Growing Up. ECC Update

Ecosystem Updates
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I remember lying on the couch, my baby son resting sweetly on my chest, only moving up and down as I slowly breathed in and out. A few weeks ago, I watched him pledge his life to his love against the backdrop of an autumn Colorado lake.

While the years have gone quickly, a lot has happened between the first memory and the second: tears and laughs, journeys together to faraway lands, and others down dark paths as we sought to find light.

The founding Zcash team breathed something special into the world 9 years ago this last week, utilizing their expertise in cryptography, mathematics, and engineering to create a tool that would someday be used by billions to live freely. In the years since, we have grown stronger, learned to be resilient, and accumulated some scars along the way. Most recently, we navigated our awkward teenage years, unsure of where to stow gangly elbows and why hair was growing in weird places.

Today, we are not the same as we were. Zcash is not the same as it was. But we could not be who we are without traveling the path we have. Yes, Lindy, but also more. While some pivoted or left during hard times, hardcore Zcashers continued to build, for the world we wanted to see.

And we are still growing.

Here are a few observations from just this week:

The Zcash shielded pool (an important measure of adoption) has dramatically increased this year and is 4.97M ZEC as I write this. This is the chart that matters.

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This coincides with a massive uptick in the amount of ZEC being swapped in and out of the shielded pool.

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Keep in mind that this is off-exchange volume, which means it occurs within non-custodial wallets, not on-exchange speculation.

A significant amount of swaps is occurring through NEAR Intents, which set a daily record of $100M in swaps yesterday. A significant chunk of this was ZEC swaps. $143M of ZEC has been swapped through Zashi since we launched the capability just a few weeks ago.

Trading is now available on Solana as well, and not just available, but used.

We are growing the ecosystem, privacy guarantees by shielding our ZEC, reach across chains, and happy users.

We are growing our base of developers, technical capability, and the size of the fund that coinholders can use to retroactively fund Zcash contributions (74k ZEC / $30M+).

We are growing up, together.

And together, we are growing freedom.

Here’s how ECC grew Zcash this week:

Zashi

What we did:

  • Delivered a functional prototype of ephemeral transparent addresses for internal testing on Android

  • Developed a proposed logic and designs for resetting the transparent gap limit and identifying funds on transparent addresses

  • Explored using Help Scout for Zashi docs

  • Explored and proposed design concepts for updated app store screenshots

  • Continued dialogue with Coinbase to address privacy concerns

  • Worked with legal to take down a Zashi impersonating site (stay safe out there!)

Note: We are having in-depth internal discussions about ephemeral addresses, the complexities they introduce, the user experience friction caused by the transparent gap limit, and the likelihood that users may encounter them. We are also in conversations with the NEAR team on the timeline for fully shielded support.

What’s up next:

  • Continue working hand-in-hand with the Core Team on implementation of Ephemeral Transparent Addresses for all NEAR Intents supported functionalities - #1 development priority. (see note above)

  • Determine and implement the flows for discovering funds and resetting of the transparent gap limit

  • Review finalized designs for Reset/Resync Zashi, Transparent Address Rotation, Ledger Hardware Wallet support, and Multi-Account support

  • Finalize open designs for Duress/Decoy Wallet features

iOS Analytics

  • Unique Installs: 20.4k (1.5k increase)

  • ​​​​​Total Downloads: 23.7k (1.7k increase)

  • ​​​​​​​​​AppStore Rating: 4.9* (unchanged)

Android Analytics

  • Total Install Base: 8.55k (0.7k increase)

  • Total Installs (incl. Open Beta): 29.4k (0.9k increase)

  • ​PlayStore Rating: 4.344* (0.094 increase)

Swap Analytics

  • Swap volume (to date): 253k ZEC (+112k)

  • Avg volume per day (to date): 7.5k ZEC (+1.5k)

Zcash Core

What we did:

  • Ephemeral address handling updates merged to librustzcash and mobile wallet SDKs

  • Account deletion handling merged to librustzcash, PRs open to mobile SDKs

  • Zallet 0.1.0-alpha-2 released

  • Reviewed and merged the specification by @oxarbitrage of ZIP 321 payment requests for ZSA Custom Assets (zips#1101)

  • Improved zcash/zips CI so that it will detect out-of-date or incorrectly referenced versions of rendering dependencies such as KaTeX or Mermaid (zips#1120)

What’s up next:

  • Review of transparent input/output additions to lightwalletd

  • Orchard crate review

  • Zashi support for ephemeral address integration & testing

  • Keystone P2SH integration

  • Zallet next steps

Other:

We released ECC’s Q4 Roadmap.

I was on The Rollup this week. Clips: Your TAM is not big enough and the NEAR unlock for Zcash.

ZECHub interview on why we host the semi-annual Z|ECC Summit. Details on the next one coming soon!

Zashi was reviewed by Bankless.

“Oldie but goodie”

That’s all for this week!

In the neverlands but always growing up,

Onward.

21 Likes
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@joshs TY for another great update, and keep up the great work. I was a holder for years but lost all zec due to my stupidity, and cannot afford a single zcash right now, but going straight to my point- please make the zashi have a vault so one day when I can affort Zcash I can put it in the vault for many years and never touch it (if the vault was implemented I would still have my 200 zcash RIP ).

2 Likes
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A voluntary lockup would be a great idea.

1 Like