Lowo Life as a ZEC Member

[Lowo88]

Hello Zcash Community,

Thank you for taking the time to read this. I want to share my journey and experiences within the Zcash community so far, including some of my accomplishments and ongoing projects.

My Journey with Zcash
I discovered Zcash in early 2021, marking the beginning of my cryptocurrency adventure and investing in crypto journey stock was always my thing but. As I researched, I was immediately drawn to Zcash capped supply of 21 million similar to Bitcoin and its focus on privacy. That combination resonated deeply with me, and I quickly became a fan of Zcash.

Fast forward to today, I’ve been a member of ZECHUB DAO for over a year and joined ZAC in November 2024. Now, halfway through 2025, I’m sharing my story on the Zcash forum. Zcash is the longest-held crypto asset in my Ywallet, and I have no plans to sell my ZEC token my wallet is a long-term commitment, hopefully for life.

Living outside Irl or the crypto space isn’t in my immediate plans; my goal is to contribute to creating the perfect privacy-focused digital currency a truly private internet money for everyone. It’s a genuine blessing to be part of this ecosystem. I’ve researched many well-known cryptocurrencies, and Zcash was my first love, with Cosmos coming second my “mistress,” as I humorously call it. Cosmos was the last crypto I explored during my early due diligence days. When I learned that Zcash had a connection with Cosmos ecosystem even if it’s not true something wanted my attention on ATOM, I knew it was something special and dove down that rabbit hole to the point of no return.

Being part of the Zcash community has broadened my understanding of privacy and given me new perspectives I didn’t have before. Running for a position on the Zcash Foundation board was a valuable experience, helping me get more involved and connect with the community including the more underground members. My hope is to continue contributing and someday become a Zcash Foundation member or even join the ECC team.

Current Projects and Future Plans
I’m excited to have set up my Zebra node on the testnet with the help of Dismad it’s a significant milestone for me. Watching Zcash testnet miners create new blocks and validate transactions in real-time is incredible. Moving forward, I plan to run my own Zebra node as an active participant in the Zcash testnet ecosystem.

Additionally, I have a project related to NEAR, from the NEAR x ZCASH hackathon. Although I faced some challenges due to Windows compatibility, progress is now steady. I plan to utilize one of my Zebra nodes to host my project once I finish integrating the remaining features with the NEAR smart contract. You can check out the project here: GitHub - Lowo88/Zedrigrade-virtual-pet: A cutting-edge virtual pet application that combines the power NEAR a game with cryptocurrency market awareness and NEAR AI agent integration. The project features a virtual pet (Zedrigrade) whose well-being is tied to user interactions, cryptocurrency market conditions, and AI-driven responses.. feedback please.

I’ve also forked Zcash to develop a fully privacy-preserving stablecoin. The project is still in brainstorming stages, but I’ll update the community on my progress once I push it to GitHub.

Thank you for your support and for being part of this incredible community. I look forward to contributing more and growing alongside all of you.

[ryan.taylor]

This is great @Lowo88! Keep up the good work

[Lowo88]

July 16, 2025, monthly update

Hi, Lowo here with my latest update! I’m happy to report that my Zebra node is now up and running smoothly after some power issues. My PC build sat idle for so long that I nearly forgot how to fully boot it up luckily, everything went well!

As of now, the Zebra node is at 65.222%, and I’ve reached the Nu5 era, which is fantastic it’s been four days since I achieved this milestone. I’m running on Windows, and I initially faced some problems with sleep mode slowing down the syncing process. Thanks to AI assistance, I was able to disable sleep mode, which significantly improved my PC’s compatibility and performance for running the Zebra node. Huge thanks to AI for that help!

I also noticed on the forum today that Zingo has been upgraded to version 2.0 exciting news! I’m using Zingo and Zaino alongside my Zebra node, and I love the updates from the Zingo team. Great stuff!

For those who might not know, I’m a ZecHub member. I’ve been helping with a partnership with Omniflix, and special shoutout to Jason/Squirrel who was the MVP thanks for backing me up. We were like Shaq and Kobe!

