1.0.15 & Overwinter
We finally got 1.0.15 out the door! Here’s the release announcement which details the changes in this release. It mostly focuses on implementing Overwinter code and an activation height for testnet (207500) but also includes a new experimental feature, z_mergetoaddress, which simplifies the process of combining many small UTXOs and notes into a few larger ones.
We also officially announced Overwinter and hope that our communications about what users and developers should expect are clear. Let us know if there’s something that doesn’t get covered properly or is confusing! The announcement links to the Overwinter information portal which should have all the resources necessary to understand the upgrade.
The next release, 1.1.0, is planned to introduce an activation block height for Overwinter on the main network if all testing and auditing goes well over these next several weeks. You can keep track of the 1.1.0 release in the associated milestone. We also keep a separate milestone for infrastructure changes so we’re not doing infrastructure updates while also putting out a release.
Onboarding
There’s been a lot of onboarding work for the new engineers including their getting set up in the new headquarters in Denver. We’re still waiting on some bios/headshots for updating the team page and once ready, we can announce them a bit more officially. We’re also looking at an additional 3 engineers to join the team and are close to narrowing on a Marketing Officer hire so expect some ongoing onboarding and adjustments as our team size grows pretty drastically.
Community update
I’m also hoping to start including some community related updates for a more general “Zcash Team update” rather than being development only. For now, I’ll say that this week a few of us participated in the Financial Cryptography ‘18 event for which we also sponsored. We’re also sponsoring a few upcoming student hackathons, the one we’ve confirmed is Hack In the North 3.0.
We’re also sponsoring 75 students to attend Consensus who wouldn’t otherwise afford a ticket. Spread the word if you know blockchain interested grads or undergrads!
Finally, we’re especially excited to invite Zcash community members who read these updates regularly to the first Zcash conference in Montreal this June. Zcon0, organized by the Zcash Foundation.
Why: This inaugural event aims to encourage collaboration of privacy projects inside and beyond the Zcash ecosystem in a focused setting and to scale future events as the community grows.
What: A three day conference for people who are working on building the privacy infrastructure for the public good, broken into three tracks: (1) Zcash today, tomorrow and beyond; (2) Privacy tech in other cryptocurrencies and applications; (3) Community and governance
Since Zcon0 is an intimate event, we ask if you are interested in attending Zcon0 to please fill out this application to be formally invited.
And that about wraps it up for this week!
