June 8th, 2018 - Weekly update (Engineering)

Ecosystem Updates Weekly Forum Updates
1

This week, the engineering teams completed their 1st sprint of this release cycle. We’re tracking each team’s progress in Github projects so you can see a more detailed view of what they’re tackling each two-week sprint and what they have in their longer-term backlogs.

Each team’s update includes big picture accomplishments for the last sprint and forward looking goals for the next sprint.

Zcashd Team
This team focus on development of the zcashd client but stands distinct from consensus protocol (which is a separate team).

Accomplishments:

  • Shipped v1.1.1 with initial support for Sapling consensus rules
  • Partial implementation of Sapling keys and notes
    • This work has required careful coordination, review and changes across multiple linked components
      • Sapling crypto (Rust)
      • Librustzcash (Rust)
      • Zcashd (C++)
      • Tests and tools (Python, Rust, C++)
  • Members worked with protocol team to draft an initial design for BIP32 style HD shielded addresses and how the wallet could support it.

Upcoming goals:

  • v2.0.0 release with Sapling support
    • Sapling activation height for mainnet
    • Implement Sapling keys, notes, addresses
    • Add support in the wallet to actively track Sapling keys, notes, addresses
    • Implement partial support for Sapling related RPC functionality e.g. value transfer via z_sendmany.
  • Test Sapling transactions on testnet (once it activates on testnet at block 252500)

Consensus Protocol Team
This team focuses on the Zcash consensus protocol current and future upgrades which include R&D, specification and interfacing with the ZIP process.

Accomplishments:

  • Preliminary implementation of Jubjub point multiplication for DH key exchange
  • Preliminary implementation of DH key exchange
  • Updated ZIP32 draft
  • Added hashFinalSaplingRoot to getBlockTemplate #3248

Goals:

  • Finish DH key exchange

Development Infrastructure team
This team works on making sure developers have the tools and infrastructure they need to efficiently collaborate, design, implement, review, test, and ship high quality projects.

Ongoing accomplishments and goals:

  • Two main themes are Safety and Build Automation
    • Safety: We are designing and building a geo-redundant, platform-as-a-service based network monitoring system for the Zcash network.
    • Build Automation: Adding support in the CI platform for building MacOSX, Windows and CentOS 7 binaries.

Ecosystem team
This team is the interface to everything not directly related to zcashd or the protocol and include support for third-party tools and services. Ecosystem projects developed by Zcash Co. also get handled in this team. Tracking for this team is kept private to prevent information leakage about third-parties.

Accomplishments:

  • Wrapped up developer documentation on transaction expiry
  • Wireframed what a zcash GUI wallet would look like
  • Continued outreach to exchanges and wallets to confirm readiness and offer support for the Overwinter network upgrade
  • Discussed next steps for the privacy metrics website
    • Architecture discussions involving how to collect and store data
    • Ideas on what metrics should be added next
    • Coordination with DevInfra on integrating our data requirements into their network observatory projects.
  • Began the support desk selection process

Goals:

  • Select and refine support desk software
  • Investigate methods for alerting ecosystem of network emergency
  • Complete all outreach about Overwinter

Documentation team
This team works on improving the accessibility of zcashd and Zcash overall.

Accomplishments:

  • Readthedocs v1 is ready for community feedback https://zcash.readthedocs.io (leave feedback as comments on #2546 or perhaps start a new thread in the forum)
    • Includes most user-facing English documentation on zcashd
    • ZIPs/protocol documentation still in progress so you might see broken links
    • You can contribute more directly by submitting pull requests in the temporary repository for the documentation: https://github.com/mdr0id/zcash/tree/zc_readthedocs/doc (plan is to relocate to an official, standalone repository once we do some testing with the directory infrastructure needed to support translations)
  • Progress on Sapling info portal and a network upgrade index page

Goals:

  • Publish Sapling info portal and NU index page
  • Test translations process and structure of user documentation using Spanish as priority
  • Consider, implement and test effective emergency response awareness on website
  • A user oriented table highlighting services supporting Overwinter, Sapling and shielded address.

Community & Communication

You can check out last week’s community and communication update on June 1st for the latest info.

There’s still time to join us in Montreal for the first Zcash conference. Check out the schedule!

And finally we’re hosting another AMA next Friday!

11 Likes