On a personal note, I asked my friend, whom I call Chat, to download the Zashi wallet. When she connected her Coinbase account to the wallet, she discovered she already had some NEAR tokens she didn’t even realize it! She mentioned she received them over two years ago but had no idea what they were. It was mind-blowing to learn she was a NEAR holder all this time, and I never even talked to her about crypto. Truly amazing once my Node fully sync, I will inform the community.

[Lowo88]

Zebra Node Setup & Sync Journey

Hey everyone thanks for the likes and interest in my post mean a lot.

What Was Accomplished In 5 days

Initial Situation:

• Goal: Got the Zebra node on mainnet node back up and running

• Expectation: Resume from previous 97% sync progress

• Reality: Node started syncing from scratch at ~0%

The Mystery We Solved

Problem: Your node kept starting over instead of using existing blockchain data

Root Cause: 1. Configuration setting delete_old_database = true in zebra-mainnet.toml
2. Outdated Zebra version - I was running an older version that couldn’t complete the sync Zebra 2.1.0
Impact:

1. Every time Zebra restarted, it deleted the ~97% synced blockchain data from my understanding.

2. The node stopped at 97% because the outdated version couldn’t handle newer blocks

Current Node Configuration

Located at: zebra-mainnet.toml
[network]
network = "Mainnet"
listen_addr = "0.0.0.0:8233"

[state]
cache_dir = 'C:\Users\User\AppData\Local\zebra'
delete_old_database = true # ← THE CULPRIT!
ephemeral = false

[rpc]
listen_addr = "127.0.0.1:8232"
enable_cookie_auth = false

Zebra node running

1. Zebra version: 2.4.0 / 486b78f this the latest zebra update supported until block 3116024

2. Network: Zcash Mainnet

3. Current progress: Fully sync

4. Sync Method: Checkpoint verification (400-block batches)

5. Network Health: 75 cached peers, good connectivity

Zaino indexer:
All service ready in the background running with my zebra node. Chainstate Service: :green_circle:Ready Json RPC Server: :green_circle:Ready gRPC Server: :green_circle:

The receiving gRPC calls: get_latest_block, get_block_range, get_taddress_txids

Supporting address: u1zx0ctf3qz3ucqumjzmuw7z07etakxv9fgftxcprfm3ssdwn0rj4w494mxqhvdrjnxys7q4jh6nhz5l9qd68qxt7ljhqagfd620fz4p4znn8gma4xstc8s402d6dpcrtpwr2q40766y4ffpz2aageuvrz5trcpez57ncua5l7eeumkxlyr9qym0jdytpd4uqd8n9wx2wdz89pca7eua3

The “Oh Snap” Moment

After installing Zebra 2.4.0 from source code from the Git source --tag v2.4.0: using the specific release tag. This was a learning experience for sure it wasn’t easy my assistant helps me a lot doing this step and I’m grateful. The compilation process was 528 packages got them all compiled built zebra binary from scratch. installing it to cargo was a headache for me with the help from my assistant save me from PowerShell it’s harder working in windows with Git GUI once I got into Ubuntu everything went smoothly. The zebra launcher was an interesting experiment wish Linux had a desktop version of zebra.
Once I got the correct version the zebra detected the old format that’s not incompatible with 2.1.0 data I sync the first time around. The configuration setting is very important, and you have to pay attention to the logs delete_old_database: true. Setting up my zebra node, I learn that zebra has a built-in protection. If it detects databases version mismatch it will wipe the cache to prevent corruption. Starts syncing from block 0 again 250GB gone

My Key Files In My Setup

zebrad/
├── zebra-mainnet.toml          # Main config (the problematic one)
├── zebra-mainnet-fixed.toml    # Backup/alternative config
├── start-zebra.sh              # Launch script
├── zaino-config.toml           # Zaino indexer config
└── logs/                       # Sync progress logs

The lesson here is that both configuration settings AND software versions can have dramatic impacts on node behavior.

