After whipping a bad cold a couple of weeks ago, nature punched me back with Covid this week. When nature punches, she punches hard. It was a good reminder that we need to slow down. Same with the team. After releasing Zashi last week, a few team members took well-deserved time off.
But anyway, screw Covid. I loaded up on tissues, Clorox injections, and Red Bull and kept throwing punches of my own, in between a few naps. 
That, and I spent my evenings watching Shōgun. Flip it’s good. I love it: the narrative, the aesthetic, the history, the dialogue, the culture, the acting. It’s also intensely human. Heroes and villains and traitors and lovers.
This line struck me:
“…a man has a false heart in his mouth for the world to see, another in his breast to show to his special friends and his family, and the real one, the true one, the secret one, which is never known to anyone except to himself alone, hidden only God knows where.”
Regardless of era, or culture, or person, this rings true. What we disclose about ourselves is and should be our choice. OUR PERSONAL CHOICE. No matter what powerful and evil forces try to compel you to do, you have a dignity that is yours to hold. Your secret heart is yours. It’s worth everything. It’s what makes us human. Fight for it. Die for it. This is not hyperbole.
Zashi on!
Coincidentally, @wobbzz asked ChatGPT what the name Zashi might signify, and the AI came back with a Japanese interpretation. The summary gave me the chills. It is spot-on, perfect. Za-shi (座 支) is a platform for delivering the capabilities of Zcash. I don’t speak Japanese, and this could be totally wrong, but I chose to believe it.
How are things going with Zashi? Um, awesome. As of yesterday, we’ve seen 882 downloads around the world. We already have over 1,200 Android downloads of the beta version, with 50 pre-signups for the 1.0 release. We’re on track to deliver Android 1.0 this month.
iOS users have reported a few bugs, and most appear to be edge cases at this point. If you haven’t already, make sure you are running 1.0.4. We’ve been cleaning some UI elements and looking at what’s next. Orchard was integrated into Android, and the security review is almost finished. It’s looking good!
Want to talk Zashi, suggest improvements or report a bug? Join the ECC Discord. And thanks to the Zcash Global Discord for wiring up a direct channel in there as well.
Zcash
We’re working to get zcashd 5.9.0 out the door. There isn’t much to it besides some cleanup, including removing all the BOSL leftovers and resetting the end-of-life date. That will be released next week. It was a light week for us on the Zash front.
Other Happenings
Last week, I posted a proposal on changing the development fund, advocating that the community move away from direct funding and instead fund organizations based on grants through a flexible multi-sig structure. This week, I added to it, suggesting that we consider retroactive funding as a means for more effectively allocating limited capital. Read through it and let me know what you think. We’ll soon take ideas to the still-forming ECC ZAC for feedback.
We met with the Brave and Filecoin teams to get an update on their progress in adding shielded support, plan for some fun at Consensus, and discuss specifics on the upcoming memo payload storage.
I also had a chance to chat with @cwgoes about Namada, our schedule for PoS, and the possibility of a bridge.
We released the ECC Transparency Report for Q3 2023.
We started our engagement with Arktouros and began product reviews, plans, and regulatory consultation on features we intend to add.
We’ve continued work with some third parties on new things for Zashi, including wire-framing and documentation reviews. I love where it’s heading!
Upcoming:
Next week is ECC’s Q2 planning week, which will run from Wednesday through Friday next week. During the week, we’ll use a series of workshops to collectively define our path for Zashi and Zcash.
Specifically, we’ll work on ways to make Zashi more powerful through more capability, our plans for continuing our PoS work, NU6 and zcasd deprecation requirements, financial sustainability, Zashi and Zcash + Brave go-to-market plans, and partnerships. Feel free to take a look at the current ECC roadmap to see what’s on the table. We’ll refactor and release a new roadmap following these sessions.
The Z|ECC Summit (the Zcash community developer and ECC workshop formerly known as Zeboot) is set for July 8th in San Diego, California. Look for an announcement and signups soon!
No time to waste.
“This sunset exists.
Tomorrow does not exist.
There is only now.”
Onward.