Hello Zcash Community 
Wrapping up 2021, here are the updates from Nighthawk team for the month of December.
Goal: Maintain public facing apps, monitor & improve crash-free rating, work on Milestone 3 items and improve overall usability of Nighthawk Wallet.
- Added option to swap with StealthEx.io to support swaps with expanded list of cryptocurrencies to transparent ZEC.
- Released Auto-shielding build for iPhone.
- Released updates for Nighthawk Wallet on both iOS and Android with upgraded Zcash SDKs and checkpoints.
- Onboarded Android SDK developer for architecting & developing a Proof of Concept to improve syncing speeds & reduce information leaks.
- Discuss and learn about Orchard transaction updates with Light Client Working Group and study the new transaction types that need to be supported following the launch of Network Upgrade 5.
On the design front, Nighthawk Wallet is undergoing a transformation. This will result in a brand new look and feel for the wallet going forward. A new icon and colour scheme was the start. Now almost every screen in the app is being redesigned to fit the new look.
The work will embrace feedback from user studies. We are currently screening participants to take part in research around the product. Findings from this study will drive design decisions around the future of the app.
Investing in the future of Zcash is also important to the team. To this point, we have begun early explorations of how NFTs on the Zcash network can fit in to Nighthawk.
We look forward to sharing more design work with you in future updates. If you are interested in joining the user study, please fill out this form. Select applicants will be contacted for a video call: Microsoft Forms
As always, the latest status of milestone updates are present at https://nighthawkwallet.com/changelog/
Goal: Keep up to date with fixes for zcashd & lightwalletd to continue providing public infrastructure for light wallet based Zcash applications.
- Kept mainnet lightwalletd service running at v0.4.7 after running in to issues with clients unable to resolve blocks info.
- Plan to test & debug mainnet upgrade again with updated clients.
- Continue maintaining the monthly warranty canary on https://lightwalletd.com
Goal: Provide a fast, light weight, tracker/analytics-free Zcash transaction explorer.
- Automated security certificate renewal as a cron job.
- Applied CSP Update for fixing QR Code on the Address page.
Zcash <> Thorchain Integration
Goal: Add Zcash to Thorchain for decentralized ZEC trading and LP incentives.
- Work in progress for TypeScript based xchainjs work.
- Created a docker image for running zcashd as a container to send custom parameters as part of the Thorchain node launcher.
- Created HELM chart for running the zcashd container as part of the Thorchain node launcher.
- Created a Draft Pull Request for getting Zcash node launcher merged with the Thorchain node launcher. Zcash daemon (!383) · Merge requests · THORChain / DevOps / Node Launcher · GitLab
- Provisioned AWS servers after evaluating the specs & requirements for each supported chain. This will help in conducting extensive testing of Zcash integration.
- Connect with Thorchain contact to pass on the funds set aside for reviewers of Zcash Pull Requests.
Plan for December: Start implementing the Golang changes for bifrost, continue working on adding Zcash support for xchainjs and architect the end-to-end testing workflows.
Thanks again to ECC/ZF/Zcash community members for supporting our work.
