Zeeps,
June 28th is a special day for me. 365*n days ago, I entered this world and have been flying around the sun ever since. It’s wild to think you and I are on this blue and green spaceship, hurtling through spacetime, all the while circling a gassy ball of fire. We’re sharing something epic!
I celebrate my date of entry with a few interesting people, including Henry VIII, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Elon Musk.
Rousseau is a fun one. I kind of wanted to write about him and his book “The Social Contract” today, but I had another idea in mind. However, I’ll weave him in since it’s my birthday, and I’m sovereign. 
He opens The Social Contract with the line: “Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.”
Killer opener! If you aren’t familiar, his work is super relevant to our conversations about Zcash governance and how it has and will function in the future. It also captures the ethos of what we’re more broadly fighting for with Zcash: human rights, liberty, and consent.
OK, now to my other birthday buddy, Elon. Because, you know, who doesn’t love rocket ships? But give me another minute of your life to get to him.
Birthdays are wonderful celebrations. It is especially true when we’re kids and people gather around us to eat cake, give us gifts, and sing us songs. What a cool thing it is to use a day to celebrate a person’s life — one of 365 each cycle, when a person can feel loved and appreciated. As I write this, my son just delivered creme brulee to my desk, one of my favorite things in the world. Seriously, it’s so good. Yes, The creme brulee, but more that my kid would think to do that for me. See, it’s wonderful.
As I get older, these days are also a time to think. Every 365 days, I write down twenty-five things to focus on for the coming year and then cut it down to the five best. It provides me with a lot of clarity. You and I only get so many of these anniversaries. And for those fortunate, we get to choose how to live them and where to intentionally live out our time. As Rousseau wrote, we are “born free.”
If you are living with intention, every day matters. You are focused on a path, an objective. If you don’t, you are giving up your sovereignty to those who will choose to control your work, thoughts, loves, and time.
Rise in the morning to live meaningfully, or yield your freedom to the mind manipulators of TikTok, X, and Netflix.
That brings me back to Elon. Seriously, did you ever think you’d see rockets land back on Earth? I didn’t. The world was what it was: rockets went up, and crashed down or burnt up. Gravity doesn’t care about our little metal tubes; we must overcome it.
To overcome something as powerful as gravity, you need a strong will, clear vision, intention, and relentless execution. Everything was against Elon and that team. NASA was the power, with existing infrastructure and over $20B in funding. Elon started with $100M and intention. But here we are, in less than a lifetime. Mars will take more time, but I no longer have doubts.
“When something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favor.” - E. Musk.
We must do the same and bend gravity to our will. We have the means, the talent, and the will.
We will deliver economic freedom, and the world will have access to decentralized, censorship, resistant, secure, and private digital cash.
If mankind is going to be unloosed from its economic chains and fly, it is up to us. We are the SpaceX of that mission.
Yes, powers will push against us, but their force is something far less certain than gravitation. Even so, we need a strong will, clear vision, intention, and relentless execution.
Our vision at ECC is economic freedom, and we believe Zcash is the world’s answer for digital cash.
To achieve this, we (all of us, not just ECC!) must also pay attention to the details. A college prof taught me that when she docked me a letter grade every time I used a comma in a “possessive its.” The C I got on that A paper still stings all these days later.
When launching rockets, teams design, test, observe, and adjust constantly. Structural integrity, payload details, navigation, abort systems, emissions, weather patterns, debris risk - it all matters.
When launching Zcash, cryptography, user tooling, protocol governance, funding structures, security, audits, on/off ramps - it all matters.
Everything matters. Yes, we will sometimes blow things up, sometimes spectacularly and publicly. We will fix it and try again.
This is going to take time. It might take years. It could take decades. I don’t know, but I know that I’ve only got a finite number of cycles around the sun. This is worth it to me. I know it is to you, and it will be for the generations to come after us.
Let’s rocket forward each day with intention. It’s worth our time.
Here’s where we’ve focused this week.
Zashi
In addition to the technical updates, we have made (slow) progress on our partnership with Rise (gift card purchases).
We also began gathering and synthesizing data from the Zashi survey, which will be shared at the Z|ECC summit.
iOS
Unique Installs: 2k 
Total Downloads: 2.35k
Rating: 4.9* ★
- Prepared tx resubmission PR, waiting on review from @str4d
- We troubleshot dark-side tests with Pacu, and resolved a few issues, but we are still not passing.
- Prepared a special build for the Z|ECC Summit with new features to be released soon.
- Most of the week has been working on Coinbase Onramp Integration.
Android
Total Install Base: 1.31k
Total Installs: 3.22k
Rating: 4.4k ★
- Promoted a new Android release to Open Beta - 1.1.2 (676)
- Changelog:
- Dark Mode has arrived! Zashi will now follow your system preferences.
- We added a feature that allows you to scan a QR code saved in your photo library.
- We now support displaying multiple memos.
- We added a toggle to the Receive tab for easy navigation between the address types.
- We also made a few UI updates.
- Changelog:
Zcash Core
- Worked on the solution for accurate ZEC/USD prices to be fetched in the SDK over Tor
- Plonkish WG meeting
- Fix and review of shardtree bug incrementalmerkletree#107
- Design work in support of sklyar’s dev fund ZIP
- Work on ZIP 320 PR in support of TEX address
- Worked through security issues for custom URIs (ZIP 321, BIP 21 vs BIP 70, etc.)
- Internal pairings on dust handling
- ZIP Edit support
- ZSA change review zcash_note_encryption#2
- Migrated zcashd CI from macos-11 to macos-12 (zcash#6905).
Other
We’ve hired a new Director of Finance and Ops and are bringing on a new product designer! We’ll introduce them to you soon!
Met with Brave on status. Shielded support is targeted for late summer. Work has also begun on the Filecoin/Memo integration.
Met with Grayscale on the current status of ETFs and plan.
I made an important statement about a possible dev fund that we strongly urge community members to consider.
We will be participating in a Zcash meet-up hosted by Edge that Thursday. Come by and say hello!
Next week, we’ll have a short one to celebrate July 4th and then on to the Z|ECC summit. We’ve got a stacked agenda, and I’m really looking forward to it.
@paulbrigner and I also met with group led by @aquietinvestor, along with @peacemonger, @gordonesTV and @skyl to discuss a final community ZIP survey to go out next week. Stay tuned!
That’s it for the week.
Let the crypto casino shoot for the moon, we’re rocketing around the sun. 
Onward.
person as well!