This is our fortnightly engineering update which happens after the conclusion of each 2-week engineering sprint. You can check out last week’s update for recent news on community and communications.
Zcashd Team
This team focuses on development of the zcashd client and Zcash protocol. Follow along with team discussions in the Community Chat #zcashd-team channel.
We are finalizing the specification for the Sprout to Sapling migration tool and beginning the specification for an automatic counterfeiting action plan which will be introduced as a Draft-ZIP this sprint. We also released the 2.0.3 update.
Development Infrastructure Team
The Development Infrastructure team ensures developers have the tools and infrastructure they need. Join this team in the #dev-infrastructure chat channel.
We focused most of our effort this sprint on testing and deploying the 2.0.3 release while making important improvements to the internal documentation of the release process. We are continuing to work on getting the Windows build integrated with our CI system (buildbot).
Ecosystem Team
This team is intended to work on projects that interface with external parties not including the zcashd core client and handles business development in the phases after initial contact by providing technical insight and support.
Changes to zcashd required to run the insight explorer without modification continue to be added. We’re expecting this work to be completed in time for the 2.0.4 release.
We’re also continuing our ongoing market research with exchanges, wallets, custody services, and other service providers. Specifically, we’re looking at where to focus improvement effort on zcashd and the rpc interface. To provide input to this effort, please email ecosystem@z.cash.
Documentation Team
This team drives the curation and assists in the creation of documentation. Follow along in the #documentation chat channel. Check out the official Zcash documentation.
We started a new process to tag the official documentation which will correspond with an official zcashd release. Documentation tags can be tracked here. For the next release (2.0.4), we’ll work on including proper release notes to summarize the changes since the last release.
Many of the items planned for the last sprint are still in the works for this upcoming sprint including: reviewing the changes to clean up documentation in zcashd source files and moving out non-policy docs; revamping release, smoke testing and officially supported products policies; and improving the formatting/styling of the documentation to fit with official branding. We’ll also be working on various content updates including helping the reference wallet team with any documentation support they need this sprint.
Reference Wallet Team
This teams current charter is to build a Zcash reference wallet. Deliverables will be a series of MVPs where Android is the first target platform.
We got the reference wallet to send transactions, which successfully completes the MVP deliverable to deploy an application that someone can use to send and receive testnet Zcash. For the next sprint, we’re going to be cleaning up code and writing documentation in preparation for the reference wallet announcement at the beginning of March.
Miscellaneous
As mentioned in the zcashd team update, the Company-designed Sprout → Sapling migration tool in this Draft-ZIP is available to those curious about the design details.
Zcon1 applications are open! Zcon1: June 22 – 24 in Split, Croatia
A few Company folks will be at ETHDenver this weekend… it will likely be difficult to locate any of us but keep an eye out for folks wearing Zcash shirts if you’re attending! 