Node Fully Sync!
Sync percent=100
Current_height= Height(3001777)
Network_upgrade=Nu6
Remaining_sync_block=0
Chain tip using gossiped blocks
I am now contributing to the Zcash network and ready for RPC calls and applications.
Thanks to ZECHUB for the support

[Lowo88]

Hello fellow Zcasher’s the race is on and zebra is the checker flag it’s no secret.
Privacy is the future this community is world wide like the web and we all connected as a global hub. This my third month posting about my progress within the Zcash community posting here helps me with staying on track.

Zebra update
Now for the tech talk I started running my node last month so it’s been up and running for over 30 days now. I count INFO mempool: zebrad: :components: in my sleep now studying the zebrad words I have none but this true financial privacy. When I’m watching the zebra log data I scroll up to see the messages in the lines to see what’s happening which is nice. Reading the forum came across a post were nutty was explaining Zcash dev tool. I guess this went over my head doing ZCON V because I wasn’t running a node and really went down this rabbit hole of ZK proof. I’m loving every bit of it as well thanks @nuttycom for reposting this amazing tool and keeping it visibility to the community thank you. Time to get ready for this hackathon the race is on as writing this I’m learning about note management etc. the heart of privacy.

As some know for those who don’t I’m a ZECHUB member so It’s only right to take a deep dive into Namada. 48 hours in I was setting up a node here’s the link to the Namada forum where I share my experience setting up my Namada node Lowo forum post on Namada I’ll give you guys a update here since I’m mentioning it. Remember when I said within 48 hours of doing my due diligence getting excited by the L1 privacy and shielded transaction. Appling this on a protocol level cross-chain privacy let Shade protocol but with Zero-knowledge proof. By that been said getting a syncing an node was a must.

In the process of doing this I came to realize I did not have enough space nor memory. The memory got upgraded from 16GB RAM to 64GB RAM I’m in the process of getting 16TB of space. Because what I learn about this is that you have to have a lot of space to run a validator as well a node. My goal is to get my Y40 PC to 128GB RAM 104GB space to run all the validators. Since the passing of the GENIUS Act of 2025 (THE GENIUS ACT BILL ) I launch my website Leoninedao.org a look at the future of crypto DAO business. Zcash and Cosmos ecosystem is going to change people life for good in my opinion only time will have the answer. I want to give credit to @ryan.taylor for the art ZK AV help with images on my website thanks for the art work from the forum. This post getting long as well touching on POS on Zcash but I’m going to save that for later and focus on learning more about Zk devtool.
The race is on

[ceb9ceb4ceb9cf89cf84]

very good …

[Lowo88]

Thanks, I’m working on 2 errors left on a shield this error 1. CoreWrapper:: new not found error the sha2::sha256::new() call is being interpreted as CoreWrapper<...> instead of expected sha256 type.
Error 2. is a type mismatch with amount parameter in the create_shieled_tansaction function?

[Autotunafish]

The 2nd error may be that the amount should not be a string and not wrapped in ‘quotes’, not sure about the first.

[Lowo88]

OK thanks will try it out.

[gordonesTV]

I didn’t see this before!

Congrats, Lowo! Keep going!

[Lowo88]

Hello everyone, I want to say never give up time is priceless make sure to use your time wisely. “Learning never stop if you are truly living life” growth is everything knowing when to act and when to sit still is the numerology to the decision a person make. The places you attend doing the times you are there and having the understanding of why and how to use that time to multiple your life experience.

I’m now a full-time student, diving into crypto, learning C++ and SQL programming. I often ask myself; how did I end up here? Reflecting on my journey from the streets of Atlanta, GA, I realize this might be my calling because crypto feels too easy at times, and I find peace in this space. I believe there’s a deeper purpose behind why I’m here, and I’m grateful for how far I’ve come.

