Nighthawk update for January 2023

Ecosystem Updates
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This January, the Nighthawk Apps team introduced its team of 7 and a roadmap for the 2023 year. We look forward to the review of our grant application by the Zcash Community Grants committee.

Nighthawk Apps has started attending the PGP Crypto Breakfast organized by Electric Coin Co to keep up with regulatory updates. Additionally, we are part of 40+ organizations that are asking the US Congress to ensure constitutional & human rights are protected online and offline, champion privacy-protecting capabilities such as end-to-end encryption, and safeguard data privacy & security

Nighthawk Wallet updates:

  • Onboard iOS developer to Zcash ecosystem and connect with LCWG group.
  • Onboarded a new UX designer and transferred Figma project admin accounts.
  • WIP: migration from Cocoapods to Swift Package Manager for the Nighthawk iOS project.
  • WIP: to test and release an updated Nighthawk Android client.
  • App Changelog is published at https://nighthawkwallet.com/changelog/

Light Client Working Group:

lightwalletd.com

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

ZcashBlockExplorer.com

Goal: Provide a fast, lightweight, Tor-enabled, no-tracker/no-analytics/no-logging Zcash transaction explorer.

  • Review components rendering issues on mobile and scope out work to improve UI handling on various resolutions.
  • Investigate “Uknown” tagged transaction types and plan to improve the classification.

Zcash <> Thorchain Integration

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

Python developer onboarding in progress: to write the ancillary code for the ZEC suite of integration tests on Thorchain. And migrated our grant application to the new Submittable platform with updated timelines: Gallery View: Zcash Community Grants Program

We continue to keep the DevOps portion of the Thorchain integration updated to keep up with changes from the Thorchain repository to run the latest version of zcashd when Thorchain infrastructure is bootstrapped. As for the Zcash-specific Thorchain work, the following items are pending:

a) Executing smoke test suite on updated test-net infra with zcashd v5.3.2 (last 2 tests remain)
b) Finish xchain.js wallet APIs for Zcash to support upcoming changes in conventional fee structure.

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Connect with Maya Protocol (THORChain fork)! https://docs.mayaprotocol.com/

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Not related to the update but didn’t think I should create a new thread for this:

Where is Nighthawk wallet on https://z.cash/wallets/ ?

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Its nearly April. Is this update monthly or quarterly?

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Hello all,

I’m here to give a brief update on where the Nighthawk team is with a few of its key outstanding initiatives, namely, Nighthawk Wallet 2.0 and the Zcash Thorchain Integration project.

Nighthawk Wallet 2.0

During 2023, our team has been hard at work revamping the Nighthawk mobile wallet with a design refresh and testing and integrating the ECC’s updated mobile SDKs with spend-before-sync and other critical performance improvements. This has been our primary focus and has allowed us to deliver Nighthawk 2.0, which is available for download in the major app stores, we hope you try it!
A significant portion of our efforts this year was dedicated to collaboration with ECC core devs, contributing to the ongoing efforts in hardening the SDK. Our team actively participated in bug identification, feature improvements, and addressing feature requests. We were also deeply involved in the ideation of features within the LCWG (Light Client Working Group) and actively worked on enhancing the Zcash user experience.
Regarding the remaining work on the apps, we still have the F-Droid release on track to be delivered by the end of 2023. However, it is unfortunate to share that our wallet maintenance grant was rejected, introducing uncertainties about the future of the Nighthawk Wallet for Zcash. Despite this setback, we remain dedicated to providing a privacy-preserving, mobile, and secure mobile wallet experience for our users, and your continued support is invaluable in our journey towards delivering the best privacy tools for people in need.

Zcash Thorchain Integration

So far, our progress on this initiative is as follows:

Node Launcher

  • Synced with Upstream:
    • Zcash node daemon image created in the ci/images/ directory as per new requirements.
    • Updated the zcash-daemon helm package following the new template in the node-launcher repo. This includes updates to Chart, values, configmap, deployment, ingress, PVC, SVC, etc.
    • Conducted basic testing on a vanilla Kubernetes cluster.

Thornode

  • Address Parsing Logic
  • Fees Handling
  • Retrieving Address from a Public Key
  • Docker Compose Setup:
    • To run zcashd in regtest mode for running mocknet tests.

Bifrost

Done:
  • BroadcastingTx
  • GetHeight
  • GetAddress, along with Confirmation Count and Health Check.
Pending:
  • SigningTx

Xchainjs

We are aiming to complete the following Xchainjs implementations by an updated date of March 2024:

  • setNetwork(net: Network): void
  • getNetwork(): Network
  • getExplorerUrl(): string
  • getExplorerAddressUrl(address: Address): string
  • getExplorerTxUrl(txID: string): string
  • validateAddress(address: string): boolean
  • getAddress(walletIndex?: number): Address
  • getAddressAsync(walletIndex?: number): Promise
  • setPhrase(phrase: string, walletIndex: number): Address
  • getBalance(address: Address, assets?: Asset): Promise<Balance>
  • getTransactions(params?: TxHistoryParams): Promise
  • getTransactionData(txId: string, assetAddress?: Address): Promise
  • getFees(options?: FeeEstimateOptions): Promise
  • transfer(params: TxParams): Promise
  • prepareTx(params: TxParams): Promise
  • broadcastTx(txHex: string): Promise
  • purgeClient(): void

Additionally, we plan to ship unit tests and sync with the Thorchain team & liquidity partner to deploy Zcash swaps.

We have received lots of encouraging messages with great excitement about this initiative, and we are excited to see this come to fruition despite all the challenges in the ecosystem.

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Congrats on this progress. I had been under the impression that Zcash ↔ Thorchain was in dormancy. Is the project completion going to have the chance to be late 2024?

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