1.0.14, Overwinter & Sapling
A lot of our engineering effort has been focused on Overwinter, the first Zcash network upgrade slated for activation June of 2018. A milestone for the 1.0.14 release is to fully specify Overwinter so that code development for the upgrade can move forward efficiently in the new year. Some key elements needed for Overwinter include blockheight transaction expiry, upgrade activation mechanism, and a roll-back limit for reorganization. As previously mentioned, the goal of Overwinter is to make future network upgrades safer and simpler so we’ve used resources like Bitgo’s criteria for supporting hard forks which the above elements aim to address.
We’re also working on various build, testing and database improvements, clean-ups and more upstream Bitcoin code cherry-picking for the 1.0.14 release.
Finalizing Sapling (the second Zcash network upgrade) circuit specification is another milestone for 1.0.14 which has been making a lot of progress as well. Additionally, implementation of the circuit is already well underway and you can keep track of this progress in the sapling-crypto repository.
The release of 1.0.14 is scheduled for the first week of the new year. A more specific release date will be announced the week before.
UX & Documentation
There’s been a lot of progress on our UX guideline for wallet developers. The document is very comprehensive and we’re currently working on cutting it down to be more concise and digestible. The topics we’re covering include UI design, user interaction, graphic design and security.
We’re also starting to work on a new section of the FAQ to address network upgrade/hard fork concerns and are finally diving back into restructuring the presentation of documentation which got derailed over the last several months.