Nozy wallet update
Nozy is a real learning experience for me and I’m enjoying every moment even the down crazy moments. Nozy is a fully Orchard built on Zebrad wallet note scan was giving me a hard time not for long after going over the code I came to realize Nozy was generating a new mnemonic every time running the note scan in the code we had new for checking the ZEC begin sent to the Nozy wallet the reason we couldn’t never see the ZEC in the wallet. Next step is wiring up the send transaction note’s etc. hopefully; I can get done before this week is out. Overall, Nozy is progressing well my first major project for an epic blockchain like Zcash, and it’s a great addition to my resume.

Zebrad
For zebra update lol this was very wild the reason I’m just now written. Getting zebra to operate with my Zingo host server etc. was too much for me I wouldn’t say I couldn’t do it but it’s not my time. Even doe I had good uptime on my node which got removed by my AI agent. My heart was broke 3 months of uptime gone Cloudflare lol I found the feature on the website to enable gRPC but still wasn’t working. Timing is everything knowing when to start something and when to stop is very important to your success rate on task.

Quick shoutout
Big thanks to @hanh for the repositories—wouldn’t know where to start without you. Thanks to @james_katz for the feedback; my code is much cleaner now thanks dude. Shoutout to @tripleyouwu for keeping me motivated, and @squirrel for pushing me to mainnet—I really took off once I got there. Thanks to @dismad for your constant support as a ZECHUB member, and @zooko for the shoutout on X about Nozy Wallet—the support Zcash provides is unmatched.

[Lowo88]

Zcash family we’re famous now ZEC triple digits nowadays. Privacy is the key to fairness with freedom of choice for communication and collaboration between individuals. It’s privacy season and let’s embrace it. It’s just the beginning of the future and as a ZEC community member we have the power to change the world for good. Let’s build a free society for all. No gold rings with special privileges.

Building on Zebra: The Creation of Nozy Wallet

One of the latest chapters in my story involves innovative contributions too Zcash community. Enter Nozy Wallet, the first fully-functional Orchard wallet built specifically for Zebra, Zcash Rust-based node implementation. Developed by the team at Leonine DAO, (https://forum.zcashcommunity.com/t/nozy-wallet-retroactive-grant/52417) Nozy Wallet represents a significant step forward in Zcash wallet ecosystem.

Orchard is Zcash advanced shielded pool, designed for enhanced privacy and efficiency. Building a wallet on Zebra, a lightweight, modular node required overcoming technical hurdles like architectural decisions, debugging, testing, and code verification, all handled by yours truly. The wallet not only supports secure storage and transactions but also serves as an educational tool, demonstrating comprehensive Zcash development practices.

The process of creating Nozy Wallet was a labor of passion, starting from early exploring in Zcash privacy tech and evolving into a complete product. As an open-source project, it aligns with Zcash ethos of community-driven development, potentially paving the way for more Zebra-based applications. Leonine DAO submitted a proposal for a $21,000 retroactive grant to recognize the work on Nozy Wallet, highlighting its value as the first Zebra-Orchard wallet.

If granted, this funding would retroactively compensate for the independent efforts poured into the project. Approval of the grant would be a game changer for Leonine DAO, a decentralized autonomous organization focused on privacy, human rights, generational wealth, and financial literacy in the crypto space. (https://leoninedao.org)Established with roots in blockchain since 2015, Leonine DAO aims to build innovative solutions on platforms like Zcash, fostering privacy-centric tools that empower users globally.

Boosting Leonine DAO and Creating Positive Impact

The funding would provide a major boost, enabling further development, marketing, and expansion of Nozy Wallet. More broadly, it would amplify Leonine DAO’s mission to create positive impact, such as educational resources, privacy advocacy, and tools for underserved communities. By supporting such projects, Zcash not only strengthens its ecosystem but also advances the broader crypto space toward more inclusive, secure, and privacy-respecting technologies.

Zcash journey from a scientific concept to a thriving privacy coin exemplifies the power of innovation and community. Contributions like Nozy Wallet from Leonine DAO remind us that the future of crypto lies in collaborative efforts that prioritize user empowerment and positive change. As the grant review unfolds, the Zcash community continues to shape a more private digital economy.