Hi Zeeps,
I went to a Vampire Weekend concert at Red Rocks a few weeks ago. If you haven’t heard of Red Rocks, it’s an ancient natural amphitheater carved into the stone of the “Foundation Formation” that is buried two miles under Denver but juts up above ground as you enter Colorado’s Rocky Mountains. If you like music, put it on your bucket list.
We arrived just in time to hear the opener. Usually, I don’t care too much about who is playing, and I didn’t come to see them, but what I heard that evening mesmerized me. His name is Kingfish Ingram. I sat in awe of what I heard come through those speakers; the sound of his guitar moved through me like a wave, forcing my face to wince and my head to move with him.
As it turns out, Kingfish is a prodigy. Born in Clarksdale, Mississippi, he dove headlong into the blues when he was five, into its history, and formed his style from the likes of Muddy Water, BB King, Prince, and Jimmi Hendrix. He was born for this music, like the souls of so many before him, who seemingly possess his body as he sings and speaks through his guitar.
Ok, let me get out of the way for a sec. Stop reading. I can’t put this into text. Press play and drink this in for about 13 minutes. So good.
Kingfish isn’t played on pop radio, not on the top of the charts, and not playing in sold-out arenas full of screaming concertgoers. But he is building on a rich legacy and doing it with his own style, adding to the R&B canon and bringing it forward with such depth that it moved my soul. I think it does that because Kingfish is channeling something, discovering notes and rhymes that exist in our universe, and pulling them together with some otherworldly sorcery.
@peacemonger and I were recently chatting about the team at ECC, the remarkable group of people that have come together for this challenge, this mission, and this journey together. ECC has so many good people, but I want to spend a couple of minutes celebrating our core.
The core team at ECC is @daira, @str4d, @nuttycom and @ebfull. While many in the crypto space are on the big stage, with tens of thousands of followers, invites to sit on the panels of all the big conferences, and publications in all of the best academic journals, this humble crew has and is making history. “Zk” is suddenly pervasive. But it wasn’t always this way, and its genesis is at Zcash and this group of musicians.
What many don’t understand is that crypto (as in cryptography) is not invented; it’s discovered. This group of people, along with people like Ariel Gabizon, brought Zero Knowledge off the paper and to life in code. It’s this group of people made it possible to create proofs on mobile devices. It’s these people who solved the decades-long problem of trusted setup.
Some of my favorite moments of the week are found in ECC’s engineering standups. I can usually attend one or two of them on any given week. Yes, there is the typical “I did this thing and am now going to do that thing,” but often, very often, they begin to riff on problems, going deep into topics with detail and skill that I don’t understand. I can only sit, listen, and take it in. They riff on cryptographic solutions, tradeoffs, attack vectors, and challenges. Sometimes, something new is uncovered, and actions are put into motion within hours.
I wish you all could hear the music they compose, riffing on one another, building, crescendoing, subsiding, resolving, innovating, and discovering. They laugh and think and frequently interrupt each other as politely as they can manage. Each day, they are adding to the cryptographic canon.
This music is at their core. They are built for this, and I have never witnessed this kind of beauty anywhere else in my career. They are prodigies, individually and collectively. They do this humbly and unselfishly because it’s in their soul, and it’s their gift to Zcash and all of humanity.
And they do this because they simply love to play this music.
I am grateful for them.
Here’s what the ECC team has been riffing on this week:
Zashi
iOS
Unique Installs: 2.55k
Rating: 4.9 ★
- Prepared a new iOS build without CB OnRamp to unblock AppStore releases
- Working on Currency Conversion API and wallet implementation
- Adopted and tested ZIP 320 and reported issues, updated UI for TEX addresses (disabled memo) - created a new API
- Supported finalization of updated requirements for server switching & currency conversion
Android
Total Install Base: 1.64k
Rating: 4.609 ★
- Integrated Coinbase OnRamp
- Finalizing Currency Conversion
- Prepared PR for dynamic server switching including the redesigned UI
- Spent some time on analysis of the missing transparent funds on older Android devices
- Prepared fetch-utxos logic improvements
- Analyzed the issue: firstUnenhancedHeight can become stuck and cause enhancement to skip transactions #1536 and prepared the db query-fixing changes
Zcash Core
- Current tasks blocking the next SDK releases: We found a problem with the ZIP 320 support that would cause the second transaction to be shown as “expired” and decided that it was a blocker to the release of that support.
- Support for querying exchange rate APIs over Tor has been integrated into Zashi. There are some remaining issues with the UI to resolve.
- Zcashd and NU6
- A PR is open for the lockbox / funding stream update (zcash#6912) and under review.
- A zcashd PR will be needed for “Blocks should balance exactly”.
- The protocol spec must be updated for the lockbox and “Blocks should balance exactly”.
- We have good collaboration with ZF on coordinating the NU6 changes.
- The default “block unpaid action limit” will be set to zero, i.e. not allowing unpaid actions, in the next zcashd release (zcash#6900).
We brought back Greg Pfeil as a contractor to finish Bitcoin script support in Rust, in support of zcashd deprecation. Welcome back Greg!
Other
The votes are in! We published a blog about the community’s decision to create a new dev fund and how we arrived at it.
I published a proposal for the Zcash Governance Bloc (zBloc) as a possible path toward a new governance model for Zcash.
We participated in a X spaces along with @decentralistdan, @aquietinvestor to discuss the current and future of the development fund. Thanks to @vito for making this happen!
We spent a little time reviewing our passions, values, and focus coming out of the last Z|ECC summit:
Tony and I spent some time with our legal team reviewing ZSA language and positioning. There were no major red flags.
Jon and I met and discussed the new Qedit proposal. Our internal review is ongoing.
Raise provided a draft commercial agreement to enable gift card purchases in Zashi.
We worked with the Keystone wallet to answer questions on how shielded ZEC might be supported on their devices. More to come!
Coinbase is making progress and continues to work with Apple on the appropriate licenses to support our Zashi integration.
Product, Product Marketing and Comms began coordination of activities related to campaigns for the upcoming Coinbase and Flexa integrations.
That’s all of this week.
Keep on shredding!
Onward.
