Hacker Congress Paralelní Polis, Prague, Czech Republic: After much anticipation, Nighthawk Apps is delighted to announce the revamped Nighthawk Wallet v2, the core product release as part of our product roadmap. One of the key features of this update is the integration of the ‘Spend Before Sync’ feature from the recently launched Zcash Mobile SDK 2.0 by Electric Coin Co. This revamped version adopts the composable architecture for iOS and Jetpack Compose for Android, ensuring our code bases are future-proofed for security and compliance. This release marks the successful completion of our third and final grant milestone of a fast-syncing wallet. With these enhancements, the Nighthawk Wallet is poised to be an essential tool in the Zcash ecosystem, enabling users to send ZEC on the go with ease and security. It’s not just a wallet; it’s a gateway to private, permissionless transactions anywhere in the world.
Over the last two years, the Nighthawk team, a group of five, joined forces with ECC developers through the Light Client Working Group. This collaboration included Carter and Pacu, former ECC mobile leads, with @Pacu now serving as the Zcash Wallet Community Developer We also collaborated with Zcash core developers Kris @nuttycom and @str4d to share critical issues that impact the Zcash network and proposed enhancements to the fee mechanism and underlying libraries to overcome the sandblasting attack on both the blockchain(since Aug 2022) and mempool(Aug 2023). We are deeply appreciative of the opportunity to collaborate with various cross-functional teams within the Zcash ecosystem. We believe that this collaborative strength is key to delivering accurate protocol specs to end users for a seamless experience while avoiding unnecessary duplication of efforts.
This release marks the culmination of the Nighthawk UX design, masterfully crafted by Zcash community member @egg. With a keen focus on user experience, @egg addressed several user pain points and introduced a streamlined app design. We extend our gratitude to @geffen and Ivaylo Dimov @Ivo for their invaluable ideation and feedback during our development phases. Geffen, in particular, holds the distinction of being the first designer to conceptualize privacy-specific crypto transactions, and his contributions have significantly influenced the evolution of Zcash wallets. Lastly, we would like to express our sincere thanks to @Vamsi for architecting the scalable, distributed infrastructure of lightwalletd.com that can handle a high throughput of light client users relying on the services.
We look forward to working closely with our engaged user base, including Global Ambassadors, @ZcashBrazil , Zcash en Español, @ZecHub , and ZFAV club members, to assist in testing app updates and gathering feedback to prioritize future integrations. We’ve adopted a crowdsourcing approach for our app translations via Crowdin, with 13 members of the Zcash community currently translating the app into over eight languages. Our joint efforts have resulted in a global reach for a privacy-focused, user-friendly, self-custody wallet app for Zcash.
We are pleased to announce that, in response to valuable feedback from our community members during the grant proposal discussions, we have decided to implement a dedicated three-month marketing campaign following the launch. This initiative aims to extend our reach to new user groups and amplify ZEC adoption beyond the current active user base.
As a privacy-focused team, we firmly stand against collecting automated logs and event data from our applications. Instead, we prioritize direct engagement with our users to resolve issues, valuing their feedback and incorporating it into our wallet’s development. We invite all our existing and new users to upgrade to our new version once available publicly and experience transacting privately anywhere they are in the world, permissionlessly. We understand it’s been a long wait, but we believe it will be worth it. We can’t wait to hear about the innovative use cases Zcashers will unlock with our newly enhanced app.
Nighthawk is a Shielded-by-Default wallet for Zcash that requires all funds to be stored in the shielded address to preserve the privacy of user funds. Nighthawk alerts users about potential data leaks when interacting with third-party services. This empowers users to make informed and secure choices, ensuring their financial data stays safe.
Nighthawk Apps is one of the core teams focused on Zcash. Nighthawk specializes in crafting cutting-edge Mobile Apps, architecting and operating scalable blockchain infrastructure lightwalletd.com and ZcashBlockExplorer.com service. At Nighthawk, our primary goal is to empower everyone with privacy in the crypto world while fighting against censorship and oppression. To achieve this, we are dedicated to going above and beyond to ensure that both seasoned crypto users and newcomers can access enhanced privacy. Our focus lies in providing day-to-day Zcash users with the utmost privacy and actively promoting the adoption of shielded ZEC.
Download the public beta versions of the apps on Apple TestFlight & Google Play Store
F-Droid and the official public release will follow soon.
and thanks to all in the forums who were contributors!