Nighthawk update for February 2022

Ecosystem Updates
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Our team has been focused on improving the UX of Zcash on mobile & designing UI for handling the upcoming transition to Unified Addresses.

On the design front for Nighthawk Wallet, we updated the set of design components and style guide following feedback from the developers.

The designer got COVID during the previous month(along with multiple members of the team), so the research aspect of the project was temporarily down-prioritized as a result of this - but will look to be resumed in the near future.

After finishing up with a new information architecture for Nighthawk, following a decision to rework the main navigational elements, the complete app redesign is well underway, with many components and screens already having a first-pass at the redesign complete, including Backup/Restore, Biometric/Pin, Home Screen, Wallet History, Settings, Send Zcash flow & Shielding UX.

Developer updates:

  1. Released app upgrades targeting updated Zcash SDKs from ECC. Further reviews and testing of Android beta-20 and ZcashLightClientKit Beta 6 is underway for the next version of Nighthawk Wallet.
  2. Attend bi-weekly LCWG to keep up with Halo Arc SDK schedule, meeting briefs are noted at GitHub - zcash/lcwg: Light Client Working Group project management repository
  3. Work on migrating Nighthawk iOS codebase from Intel to Mac ARM-based setup.
  4. Increase Nighthawk Wallet internal testing window to 2-3 weeks before releasing updates to production.
  5. Handle the surge in support requests from incoming new user questions via Twitter DMs & Email.

As always, the latest status of milestone updates are present at https://nighthawkwallet.com/changelog/

lightwalletd.com

Goal: Keep up to date with fixes for zcashd & lightwalletd to continue providing public infrastructure for light wallet-based Zcash applications.

We noticed increased bandwidth usage from the month of January through February. Our servers haven’t reached the limits yet, we are closely monitoring the service.

  1. Upgrade both load-balanced mainnet & testnet nodes to zcashd v4.6.0-1 and test APIs with light clients.
  2. Updated our secure sign-in mechanisms and accounts.
  3. Continue maintaining the monthly warranty canary on https://lightwalletd.com

ZcashBlockExplorer.com

Goal: Provide a fast, lightweight, no-tracker/no-analytics Zcash transaction explorer with tor onion V3 support.

  1. Upgrade core zcashd node to v4.6.0-1
  2. Fix iOS/WebKit-specific bug that caused issues with the viewing keys feature. h/t @zooko for reporting the bug.

Zcash <> Thorchain Integration

Goal: Add Zcash to Thorchain to enable decentralized ZEC trading and LP incentives.

The work undertaken by the Nighthawk team will not only add Zcash to Thorchain but also build the interfaces necessary for various web & mobile apps to add ZEC swaps functionality.

  1. Refactor ZEC APIs in TypeScript per PR review for xchainjs Resolve: ADD xchain-zcash by veado · Pull Request #454 · xchainjs/xchainjs-lib · GitHub

  2. BiFrost work is nearing completion with the following items marked done:

a) Implement Chainclient:

  • NewClient for ChainClient (initialize the chain client required by Bifrost)

b) Implement BlockScannerFetcher

c) ChainClient Exported Functions:

  • GetHeight
  • GetAddress
  • GetAccount
  • GetAccountByAddress
  • GetChain
  • Start
  • GetConfig
  • GetConfirmationCount
  • ConfirmationCountReady
  • IsBlockScannerHealthy
  • Stop

d) Internal functions to support ChainClient:

  • getBlockRequiredConfirmation
  • getCoinbaseValue
  • getGas
  • ignoreTx
  • getSender
  • getOutput
  • getAddressesFromScriptPubKey
  • getTxIn
  • getAsgardAddress
  • isAsgardAddress
  • getMemo
  • isRBFEnabled
  • isValidUTXO
  • getMemPool
  • tryAddToMemPoolCache
  • updateNetworkInfo
  • isSelfTransaction
  • getUTXOs

e) Zecutil: Utility library for zcash which includes RPC client to call all the rpc methods required by chainClient functions.

f) Additional functions in RPC client:

  • GetBlockVerboseTx
  • GetRawMempool
  • GetRawTransactionVerbose
  • GetRawTransaction
  • ListUnspentMinMaxAddresses
  • ListUnspent
  • GetNetworkInfo

We plan on opening the Bifrost PR towards Milestone 3 as soon as we wrap up implementing and testing the signTx method.

P.S. We will be at Twitter spaces party later today with Zooko to exchange Shielded Love notes. We’re also handing out stickers and raffle entries towards a ZEC Cabochon by simply sending a shielded memo with a mailing address to zs1nhawkewaslscuey9qhnv9e4wpx77sp73kfu0l8wh9vhna7puazvfnutyq5ymg830hn5u2dmr0sf
The winner’s txid will be picked randomly from an online picker Random Picker — Choose a random thing from your list tonight at 8:30 PM MT

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