Hi Zeeps!
8 is magic. It symbolizes prosperity, new beginnings, enlightenment, harmony, and balance across many peoples and faiths. And flip 8 on its side, and it’s eternal. There is something about that number.
On October 28th, Zcash turned 8 years old. Remember 8-bit console games? They were the best, with 256 colors in all their glory (2^8 
). Hm. Wizardry.
The community gathered on Discord this week to remember and celebrate our birthday by looking at old postings and sharing plans for the future. The vibe was so good, so pure. Happy Birthday Zcash fam!
So take a sec, and think about how far we’ve come.
First practical implementation of zero-knowledge proofs with Sprout
First performant implementation of zero-knowledge proofs with Sapling
Elimination of trusted setup with Orchard
These network upgrades were impactful not only for Zcash but have changed the world—that’s not an exaggeration. Wizardry. And this over 8 short years.
We have much protocol work to do before Zcash is ubiquitously used for private electronic cash, but we are now in a place to drive growth by moving up the stack to deliver the user experience people need.
There is SO MUCH happening right now, but I’ll focus on my top 8 (yeah, you saw that coming) drivers for growth.
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Zcash’s third season starts later this month with its second halvening event and the end of the direct dev funding model. Season one was the launch and founder’s reward. Season two began Sapling, the first halving, and grants to help fuel community expansion. Season three is shaping up to be our most explosive yet.
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Qedit is bringing Zcash Shielded Assets (ZSAs) to life, allowing the world to shield its Bitcoin, among other things.
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Shielded Labs will deliver Crosslink, allowing for a hybrid PoW/PoS that unlocks yield opportunities, better finality, and on-chain tokenholder governance participation.
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New shielded wallets are proliferating! In addition to Edge and Unstoppable, Ywallet, Zingo!, Keystone, Ledger, Brave, Metamask (via ChainSafe Systems), Bison, and Zashi (from ECC) are all innovating and/or adding shielded support at a record pace. How far we’ve come!
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Access is expanding! The Maya DEX will soon support Zcash, and red·dev is bringing ZEC to Avalanche. More will follow fast.
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The Zcash community is rapidly decentralizing. While ECC brought Zcash to life, and while we are still important, we are now just one of many doers and decision-makers. The more room we continue to make for others, the more this ecosystem will flourish.
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The talent that brought Zk to life, made it performant, and eliminated trusted setup is still here and will deliver a truly scalable Zcash.
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The community is the most vibrant I’ve ever seen. ZecHub, Free2z, zkAV, the Spanish and Brazilian communities, the My First Zcash team, and many others have embraced Zcash in their daily lives. They are actively driving awareness, adoption, and energy.
Look, I love 8-bit. It’s nostalgic. And we’ve delivered magic in 8 bits. But 8 years after our birth, we now have exponentially more to play with. Let’s go paint the sky, you wizards!
Here’s some magic from the ECC team this week:
Zashi
Flexa, oh so close.
Design
- Finalized Transaction History Redesign
- Making progress in design explorations for Home Screen and app navigation
- Finalized designs for Transaction Success/Error screen (prepared versions for development in light and dark mode)
- Working on getting the progress animations customized
- Continued exploring ideas for Multiwallet and Multicurrency support
iOS
Unique Installs: 3.75k
Total Downloads: 4.43k
Rating: 4.9 ★
- Released Zashi 1.2.2
- Lottie integration implemented
- Working on redesign SendConfirmation screens with success/in progress/error states
- Sending screen with animation
- Success & Failure screens with illustrations randomly displayed
- Partial Error screen redesigned
- Split the failure cases into 2 independent screens
- Hidden behind a feature flag so we can still have both previous and new solutions available
- Updated all tools and systems to the latest
- Custom Tooltip tweaked to be able to point downwards as well, used in Recovery Phrase screen explaining birthday
- Adopted @yasserisa’s Spanish translations
- Reviewed & Updated str4d’s Address Book encryption PR to be buildable again
Android
Total Install Base: 2.28k
Total Installs (incl. Open Beta): 8.22k
Rating: 4.594 ★
- Finalized redesign of all Settings flows
- App launch authentication finalized
- Started redesigning SendConfirmation screens with success/in progress/error states
- Adopted Yasser’s Spanish translations and prepared an internal build
- Started working on Address Book encryption
- Implemented authentication for Flexa purchases
- Troubleshoot user reported issues
Zcash Core
- Working on PCZT format
- Crosslink 2 write-up, security proof
- Removed the explicit dependency on wallet errors from librustzcash#1535.
- Working on explicit fees ZIP
- Meeting with QEDIT(ZSA fees)
- Initial framework for the zcashd wallet replacement binary (wallet#8).
- Reviewed the open ZSA ZIP draft update PR for semantic stability.
- NU7 ZIP review
- Reviewed: librustzcash#1593, librustzcash#1596
Other
I met with the Ripio CEO Seb Serrano. Ripio supports Zcash in its wallet and is accessible to 90% of the population in Central and South America. I spoke with him about adding their Crypto as a Service product to Zashi. Similar to what we’re doing with Coinbase, this would allow LATAM users to on and off-board ZEC directly in the wallet.
Brave is almost done with its wallet implementation, which will support shielded ZEC, and they will soon begin a security review.
@nuttycom and I were guests and talking Zcash on the Bitcoin Takeover podcast.
@tonym and I began more deeply engaging with some companies we invested in some time ago, including Agoric, Starkware, Bolt Labs, and Ingonyama. I will be joining the Agoric BoD.
Check out the Keystone update on their progress, and we get closer to support in Zashi.
A number of us will meet in person next week for deep Zashi, budget, and sustainability planning.
We have started to change Zcash messaging, including on Twitter and Z.cash.
Our next Z|ECC Summit, ECC’s bi-annual team + community planning, has been scheduled for the week of January 13th in Cancun Mexico. Builders in the community are welcome to join us. The application will be up soon.
We fixed the halving countdown on Z.cash to pull data directly from the chain.
We’re hiring! Join us. 
Oh, and join the rest of us and shield your ZEC. Let’s keep building the pool!
That’s all for this week.
Growing exponentially,
Onward.
