Hi Zeeps,
I’m troubled. And also resolute.
We’ve seen the dark storm coming. It’s been creeping in like a fog, and it’s now over our heads. These are dark and cloudy days.
source
This week, the US government arrested Keonne Rodriguez and William Lonergan Hill of the Samourai wallet project for money laundering and operating an unlicensed money services business. The next day, the FBI then put out this notice.
Powers are fighting self-sovereignty, privacy, and the freedom to transact with one another.
They are fighting human dignity and consent.
This felt like a punch in the gut. I hit the gym hard after hearing the news and reading summaries of the case. Headphones on. Angry tracks blasting in my ears.
–
"'Cause I’ll rip the mic, rip the stage, rip the system
I was born to rage against 'em
…
What? The “land of the free”?
Whoever told you that is your enemy"
–
People all around the industry voiced dismay.
It should be abundantly clear that governments around the world do not want what we have to offer. They want to shut us down by any means possible.
I understand that the founders of Samourai said some reckless things. They may have also acted recklessly. I don’t know. We have reached out to legal experts to help us dig into the details to better understand the charges and the stated reasons behind them.
What I do know is that if you are here to fight for human dignity and freedom, this will be the fight of your life. And those fighting against these things aren’t fucking around. They will oppress us, intimidate us, and use all the tools at their disposal, including regulatory overreach, to shut us down.
More than any other crypto community I know, the Zcash community stands for good. We stand for the people who do not have access to traditional financial services. We stand for people who simply want to live life without being spied and preyed upon. We stand for people who are in danger of losing their financial security and even their lives to those who wish evil upon them.
We do not seek to enable evil doers to do evil things.
Quite the opposite. We seek human flourishing.
Why then would they seek to crush us?
Power.
I believe that many of these people are well-intentioned. They are conditioned toward the belief that they are doing good. But they are mistaken. Oppression through force is not righteous; it is misguided at best and evil at worst.
A friend once told me, “Power is never ceded; it has to be taken.” I don’t believe that’s always true, but it is true here. They are grabbing power, and we must not cede it.
How do we take power back?
There are those in legal and policy circles that will fight for us head-on. I’m thankful for and root for them! But for many of us, we are simply too weak for that kind of confrontation. We don’t have the resources or sit in the right seats of power. When these people punch, they punch hard. If you want to go head-to-head, you best be ready for a tumble. And they will not change. They will not whither away.
So, do we sit and watch the clouds come upon us with helpless indignation?
No!
The best thing for us to do is to repaint the sky.
"
I stood up and wandered a little farther—off the bridge, and along the road. I had not gone far before I passed a house, out of which came a young woman leading a little boy. They came after me, the boy gazing at the red and gold and green of the sunset sky. As they passed me, the child said—
“Auntie, I think I should like to be a painter.”
“Why?” returned his companion.
“Because, then,” answered the child, “I could help God to paint the sky.”
"
George Macdonald, Annals of a Quiet Neighborhood
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Our motives are righteous and pure.
These are our colors - the colors painted by God in the sunset sky.
We must repaint these dark skies with our hues; the hues of freedom, to replace the hues of oppression.
So with brushes in hand, we paint. We know how. We build. That’s what we know how to do best.
We discover math. We innovate.
We paint.
We build open-source software for everyone to use, without intimidation or fear.
We paint.
We build software for the betterment of all mankind today, and for generations to come.
We paint.
We tell stories about how our work is improving the lives of people around the world.
We paint.
We onboard people in our community and spread the good word.
We paint.
If we do it together, this is not fanciful or naive.
It’s pure. These are our brushes. This is our contribution.
This is how we repaint the sky.
Here are some of our contributions from ECC this week:
Zashi
We planned to release 1.0 of the Android app this week. The code was ready, but the lightwalled infrastructure options were not, so we pressed pause. Apparently, there was a DDOS attack, and other issues were discovered. We spent time troubleshooting and reaching out to different providers. We also learned that Nighthawk intends to shut down its servers in 5 weeks. We adjusted both versions of the app to include servers in which we have higher confidence. We also contacted other third parties about adding additional infrastructure to increase resiliency.
But Android 1.0 IS coming soon. Don’t blink!
We also designed a few new things in the UX that you’ll experience soon on both app versions, and we started exploring various 3rd party APIs. There was some behind-the-scenes work to deal with dust spending issues.
People are continuing to download Zashi and love it. Approximately 30 days after launch, 1.2k people have downloaded the iOS wallet and it currently has a 4.9 rating in the app store. Thank you!!!
We have over 400 people signed up for the prelaunch of Android, with 1.15k users signed up or on the beta. It currently has a store listing conversion rate of over 40%, which is fantastic.
Zcash
The team put together a zcashd deprecation plan and began working through it in collaboration with the Zcash Foundation. The teams met Thursday to run through it. As with all our Zcash engineering efforts, Daira is leading this for ECC.
We completed the rollout of 5.9.0 and communicated the rollout to exchanges and miners to ensure they weren’t affected by the 5.8.0 EOS.
We also worked to support the ecosystem, including providing Namada feedback on their airdrop protocol and Brave on key management in their wallet implementation.
Other things
When the Samourai issue hit, we began investigating the specifics of the case and consulting with our legal team. We are very careful to comply with US laws, and it’s important that projects like Zcash that are built for good-intending people are not caught in regulatory crosshairs.
We worked through long-term planning and staffing options based on needs based on various dev fund scenarios, including the possibility that the development fund will not be renewed.
Work is also being done in preparation for the upcoming ZconV.
Want to help us paint? Register for the next Z|ECC summit in July!
That’s all for this week.
Got your brushes and paints? I got mine.
Onward.
I wasn’t thinking of them as allies, necessarily. They were just fueling my rage in the gym.
