With the release of Nighthawk iOS v1.21 on App Store & Nighthawk Android v1.0.20 on Play Store, we have successfully reached the first Milestone. We would like to share our achievements, which are well received by end users on both Android & iPhone.
The status will be updated regularly and published at https://nighthawkwallet.com/changelog/
Additionally, we:
- Resolved several user support requests via Emails, DMs and GitHub issues.
- Proactively participated in mobile design discussions for NU5 & Unified Address UX with ECC.
- Engaged with end users, product walkthrough and noted shortcomings to improve upon.
- Obtained necessary hardware & software towards meeting milestone deliverables.
- Renewed the App Store Developer subscription with Apple.
- Updated the app landing page at https://nighthawkwallet.com
- Regularly attended development meetings with the LCWG.
- Setup continuous integration via Bitrise and enabled test-net build variants for ease of testing.
- Transitioned from relying on existing lightwalletd server to https://lightwalletd.com with 0 service interruption for our end users.
- Fixed a vulnerability reported to us via our Disclosure Policy.
- Reported a vulnerability upstream and acted immediately releasing a fix to prod. Privacy-leak bug discovered in Nighthawk and ECC wallets - Electric Coin Company
- Followed the strict no logging/tracking policy.
- Kept app dependencies updated with the latest fixes from ECC & native Apple/Android eco-system.
Android specific:
- Enabled language configuration to prepare for auto-translations to multiple languages.
- Increased number of supported devices for Nighthawk on Android to 14,579 devices(per Play Console) with minimum supported version of API 23/Android 6.0
- Focussed on improving layouts & accessibility for supporting a broad variety of form-factors.
- Enabled screen density configuration to generate optimized APKs for each screen density.
- Switched to ABI configuration for releases instead of APKs for a smaller app download for users by removing the libraries of the ABIs their device will not load.
- Reduced app download size to ~9MB after stripping out un-necessary Play Services components, also preparing the build towards a F-Droid release.
Developer community related updates:
- Engaged with contributors and rewarded them for their contributions from our consulting budget.
- Intro with ARTI developers and plan to provide them with mobile device requirements for running Tor by default on thin clients.
- Attended Google I/O 2021 & Apple WWDC21 to keep up to date with the latest APIs, cryptography & security related updates on the Android & iOS platform.
Zcash users feature demands which we will R&D on as per bandwidth:
- Passcode/Pin protected app start.
- Contacts management with Z-addresses.
- Deep linking for interacting with ZECpages.
Things to improve on:
- Provide updates on Zcash Forums: As per the grant, we promised to post updates following every Milestone on Zcash Forums, especially after an observation of the forum activity slowing down. So we focussed on connecting with the end users directly for updates and troubleshooting. In the future, we will try to post updates to the forum alongside our alternate channels.
- Investigate optimizing of sync times while maintaining maximum privacy & reducing information leakage. As for the scanning optimizations, once the faster community algorithms are verified and gotten thumbs up from @str4d , we can have those pulled in to Nighthawk for all the efficiency gains.The priority for the next milestone is still NU5 compatibility.
- Improve regression testing to stop vulnerabilities from seeping in to production versions.
We thank @ZcashGrants for funding us and believing in our vision to ship Nighthawk Wallet on App Store, Play Store & soon F-Droid Store with regular updates.