This is our fortnightly engineering update which happens after the conclusion of each 2-week engineering sprint. You can check out last week’s update for recent news on community and communications.
Arborist Team
This team focuses on development of the zcashd client, lightwalletd, librustzcash and protocol upgrades. Follow along with team discussions in the Community Chat #arborist-team channel.
The 2.0.5-2 release, which included the counterfeit defense consensus code changes and the Sprout-to-Sapling migration tool, went out on May 20th. The team will be focusing on reviewing, responding to and refining draft ZIPs for NU3, tech debt and efficiency improvements, and reviewing PRs for librustzcash and other code improvements.
Development Infrastructure Team
The Development Infrastructure team ensures developers have the tools and infrastructure they need. Join this team in the #dev-infrastructure chat channel.
We spent a good amount of time last sprint helping with the 2.0.5-2 release, and we are still on the final stretch for getting the build factory to run the zcash test suite on windows workers. Next we are working on the new website deploy and supporting Debian 9 for 2.0.6.
Documentation Team
This team drives the curation and assists in the creation of documentation. Follow along in the #documentation chat channel. Check out the official Zcash documentation.
We merged the migration tool docs and tagged the documentation coinciding with this weeks release. Looking ahead, we’re planning some of the initial steps towards refactoring the documentation. We also have some release process and support policy docs to add to RTDs after final touch ups and review.
Ecosystem Team
This team is intended to work on projects that interface with external parties not including the zcashd core client and handles business development in the phases after initial contact by providing technical insight and support.
We spent most of our time this sprint working on documentation updates for the Insight code merge and helping with code review and testing for the 2.0.5 release. We are also continuing to work on reviewing PRs for the Arborist team.
Reference Wallet Team
This teams current charter is to build a Zcash reference wallet. Deliverables will be a series of MVPs where Android is the first target platform.
We are working on a test app for zcon1, continuing to work on improving the user experience during reorgs, researching any technical blockers for supporting shielded on iOS and responding to community and partner questions about wallet setup.
Miscellaneous
Note that the next release, v2.0.6 features two important goals:
- Blossom implementation release on testnet
- Targeting Debian 9 only (dropping support for Debian 8)
We’ll keep the community updated on the progress of both of these in the next couple of engineering updates and in the community chat.
Also, the Foundation hosted a protocol discussion this week: Zcash Protocol Hangout video available on YouTube!
