending funds if configuration changes are made while in-process
  • Added a ā€œWhatā€™s Newā€ screen
  • Improved the restore process with greater user control
  • Working with Pacu on integrating his ZIP 321 URI parser
  • Working on transaction resubmission
  • Working on dynamic server selection

Zcash Core

  • Completed review of librustzcash#1422 (TOR exchange rate retrieval)
  • Re-reviewed librustzcash#1425
  • Rebased librustzcash#1135
  • Started redrafting the ZIP 302 update with Structured Memos (zips#638)
  • ZIP 320 pairings and review
  • R&D meeting with Zebra engineers; discussed initial thoughts around technical concerns for lockbox disbursement
  • Moved zips.z.cash source and rendered files into subdirectories (zips#874), and altering the deployment process to match (zips#875)
  • Added additional tables to the zips.z.cash index page to improve readability (zips#876).
  • Updated various draft ZIP PRs to be mergeable (zips#240, zips#426)
  • FROST-NIST meeting

Other

In collaboration with @aquietinvestor , @nuttycom , @peacemonger , @gordonesTV and @skyl , I posted plans for a runoff between the top two dev fund candidates.

We announced that Paul Brigner has taken a position at Coinbase to lead the Coinbase Institute. While he is leaving ECC on a full-time basis, he is joining the Bootstrap Board of Directors and will be a powerful advocate for Zash at Coinbase and in Washington, DC.

I met with the head of the family office which owns the majority of Brave and Zebpay, to discuss collaboration. There is high alignment, and there are interesting possibilities.

We reached an ATH of ZEC stored in shielded pools!

We published the first in a series of clips on privacy and Zcash that were shot at the Z|ECC summit last week. Special thanks to @nuttycom , @decentralistdan , @adjychris and Richard.

I met with SwapKit and Maya to discuss schedules and the next steps for integration into our SDK. Stay tuned!

Tony Margritte, our new Director of Finance and Operations, has started onboarding and is already making a huge difference! Welcome, Tony.

With Paulā€™s departure, I am taking a more active role in policy and regulatory matters. I started getting back up to speed on current issues and attended a Blockchain Association meeting.

I also met with a long-time but recently dormant significant Zcasher. With all the changes heā€™s seeing, heā€™s getting reenergized! I love it.

I met with Ben Adida at the request of the Zcash Foundation to discuss possible mediation between the ECC and ZF. It was a great conversation. We talked a lot about the projectā€™s history and past and current political dynamics. I was clear that the community has been increasingly empowered, that we are moving in the right direction, and I donā€™t believe that ECC and ZF should in any way collude outside of public dialogue. He took notes on what we discussed that he will share with me, and I will share those with you when I received them.

I met with @_jon and discussed the concerns about the Qedit shielded stablecoin grant and possible ways to improve the process for future efforts.

I met with Lixin Liu about adding shielded ZEC support to the Keystone hardware wallet. We are reviewing specs and will follow-up with them next week. This would likely require a grant from ZCG and resources from our Zashi team. Iā€™m optimistic.

Iā€™ll be in Nashville for the Bitcoin Conference next week. Let me know if you plan to be there as well and letā€™s meet.

Thatā€™s all of this week!

Time and time again,

Onward.

33 Likes

oh yea Keystone is best

2 Likes

:eyes: :ear:

5 Likes

Iā€™m being hyperbolic but all Iā€™ve ever wanted was a hardware wallet that fully supports the shielded pool and is future proof.

Iā€™m glad to hear we have an advocate that can lend a presence in Washington. It has been a messy and tough journey but Iā€™m proud to play even a small role in it since the beginning. We definitely learned to have some grit over the years.

5 Likes

We all are:)

3 Likes

When can we confirm POS updates???

1 Like

Our PoS work has been on pause for few weeks in order to focus on other more urgent things. However, we have been in contact with others who might be able to help accelerate this work. Weā€™ll share more on that as soon as we can.

11 Likes

Curious where this data is coming from? Does it match ZecHubā€™s data that is free for all?

:zebra: :shield:

2 Likes

Coinmetrics

4 Likes

Booyah! Bringing the believers back :fire: :fire: :fire:

2 Likes