Zcash World: Startup Milestone Report
Posting this as the completion report for the Startup milestone of the Zcash World grant, ahead of the milestone payment request.
Grant: Zcash World, Mumbai (Devcon 8 week)
Milestone: Startup, $8,000
Event: Sunday 1 November 2026, Mumbai
The four Startup deliverables are addressed below in the order they appear in the grant.
1. Venue contracted and confirmed publicly
Zcash World will be held at Atlas SkillTech University, Mumbai.
Confirmation has been received from the university by email. This is the public confirmation the milestone calls for.
Atlas SkillTech works for this event for three reasons. It gives us full-day access on a Sunday with the breakout space and power the nine activity areas need. It is a campus rather than a commercial hire, which is what makes the venue line in our budget realistic during Devcon and Diwali week. And it puts us in front of exactly the audience this event was designed for, which is students who have never held a self-custodied wallet.
We are also keeping a small number of alternative venues warm as a backup, in the normal course of planning an event of this size.
Status: complete.
2. Benchmarking methodology published for review
The methodology for the device performance study is published in full, before any data has been collected. That ordering is the point of the deliverable and we have kept to it.
Methodology document: Shielded Wallet Performance on Entry-Level Android
The short version of what it commits to:
- Ten measurements, taken from two runs. A cold sync and a single shielded send. Everything else, proving time, peak memory, out-of-memory kills, thermal state, battery draw, mobile data consumed and failure mode, is recorded automatically while those two runs happen. We are not running a separate test per metric.
- Twenty entry-level Android handsets, ₹6,000 to ₹12,000, across Redmi, Realme, Poco, Lava and Samsung M-series, spanning 2 to 6 GB RAM and Android 11 to 15. The exact models are fixed in an appendix before collection starts, so no device can be dropped afterwards for producing a poor result.
- A single fixed benchmark wallet with a published seed, so every device performs identical work and any third party can reproduce the exact workload on their own hardware.
- Exclusion criteria fixed in advance. Six mechanical reasons only. A slow result is not one of them, and neither is a failure. Crashes, stalls and timeouts are recorded as findings, and every excluded run is still published with its reason.
- Conflicts stated plainly. We have an open Hindi localization pull request against Zodl. That is precisely why more than one wallet is tested under an identical protocol, and why we commit to publishing unfavourable results including any affecting software we contribute to.
Status: complete.
3. Merchant target list shortlisted; guides, signage and training material produced
Merchant guide
The merchant guide is finished and ready for print. It is a single A5 booklet carrying every instruction in three languages, English, Hindi and Marathi, so one printed item serves every shopkeeper we approach rather than us carrying three stacks around Mumbai.
Eight pages: taking Zcash at your shop, installing the wallet, the 24 words and why they matter, taking a payment, the send and swap and merchant functions, listing on ZecMap, and what to remember. It is written in short sentences with drawn diagrams for the two things that actually protect a merchant, which are the QR flow and never sharing a seed phrase.
It also carries a plain line stating that tax and regulatory obligations are the merchant’s own responsibility and that we are not advisors.
Merchant shortlisting category criteria
- Pharmacies
- Jewellery Stores
- Salon & Wellness Centres
- Hotels & Hostels
- Hardware Shops
- Furniture Stores
- Electronics Stores
- Travel Agencies
- Bars & Pubs
- Cafés
- Restaurants
- Fast Food Outlets
- Shops & Supermarkets
- Gyms & Fitness Centres
- Tattoo Studios
- Mobile Phone Shops
- Gift Shops
- Automobile Shops & Workshops
- Co-working Spaces
- Watch Stores
These are the tageted categories of the merchants.
Signage, training material and brand kit
Production is underway and assets are collected here, including the Zcash World brand kit:
Status: guide complete, criteria set, signage and training material in production and on track for the field team’s departure.
4. Programme published, speaker list, registration open
Programme
The programme is published and registration is open.
Registration: Official event page
Announcement: Announcement Post
Zcash World runs from 11:00 to 19:00 in a single venue. As set out in the grant proposal, the day is built around nine activity areas running concurrently rather than as a linear agenda. An attendee moves between them across the day instead of sitting through a fixed schedule, and the passport they receive at registration is what carries them around the floor.
- Registration and wallet onboarding
- ZEC distribution
- Z-BAZAAR, the on-site marketplace where shielded ZEC is the only accepted payment
- Device benchmarking
- Main stage: talks, panels and product demonstrations
- Privacy installation
- Media desk
- Project booths
- Games and on-chain challenges
Most of these run continuously for the full eight hours. The main stage is the one part of the day that is time-slotted, and we are not publishing stage timings yet because the panel line-up is still being confirmed. Publishing a schedule we would then have to rewrite twice helps nobody.
We will share the full run of show, the stage timings and the complete set of on-ground activities on this thread shortly. There is a good deal in the design of the day that we are looking forward to putting in front of the community.
Status: programme structure published and registration open. Stage timings to follow with the speaker list.
Speakers
Being straightforward about where this stands, because it is the one part of the Startup milestone that is not finished.
Confirmed:
- Akash, Ecosystem Growth Lead at StarkWare. Confirmed.
In active conversation:
- Eli Ben-Sasson, co-inventor of Zcash and co-founder of StarkWare.
- Dev Ojha and Harsh, Valar Group, the team behind Zakura alongside Sean Bowe.
- Cake Wallet. In conversation with their CEO and core team members.
- Zodl. We have spoken with Josh Swihart. Josh will not be travelling to Mumbai, but a core developer from the Zodl team will be attending the event, and we are working with Josh to place them on the panel. Given that Zodl is the wallet 250 to 300 people will create on the day, having someone from that team in the room matters to us.
Devcon week has a very large number of competing events and the people worth putting in front of this audience are being asked by everyone. We would rather keep reaching out and announce a strong final line-up than publish a thin one now to close a milestone.
We will publish the final speaker list on this thread soon, well ahead of the event.
Status: speaker list partially confirmed, final list to follow.
Summary
| Deliverable | Status |
|---|---|
| Venue contracted and confirmed publicly | Complete |
| Benchmarking methodology published before collection | Complete |
| Merchant list shortlisted; guides, signage, training produced | Guide and criteria complete, assets in production |
| Registration open | Complete |
| Programme published | Structure published, stage timings to follow |
| Speaker list published | Partial, final list to follow |
Everything on the critical path for 1 November is now either done or in production. The venue was the dependency that gated the rest of the build, and with Atlas SkillTech confirmed we can commit to print, fabrication and merchandise this week, which is exactly what the Startup tranche was requested for.
Submitting the Startup milestone payment request alongside this post.
Happy to answer any questions here.
Jatin Sahijwani
Zcash India · @ZcashIND · t.me/ZcashIN