Hi Zeeps,
I get lost in rhythms, all kinds.
The driving rhythms in good music.
The soothing rhythms of a springtime storm.
I find rhythm on a bike, pedal stroke after pedal stroke, and when driving on empty roads in the Colorado mountains.
And I get lost in the rhythm of deep, focused work.
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It’s in the relentless push, again and again, where my instincts take control. It’s a strange kind of phenomenon when you find that flow. The noise is tuned out. All becomes clear. All is focused. You don’t have to think; something in you simply understands how to move.
Here’s the thing…
A strong and powerful darkness is set against what we’re building and striving to become. We’ve seen the recent court judgments and impending lawsuits. That’s just the tip. The forces behind that, what is at stake, and what’s ahead is the subject of another post.
What I will say for now is that finding our rhythms is vitally important. We must be collectively dedicated, focused, and working together.
The flow into that kind of rhythm comes when we let loose of fear and ego and choose to establish positive patterns. We focus, tune out the distractions and temporary trappings, and trust the instincts rooted in the truth that we know. We build that muscle memory. It doesn’t mean that we all agree or move in the same direction all the time, but it does mean that we move with one another.
ECC is committed to building momentum through powerful collective rhythms.
This year, ECC has established new rhythms through community and user engagement, employee empowerment, intentionally focused collaboration, commitment to ship world-class products to drive ZEC adoption, and transparency.
We also established a new rhythm in how we collectively decide to prioritize our work. This week, ECC focused on our Q2 priorities. We moved from a tired and burdensome planning model with segregated teams to planning together as one unified team.
We revisited our mission to empower everyone with financial freedom and our vision to build a new system outside the old system. We want to see Zcash adopted and ZEC used for privately storing wealth and making payments. Our focus, for now, is Zcashers—the “first 100” who are here because they believe in the importance and power of what we’ve collectively built together. We intend to make it easy for them, remove barriers, increase their ability to use ZEC and recommend it to new Zeeps.
Many of you are contributing in your own ways. Our contribution is to build a full-stack experience for Zcash users so they can securely hold, privately transact and adopt ZEC as a means of payment and store of value. We need to build a system that is outside but adjacent to the old system.
For what we build, we established three core UX principles.
- Make it easy
- Reduce friction
- Increase adoption
We collectively worked through user needs, features, the project’s unique value proposition, and metrics we intend to track.
We then spent hours reviewing Zashi user feedback, new possibilities, protocol work, and research needs. We wrapped today with prioritization and estimates. We will publish an updated ECC roadmap next week, but some of the key areas of Q2 focus include:
Zashi: highly requested features including dark mode, the ability to use received funds more quickly, currency conversion, and integration with a payments provider to allow Zashi users to buy gift cards (pending a commercial agreement).
Zcash: We worked through ideas on how to best proceed with zcashd deprecation, timelines and features for NU6, considerations for NU7, and PoS research. Of course, consensus changes aren’t up to ECC, and we intend to share our thoughts with the community next week.
We also recommitted to ship frequently.
New rhythms.
While the entire team was great, I want to thank @andrea specifically for her masterful work leading our workshops this week and @nuttycom, who relentlessly delivered clear thinking and insight.
The next time we do this, we’ll do it with you. Our next planning week will be in July at our Z|ECC summit, which will be open to Zcash developers across the ecosystem. If interested, you can now apply. We have limited capacity and will be selective, but please apply if you are an active community member interested in helping shape our roadmap. More information is available here.
A few other things:
We continue to work with @aquietinvestor and @pacu on TEX adoption and Binance. I know many are anxious, but Jason and Pacu are doing a great job, and we’re doing our best to support their efforts.
I heard from Coinbase that they are unwilling to change confirmation times until they see that viaBTC is mining less than 50% of the total blocks, even though the hashrate reported is under 50%. I am following up.
As noted above, we spent time working through options for NU6. Time is running out, as any features must be tested and audited in this quarter if they are to be activated on mainnet in November. We requested a public meeting with other ecosystem partners to align collectively.
896 unique people have downloaded the Zashi iOS app, and the engagement on Discord has been great. We have 182 pre-registrations for the Android app. The security audit for the Android app is complete, and we remain in good shape for a 1.0 release this month.
Thanks for all the engagement (and good app store ratings!) these last few weeks as we launched Zashi. You all are an amazing community.
Clear. Focused. Moving.
Rhythm.
Onward.
Honored to be on this mission with you.