Hi Zeeps,
TLDR: we updated our roadmap this week for Q2. You can find it here, but if you want the juice, you’ll really want to read all the significant bits below.
Zashi Roadmap
Potential Zcash Roadmap
As I’ve highlighted elsewhere, ECC has moved to a quarterly planning cycle that includes a reassessment and refactoring of our roadmap. We spent last week working through the current state, market opportunities, and Zashi feedback; and then planning and estimating.
We are listening to you and inviting you in. Our next in-person get-together is in July. If you are working in the ecosystem and want to collaborate, apply!
Fluidity, assumptions, and dependencies
I’m stating the obvious, but our vision is better when the target is closer. We’re confident about this quarter, but it’s fuzzier longer out. For better or worse, we only see with human eyes. That’s why we need to reevaluate and refactor constantly.
There are also assumptions and dependencies here. For example, our work integrating gift cards in Zashi depends on a signed commercial agreement. In some cases, like ZSAs, the bulk of the development right now is being done by an independent team, Qedit, with our support. In other cases, like zcashd deprecation, ECC and ZF are sharing the work, so there are multiple dynamics at play, and good cross-team collaboration will be required up and down this plan.
Roadmap Details
The roadmap is divided into two main sections: Zashi, and the Zcash protocol.
Zashi Roadmap
The release of Zashi 1.0 for Android remains a top priority for this month, and we’ll work to bring the release times for iOS and Android closer together.
Zashi 1.1 (May)
ZIP 320 support: This introduces the new address type requested by Binance, which will only accept funds coming from a transparent address.
Currency conversion: This feature allows the Zashi user to see the current value of their ZEC or ZEC transaction in US Dollars.
User authentication for spends: This adds support for biometric or pin-based authorization for enhanced user protection.
We’ll also release Dark Mode (highly requested) and a few other UX improvements.
Zashi 1.2 (June)
Gift card purchases: We have been working with a third party to allow customers to purchase gift cards from various retailers. While we’re all highly motivated to make this happen, we are still working through contractual details and will update you.
Address rotation: This will allow users to generate new addresses in the wallet.
Spend quick controls: This UX improvement will allow the user to send a % of their funds up to the maximum amount without having to type it in and figure out fees.
Faster spend latency: This is related to how long you have to wait to spend funds. This one is a bit tricky, but we think we can handle a lot of it with changes in how we manage notes. Regardless of the ultimate solution, we are committed to reducing this friction.
Zashi 1.3 is lighter to allow for carryover work if necessary and to account for Q3 planning that month. As of now, it includes the ability to import viewing keys and various performance improvements to make things easier and faster.
Zashi 2.0 and 3.0
We are exploring this quarter, through research and partnership discussions, several possible candidates for Zashi 2.0 and 3.0. The timing of some of these things is based on dependencies. We’ll use that information in our planning with you in July!
Zcash Roadmap
We’ve broken this roadmap into Hybrid Consensus, NU6, NU7, zcashd deprecation, and additional R&D.
We’ve done our best to map out what we believe is possible. However, this is all subject to change based on community feedback and our development partners across the community. In fact, a number of us are meeting together tomorrow if you’d like to tune in.
Hybrid Consensus: We’re finishing up Design Phase 2 this month and plan to work on the Simulator in May and June. We’ll take a short R&D break from this in July to ensure we have adequate time for necessary NU6 and NU7 support before beginning prototype work in August.
In this section and across the others, we’ve added a concept called “Transient testnets.” We intend to start opening up early and ephemeral public testnets that anyone can use to test against new capabilities added to Zcash. If all goes according to plan, we’d like to start pushing Transient testnets for Hybrid Consensus as early as November.
NU6: We (all of us in the community) need to lock in development priorities for NU6 this month, assuming we intend to update in November. This does not mean we reach a consensus on the dev fund or its particulars. Technically, that one should be simple. However, we need to work through a set of candidate features quickly. Not all of these will likely make it. These options include a new transaction format to account for explicit fees and extending the memo field to support novel features such as ZSAs and liberated payments. Assuming all development is complete by the end of June, we should have enough time to activate in November.
NU7: We are making the assumption that NU7 is focused on ZSAs (Zcash Shielded Assets) and largely driven by Qedit, with support from us. Based on what we know to be true today, we believe they should be ready by April 2025. However, this timeline could be accelerated if they complete all circuit reviews and auditing earlier. If we get Transient testnets, this will allow us all to conduct more testing more quickly.
zcashd Deprecation: To move beyond the legacy Bitcoin codebase in zcashd, the community needs a stack of software that includes consensus nodes, parity with current RPC interfaces, and wallet support. The Zcash Foundation has built zebrad for consensus, but much work remains on the rest. We are proposing an RPC wrapper around a CLI wallet and will work with the foundation and others to move this along as quickly as possible. As ZSAs will not be supported in zcashd, this is a prerequisite for their deployment on Zcash.
Other: The ECC core team has a full plate, so for this quarter, we’ve limited additional R&D to Liberated Payments. This would allow Zcashers to send ZEC to others through secure messaging systems rather than using a specific address and might unlock some other cool capabilities we’ll revisit later.
As always, we welcome your feedback!
Onward.