Gleyo, Post Hackathon Update 🚀

It’s been a few days since launching Gleyo during the ZecHub Hackathon, and I wanted to share a quick update on how things have been going.

Since launching on July 14, Gleyo has reached 33 weekly active users. It’s been exciting to watch people go through the full experience, from signing up and completing quests to chatting, earning shielded ZEC rewards, and withdrawing their rewards.

One thing that surprised me the most was the feedback around the UI/UX. Many testers mentioned that signing up and navigating the platform felt simple and intuitive, which was something I spent a lot of time trying to get right. I also refined the community payment flow to work seamlessly across both desktop and mobile devices, giving community owners a consistent experience regardless of how they choose to manage their communities.

Instead of focusing only on onboarding more users, I decided to slow down and iterate on the feedback I received, improving the parts of Gleyo that wouldn’t scale in the long run.

One major limitation is now solved

Originally, withdrawals were processed one user at a time across the entire platform.

That worked during development, but it obviously wouldn’t work once multiple communities started using Gleyo simultaneously.

I’ve now redesigned the withdrawal system into a queued architecture, allowing multiple withdrawal requests to be processed safely without overwhelming or crashing Nozy Wallet.

It’s one of those backend improvements that most users will never notice, but it’s essential if Gleyo is going to support many communities at once.

A feature inspired by community feedback

One piece of feedback from @squirrel really stood out.

He suggested allowing communities to fund campaigns using assets they already hold instead of requiring everything to start with ZEC.

I thought that made a lot of sense.

Since then, I’ve implemented multi-token deposits, allowing communities to fund campaigns with supported stablecoins like USDT and USDC, while Gleyo automatically settles rewards into shielded ZEC behind the scenes.

The goal isn’t to replace ZEC, it’s to make adopting Zcash much easier.

Communities can continue using familiar assets while contributors experience private payments through Zcash without additional complexity.

Going forward, I’ll continue expanding support for more tokens and networks to make onboarding even smoother.

Why I’m building Gleyo

My goal with Gleyo has never been just to build another community platform.

I want to help Zcash communities, Web3 projects, and even traditional Web2 organizations grow stronger communities through better onboarding, engagement, and long-term retention.

At the same time, I want to make Zcash feel almost invisible to newcomers.

Instead of asking someone to first understand wallets, shielded transactions, and privacy technology, communities can simply reward participation.

People join a community.
They contribute.
They earn rewards.
They experience private digital money.

Over time, they naturally discover the benefits of Zcash through using it, not because they were forced to learn it on day one.

That’s the experience I’m building toward.

Thank you

A huge thank you to @dismad for encouraging me to share Gleyo publicly after the hackathon.

Without that encouragement, a lot of the feedback, bug reports, feature requests, and conversations that have helped shape Gleyo over the past few days probably wouldn’t have happened.

Building in public has already made the project significantly better, and I’m incredibly grateful to everyone who has taken the time to test it.

Repository

https://github.com/gilmorre/gleyo-Zechub-

ZecHub Pull Request

https://github.com/ZecHub/zechub/pull/1874

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Gleyo Update: Ironwood Readiness + Recent Fixes

Quick update as the Ironwood upgrade approaches on July 28.

Since Gleyo is built entirely on Orchard (unified u1 addresses for both deposits and withdrawals), the transition to Ironwood should carry over cleanly on our end. Ironwood preserves existing Orchard receivers, so no address migration is needed for Gleyo users. I’m working closely with @Lowo88 on the Nozy Wallet side to confirm the RPC/API layer is fully aligned with Ironwood support so Gleyo’s deposit verification and withdrawal flow keep working exactly as they do today, without any disruption for users mid-upgrade.

I’ll be tracking Zebra’s node upgrade closely as well to make sure the self-hosted node stays consensus-compatible past activation.

Alongside this, a few fixes went out based on recent testing feedback from @dismad and the ZecHub team:

  • Updated SETUP.md to clarify Supabase requirements (including creating the uploads bucket), the recommended Python version, and additional setup notes for running Gleyo locally.
  • Fixed Community showing up hardcoded on the landing page, it now pulls dynamically.
  • Fixed the Community Chat entry not appearing in navigation.

Appreciate @dismad and the ZecHub team for testing and pointing these out, it’s made the local setup experience noticeably better for anyone trying to run Gleyo themselves.

More updates soon as Ironwood activation approaches.

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Gleyo Update: Confirmed Live on Ironwood

Quick confirmation following the Ironwood activation on July 28.

Working closely with @Lowo88 on the Nozy side through the upgrade, I ran a live test connecting a shielded wallet (Zodl) by sending a small deposit to Gleyo’s Nozy-backed address, then verified where it landed.

