Hi Zeeps
Last week I wrote about our intent to build a new system, outside but adjacent to the old system. I was glad to hear from so many of you, that this resonated with you and its the very reason you continue forward. I’m more bullish and encouraged than ever about our collective will and ability. It’s going to take all of it, which is why ECC is so strongly leaning into the community with a spirit of openness and collaboration. And as a result, we as a community, will build moar, faster.
In practical terms, over the last two months ECC has:
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Moved Orchard out of the restrictive BOSL license to MIT in order to remove the burden of other builders
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Asked the ECC team to actively and openly engage with the community on the forums, Discord and elsewhere to encourage, support and ideate with the community
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Opened our doors and asked the community to help us think and plan about our next steps forward at Zeboot, ECC’s first in-person all-company planning session in several years… and you showed up in a big way!
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Began more active engagement internally and with you all on gathering information about our users and use cases - thank you @peacemonger, @vito, @pacu, @yasserisa, @nuttycom @zancas and all the other Zebooters who have continued to keep the conversation going!
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Engaged with the mining community, which lead to a better model for reporting hash rate that was freaking out a number of exchanges - thank you K.!
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Asked the ZECHub team to lead a path forward for the CZ NFTs - thank you @squirrel !
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Announced our desire to partner with the Zcash Foundation on a planned deprecation of Zcashd in order to speed our development efforts
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Helped out the Zingo! team a bit on background sync, a great collaboration!
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Began working with a small team of community members to bring more of our global community into Zcash related decision making.
It won’t end there. As we have been working on our roadmap, I have asked my team to consider how we might better embrace third party contributors to do even moar, even faster. We’re still targeting the end of next week to rollout our near term priorities and roadmap. I didn’t realize that it coincided with ETH Denver, which I’ll be at, but we’ll figure it out. It’s a top priority. Btw, if you are going to be in town for ETH Denver, shoot me a note and let’s meetup.
The best part of looking and possibilities and planning these last few weeks as been you. We can build more because you are doing more. You are applying for grants and building tech that will close real gaps and open new opportunities. And ZCG is approving the grants that we can build around. Thank you and thank you ZCG! This is all fresh momentum and it is allowing us to build a roadmap alongside it all, collectively accelerating things for Zcash.
To name a few, NYM (mixnet), Hahn and Maya (DEX support), Zure (user research), Qedit (ZSAs), Pacu (lightwallet), Kit (Avalanche Bridge), … I’m sure I’m missing folks. And this is in addition to the amazing work from the ZF on zebrad and FROST!
Let’s go!
In addition to roadmap work, here are a few things we’ve been up to this week…
Zashi
We’re on target for a March release of the iOS app and pushing for April for Android. The security review is underway on iOS. The backend will be next up for review as we wrap up our work to integrate Orchard this month. And it appears that Apple approves. Andrea has been a terrific addition to the team, ensuring we stay on task and that we’ve got everything covered. Everyone on the team has been working their tails off to get this shipped for you - from engineering to design to creative. It’s all coming together.
Speaking of creative, we’ll have ECC website updates to coincide with the Zashi release that will better reflect our current energy and focus.
R&D
In addition to hir new leadership responsibilities, @daira is continuing to focus on Design Phase 2 for TFL. Again, we’ll share more about our roadmap next week.
And icymi…
Grayscale did this. They’re great friends. I asked them about it just a couple weeks ago and they most certainly did not tell me this was coming so quickly. Hmm… maybe they’re just friends. Great friends tell each other secret things.
Also, our beloved founder and current board member, @zooko was in court to testify that Satoshi (not Craig Wright) most certainly did not send him any Bitcoin early on as Craig is claiming he did. Zooko did a great job, defending privacy and supporting Zcash along the way. Also, if you are interested, these emails from Satoshi were released this week! 
Fun read (for someone like me)
One more thing. It was kind of a big week for Starkware, which is good for us.
The STRK token started trading, and as an early investor, we have a few of them. They are locked up until April 15th, released a bit over time, and who knows what’s going to happen them and their price, but this is a good thing for ECC’s health and for Zcash.
Anyway, you all amaze me. Every day, more of you are leaning in and building and it’s an honor to be going at this with you all. Together, we are going to build this new system. Can you see my big freaking smile right now coming straight at your through your computer screen? I wish you could.
Together, Onward.
. Who would have thought 
.