June 12, 2020 - weekly forum update

Here are the updates from this week:

Mark your calendars,

  • Mon, 6/15, ECC is partnering with Gitcoin for the Protect Privacy Hackathon. Developers are invited to compete for $6000 in bounties. Register here.

  • Sean and Daira will be doing two ZK Study Clubs on Halo. Add these to your calendar.

    • Thur, Jun 18th, at 17:00 UTC, Sean will focus on “Halo and Accumulation Schemes”
    • Thursday June 25th, at 17:00 UTC Daira will focus on “Halo Optimizations and Constructing Graphs of Elliptic Curves”
  • Tues, 6/30, Zeal Call: We’re spotlighting hackathon submissions and Presidio Principles with special guest Sheila Warren from the World Economic Forum. More info here. Register here.

  • Thur, 7/2, inaugural Arborist call, registration link coming soon.

  • Tues, 7/7, July Gardening club, register here.

Community Shout Outs - Shout out to @ChileBob for your GatewayXYZ project. Super cool stuff. Shout out to @hloo for the NumberProtector app.

This week in privacy, big tech pumped the brakes on facial recognition. Amazon announced a one year moratorium on their Rekognition product and IBM is halting their facial recognition program altogether. Brave addressed a redirect issue in their browser. “The goal is algorithmic governance,” NYT does another deep dive on the Chinese surveillance machine. Zoom closed account of U.S.-based Chinese activist “to comply with local law.”

Friend of Zcash, Alejandro Machado working on Valiu, a startup that allows Venezuelans to transact in dollars without a US bank account.

In crypto news, Isaiah Jackson and Robert Greenfield wrote powerful pieces for Coindesk on crypto, race and what needs to change. Matt Mitchell, Ford Foundation Fellow and founder of Crypto Harlem, led a great workshop on digital security while protesting. Holmes shared his inspiration for starting Zbay - it involves fighting against hacker-for-hires, misinformation and fighting for the future. A must read!

6 Likes