Hello Zcash Community,
I know that in these weeks you are very busy with the ZCG Elections, but I want to give you a summary of the grant I am requesting and the importance of this project. I hope you like it and that it gives you a better overview.
Why is Znodes so important for the infrastructure?
- Network Visibility: It helps to have real information on active Zcash nodes, their versions, and how the network is distributed.
- Decentralization Metrics: We can measure geographic distribution, ASNs, and cloud distribution. This helps evaluate the networks resistance to censorship and interruptions.
- Update Adoption: It allows verification of Zcash updates detecting old versions or bifurcation risks.
- Tools for Operators: It helps node operators check if their node is mining correctly, responding to external connections, and measuring latency and delay.
- Security & Privacy: It aids in studying traffic vulnerabilities, centralization risks, and the connectivity of nodes in both public and private traffic.
- Network Health: We can monitor regional blackouts and potential denial-of-service attacks.
- Transparency & Investment: It provides transparency for the ecosystem and proves to new investors that the network is robust and not controlled by just a few people.
MAJOR UPDATE
We want to announce that we have already pushed an update adding compatibility with Zcashd and Zebra.
We now show Zcash nodes IN REAL TIME. This is very interesting because current platforms shows nodes that have a lot of latency and are in flux or fail to show the good nodes entirely.
Key Features & Goals
- The Crawler: We will improve the backend logic based on Ziggurat and dismand version to discover both Zebra and Zcashd nodes efficiently.
- Privacy-Preserving Live Map: We will implement a live map showing node locations (the locations are going to be only the country locations or state locations to protect the user that it is running a node.
- Professional Design (UI/UX): We will hire an external designer to create a “White & Professional” interface (using a palette of black, strong blues, and grays). We want to make a better platform that bitnodes and we do not add ads
- Node Trust System: A backend system to classify nodes based on stability and uptime, giving a “trust score.”
- Manual Node Discovery: A feature allowing users to manually add their nodes to the platform to speed up discovery.
- API for Developers: A public API so other devs can use our node data for their own apps.
- Security Audits: Ensuring the site does not keep logs, IPs, or cookies that could compromise user privacy.
We are asking for a budget to make this reality.
You can see the GitHub proposal here: Zcash Community Grants Issue #149
Check the MVP here: znodes.live
