[Important] Public Infrastructure Service Changes on May 30th 2024

Ecosystem Updates
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Dear Community,

As it was announced by NightHawk Apps on March 19th on this forum post, the infrastructure related to their grant will cease to operate on May 30th 2024

@decentralistdan (ZF) and myself received a 30-day notice via Signal from @NighthawkApps and we reached out to the different wallet developers of our ecosystem so that they can take the needed actions to switch to different infrastructure.

As Zcash Wallet Community Developer, I’m extending this notice to the wide Zcash community.

Impacted Infrastructure:

When we inquired about Zcash block explorer, Nighthawk Apps instructed us to tell wallet developers that had linked it into their applications to look for other alternatives. It is expected that https://zcashblockexplorer.com/ ceases to operate on May 30th 2024

Actions to take

If your application uses or references any of these servers, take the necessary actions to move away from them as soon as possible.

Lightwalletd.com alternatives

Zcash Community Grants committee member GGuy posted an RFP on Infrastructure which has been granted to a provider (emersonian) who is hosting infrastructure under the domain zec.rocks. (see post RFP - Zcash Lightwalletd Infrastructure Development and Maintenance - #31 by emersonian)

List of new public infrastructure (please double check for any changes)

https://zec.rocks:443 - Global endpoint (closest region automatically selected)
https://na.zec.rocks:443
https://sa.zec.rocks:443
https://eu.zec.rocks:443
https://ap.zec.rocks:443

Zcash Block Explorer

we currently don’t have any Zcash-only alternatives for replacing it. Please consider using another block explorer that you consider suitable for your users.

Please don’t hesitate to contact me for any further inquiries.

Best Regards,

Pacu

Zcash Wallet Community Developer.

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@Pacu Has there been any discussion of re-pointing the lightwalletd.com domains at the zec.rocks addresses?

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As far as I know, those domains are NH’s. There haven’t been any discussions on that regard.

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5

It would be a great gesture if @NighthawkApps relinquished these domains so we can keep the services running and people don’t have to reconfigure their wallets.

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6

coingecko uses the zcashblockexplorer api too

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BTW the Block Explorer is fully open source GitHub - nighthawk-apps/zcash-explorer: Zcash Block Explorer

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The Pheonix build does require some working experience with Elixir

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The domain will expire at some point. Someone can snipe it.

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It will only expire in Jan 2025, long after the service is down.

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Hello @pacu!

I want to record a video tutorial in Russian on how to start a light node over a full node. Please direct me to materials (possible content) that are available for this.

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If by light node, you mean a lightwalletd server, then you should be aware that it still needs to connected to a full node.

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a Zebra Lightwalletd node?

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I understand. I want to find instructions and spread this knowledge. I don’t want to connect to other people’s servers and leave metrics on other people’s devices. And moreover, those people who follow Zcash in Russia today don’t want to do that either. I see hundreds of people accessing my site every day every day who are clearly using a VPN. At the same time they have a pop up asking them to sign up for the newsletter and I only have 3 subscriptions there. On youtube I offered to vote for their views on funds and there too there are zero people willing to log into Helios from a google account. Everyone who voted did so using their GitHub accounts. The questions I get asked on the channel are more about working with the full node, not how to send a transaction on a mobile wallet. It is very strange to me that we are suggesting that these people connect to some other people’s servers.

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Thanks! zebra/book/src/user/lightwalletd.md at main · ZcashFoundation/zebra · GitHub

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I was asking to point you to that documentation

Good luck!

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:+1:t2: That’s what I need, I wouldn’t have found it myself without you asking. :slight_smile:

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