The sphinx is the powerful guardian of secrets and the sacred.
In Egypt, the sphinx shielded sacred spaces with divine authority. And throughout all mythologies, they embodied the tension between the hidden and the revealed.
This last week, we announced the formation of the Zcash Open Development Lab (ZODL), the new home of the former ECC team. And the sphinx is our emblem — the guardian of the sovereign, and beautifully uncompromising.
On zodl.com, we wrote our purpose:
We envision a world without mass financial surveillance, where law-abiding people can transact freely and privately, without fear that their data will be exploited, sold, or weaponized by criminals, corporations, or governments.
A world where financial privacy is the default and access to markets is a human right. Because the ability to make transactions that sustain life and liberty should belong to everyone.
There is no sovereignty without privacy.
Our name has changed. Our work has not. We continue to build and steward the core Zcash protocol and drive ZEC adoption through the Zodl wallet (previously known as Zashi).
The transformation from a nondescript origami shape into the bold shape of the sphinx is the perfect metaphor for this team’s recent journey. And we emerge tested and undaunted.
This change comes at a critical moment, and not just for this team, or for Zcash in particular. The world is facing two divergent paths. Those in power are attempting to usher us down a path of subjugation through surveillance. The alternative is sovereignty through privacy.
We cannot avert our eyes and hope it will all get better. We must widen the path to sovereignty and provide the protection afforded by the divine gifts of math, encryption, and code. We must collectively work in earnest.
Join us. Build, onboard, speak, spend, swap …Zodl!
Here’s how our work took shape this week:
Special thanks to @peacemonger for the sphinx concept, logo, and images.
Zodl (formerly Zashi)
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Launched the Zodl brand publicly (zodl.com, announcement), finalized the majority of rebranding changes, and transferred the Zashi Android app to the new ZODL developer profile.
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Onboarded a new Android developer.
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Finalized and implemented design changes to Swap details.
Zodl iOS Analytics
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Unique Installs: 37.3k
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Total Downloads: 43.7k
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AppStore Rating: 4.9★
Zodl Android Analytics
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Total Install Base: 13.9k
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Total Installs (incl. Open Beta): 43.8k
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PlayStore Rating: 4.2★
Zcash Core (includes R&D)
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Significant progress on the integration testing repository for zcashd RPC tests, which will allow testing of Zallet work with Zebra once merged.
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Finalized the EIP-681 API for FFI and fixed, reviewed, and merged important note commitment tree bugfixes.
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Reviewed @ValarDragon’s shielded voting protocol and gained confidence in the overall approach.
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ZIP Editors discussed how consumers of the extensible transaction format (ZIP 248) can reliably maintain treestates and ensure indistinguishability between ZSA-using and non-ZSA-using transactions.
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Merged a PR removing alert handling in zcashd, eliminating a remaining point of centralization.
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Continued work on Quantum Recoverability ZIP fixes and the extensible transaction format.
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Reviewed a cryptanalysis paper on Poseidon2 and confirmed it does not affect Orchard’s use of Poseidon 1.1.
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Significant infrastructure/IT support work for the Zodl marketing launch.
Other
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Began executing a three-part protection framework: protecting people (jurisdictional risk for Zcash devs), product (source code accessibility, multiplatform alternatives), and protocol (building alliances). Three working presentations drafted covering country risk analysis, App Store threats, and a Europe/MiCA deep dive.
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Signed a long-term partnership agreement with NEAR.
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Meetings at Eth Denver. People are hungry to get back to the reasons we all got into this space in the first place. So much good is incoming!
Building to protect sovereignty,
Onward.
