Hi Zeeps,
It’s almost midnight on Sunday. I just got home from a week of attending and meeting with others at the Bitcoin Conference. My week is ending just as another begins. I’m on fumes, so this one will be pretty short and snarky.
Outside the conference, the summer streets of Nashville were a parade of open-air truck trailers and buses full of brides-to-be, party-goers, and their entourages celebrating, drinking, shouting, and singing songs. I have to admit, I’ve never seen anything like that. It must be a Nashville thing, and I don’t quite get it, but if one of you Zeeps organizes one, I’ve got an open mind. I’m down.
Inside the conference center, twenty thousand people arrived to connect, celebrate, drink, shout, and sing songs about Bitcoin. Yes, you could buy Bitcoin songs on vinyl. I don’t quite get it, but many do, and Trump and many other politicians, venture capitalists, and financial institutions were there to croon. It felt soulless to me—something more like pop songs and uncomfortable-looking pelvic thrusts. You may think me crude, but I did stumble across a booth with a couple of dudes selling Bitcoin panties, so whatever.
This is not how it started.
Bitcoin’s Genesis block was created in January of 2009 when Satoshi first transferred a non-spendable amount of 50 BTC. The block included a message: “The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks,” referencing the London Times headline and the efforts to rescue banks that had become “too big to fail.” Bitcoin was birthed to set us free.
The block’s namesake book in the Bible accounts for the story of Adam and Eve, who were given a beautiful garden in which to sing and celebrate life.
Eden represented freedom. While its first two residents were given all they needed, their hearts were deceived, and they chose to eat the forbidden fruit in a desire to obtain Godlike power. Eden and its freedom were lost, and man became mortal.
I felt a little dead inside as I walked through the smiling faces, backpacks, and lanyards. Don’t get me wrong, there were some fun things to be found there, but this scene came to the forefront of my mind.
Cole Sear: I see dead people.
Malcolm Crowe: In your dreams?
[Cole shakes his head no]
Malcolm Crowe: While you’re awake?
[Cole nods]
Malcolm Crowe: Dead people like, in graves? In coffins?
Cole Sear: Walking around like regular people. They don’t see each other. They only see what they want to see. They don’t know they’re dead.
Malcolm Crowe: How often do you see them?
Cole Sear: All the time. They’re everywhere.
Snap back to reality….
While Bitcoiners have eaten the apple, the cypherpunk ethos of Zcash remains strong, and our tribe is growing. More people are beginning to open their eyes.
I saw it in the faces of strangers in conversations around a cocktail table and in an intimate gathering with two Senators and their staff who heard about Zcash for the first time.
This is just the beginning.
Zcash will supplant Bitcoin as a means of financial freedom.
Digital cash will thrive and it will be private.
ECC’s work this week
Zashi
Pablo joined the ECC team as our new wallet designer. He has significant experience designing crypto education products and previously worked as a designer for Binance. Welcome, Pablo!
iOS
Unique Installs: 2.47k
Rating: 4.9 ★
- Blocked by AppStore on releasing the build with the CB Onramp integration. Working with Coinbase on a resolution.
- Lukas is back from vacation on Monday.
Android
Total Install Base: 1.59k
Rating: 4.591 ★
- 1.1.3 release pushed from Open Beta to Production
- 1.1.4 release pushed to Open Beta
- We investigated and analyzed the reported issue of missing transparent funds.
- We paused work on server switching and transaction resubmission to adopt Currency Conversion and ZIP 320 on the SDK and client side.
- We provided feedback to all SDK Core Team PRs, i.e., the feature branch (which should contain several bug fixes), ZIP 320, and Tor and currency conversion PRs.
- We updated the Currency Conversion API in the SDK and adopted it within Zashi and UI for the Currency Conversion feature.
- We introduced Koin (a Dependency Injection framework) into Zashi’s codebase and resolved one of our bigger tech depts.
- Work on F-Droid (an alternative to Google Play) deployment service setup.
Zcash Core
- Reviewed librustzcash#1450
- Reviewed zcash-light-client-ffi#147
- Reviewed zcash-light-client-ffi#142
- librustzcash#1451: Reviewed and moved zcash-inspect from zcash/zcash and added TEX conversion.
- Tested TEX spend from Android to iOS.
- Implemented TEX support in Android SDK (zcash-android-wallet-sdk#1532).
- Finished currency conversion support in Android SDK (zcash-android-wallet-sdk#1533).
- Reviewed zcash-test-vectors#99.
- Reviewed UFVK account imports (librustzcash#1425).
- Answered various technical questions in the forum and R&D Discord.
- Engineering meeting with Qedit.
- Updated zips#882 to remove Aditya as a ZIP Editor as well.
- Worked on v_transactions bug.
- Security work and backports.
- Found and fixed bug in the transparent coins DB migration (librustzcash#1453).
- Opened zcash#6912 (Lockbox funding streams for zcashd) as a draft.
- Investigated lightwalletd connectivity issue (librustzcash#1455).
- Adding optional lightwalletd lookups to zcash-inspect, to make Zashi support triage faster (librustzcash#1456).
- R&D on technical approaches to NDFM.
- Investigated Zashi support issues about missing transparent receives.
- Opened zcash-android-wallet-sdk#1536 and updated zcash-android-wallet-sdk#1483 with why I think it is causing the user problems.
- Fixed no-default-features compilation (librustzcash#1460).
- Implemented is_shielded column for v_transactions (librustzcash#1461).
- PLONKish WG meeting.
Other
ECC released an updated roadmap. Relatedly, check out @pacu’s posts on the Z|ECC planning sessions that occurred earlier this month: Day 0, Day 1, Day 2, part 1.
I participated in an intimate lunch with the Blockchain Association and Senators Tillman and Tuberville at the Bitcoin Conference. I spoke and introduced Zcash with a clear message on why Bitcoin is not suitable for digital cash and why Zcash is the answer.
We met with Brave on engineering updates and then joint marketing plans in person at the Bitcoin conference. The shielded wallet support is progressing well. The memo attachment capability will be rolled out in two phases. The first phase will include a URL to an encrypted file, with encryption coming a bit later.
@peacemonger and I met with Swapkit and JP from Thorchain at the Bitcoin Conference on Zcash integration with Maya, liquidity, and future phases.
The ZAC poll, ZCAP, and others went out to assess community sentiment on the two finalists.
Coinbase and I announced the transition of Paul and the PGP* initiative to Coinbase Institute at the monthly PGP meeting.
We contacted the Zcash Foundation about their intentions with the trademark following, given our intention to dissolve the agreement before NU6. We are awaiting their decisions.
Technical exploration is underway with the Keystone hardware wallet.
ECC signed a small grant agreement with Flexa to add support to the Zashi wallet.
Fun things are possible when we’re unencumbered by trademarks! 
That’s all of this week!
Stay moisturized and ready, Zeeps. We’re about to roll through an open door.
Onward.
sometimes you get a new reviewer and they give you a hard time.