Result: the deposit landed in the Ironwood pool, not legacy Orchard, confirming Gleyo’s shielded wallet connection and deposit verification are fully compatible with the network upgrade going forward.

Existing Orchard balances still need to go through the standard migration flow (Plan → Migrate → Broadcast) to move over, that part’s expected and separate from new activity, which is already flowing correctly into Ironwood.

Great collaboration with the Nozy team throughout this transition, more updates as things stabilize further.

Repository: GitHub - gilmorre/gleyo-Zechub- · GitHub

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Gleyo Update: End-to-End Ironwood Testing Complete

After Ironwood activated, I wanted to verify that Gleyo’s complete payment flow still worked on mainnet from end to end.

Happy to say everything tested successfully.

I funded a community using USDT, Gleyo automatically settled it into shielded ZEC, the deposit was detected by Nozy after syncing, and withdrawals continued working through the same unified (u1...) address under Ironwood.

During testing, I also worked closely with @Lowo88 to reproduce and debug a pending transaction issue in Nozy Wallet. The fixes have now landed, and after rebuilding from the latest master and re-syncing, the wallet correctly reconciled pending transactions and balances.

It’s been great working together to make sure Gleyo was fully compatible with Ironwood from day one.

I’m also excited about what’s coming next. @Lowo88 is currently working on Zcash Names for Nozy Wallet, and I think human-readable names could make onboarding and payments inside Gleyo feel much more natural for new users.

Looking forward to building on top of that.

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Yes, glad everything workout for the both of us. Zcash names will be apart of the next release coming soon.

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Really looking forward to it, Zcash Names could be a genuine game changer for onboarding new users into Gleyo. Appreciate all the work on this :folded_hands:

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Game changer it will be. @gilmore thanks for been a true community member you brought real use case to Zcash blockchain. Good collaboration from day one seems like we knew one of other before now good vibes teamwork hands on if, I had a budget I’ll make more for u.

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Really means a lot, @Lowo88 :folded_hands: This whole collaboration has felt natural from the start, real teamwork, not just two projects crossing paths. Really excited for what’s ahead.

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Weekly Gleyo Progress Update :shield:

This week was focused on turning community feedback into improvements. We’ve been speaking with contributors across different regional communities, and a lot of that feedback has already made its way into Gleyo.

:white_check_mark: Telegram Task Verification

Gleyo can now automatically verify whether a user has joined a required Telegram group before completing a quest. This removes the need for manual verification and makes onboarding much smoother.

:white_check_mark: Fixed a Duplication Bug

Resolved a bug that could cause duplicate records in certain workflows, improving overall stability.

:white_check_mark: Quest Template Improvements

Continued improving the template system to make it easier for community owners to create structured onboarding experiences without rebuilding common quests from scratch.

:white_check_mark: Wallet Infrastructure Update

Worked closely with @Lowo88 to migrate Gleyo’s Nozy wallet integration from Orchard to Ironwood, keeping the platform aligned with the latest Zcash ecosystem upgrades.

Following feedback from @squirrel regarding Unified Addresses and Sapling receivers, also updated Nozy to properly support Unified Addresses that contain Sapling receivers. This helps improve compatibility across wallets and reduces the likelihood of failed transactions when users withdraw funds from Gleyo.

As always, thank you to everyone who’s been testing Gleyo and sharing feedback. Every suggestion helps shape the roadmap, and there’s much more to come.

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Weekly Gleyo Progress Update

This week was mostly community-focused, lots of conversations with contributors and testers, plus some deep collaborative debugging with @Lowo88 on the Nozy side.

Fee Reconciliation Bug Found & Fixed

While reconciling wallet balances on Gleyo’s backend, I found a mismatch between the fee Nozy’s API was reporting (10k zat) and the actual dynamic ZIP-317 fee being charged (40k zat). Worked closely with Lowo to trace it, confirmed it was affecting the API layer specifically (not just the desktop/extension clients), and verified the fix end-to-end with a real withdrawal once it landed. Updated Gleyo’s backend fee constant to match the correct number.

This one mattered beyond just Gleyo, since anyone integrating via the Nozy API directly would’ve hit the same silent mismatch.

:speech_balloon: Community Conversations

Spent a good chunk of the week talking with communities and testers rather than shipping features, feedback is shaping a lot of what’s coming next for Gleyo.

Also want to say a genuine thank you to @squirrel for consistently engaging with feedback and ideas, from the wallet onboarding suggestion for zechub.wiki to ongoing input on Gleyo itself. That kind of steady back-and-forth is a big part of what makes building in this ecosystem feel collaborative instead of solo.

Still building, more to come soon :folded_hands: