Hi Zeeps,
Pardon me as I wax a little philosophical. This week, I have been reflecting on changes in Zcash over the years – on what we have built, the attacks we’ve faced, the storms we’ve weathered as a community, and a new dawn.
"Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange."
The Tempest, Shakespeare
At the heart of The Tempest lies an arc of suffering, exile, struggle, reflection, reconciliation, and restoration. The Prospero-induced shipwreck marked a sea-change that would result in the restoration of a position lost but also in the heart of Prospero himself. Once a man abandoned to die at sea, he discovers magic, wrestles with self-absorption and vengeance, and ultimately chooses forgiveness, reclaiming his place with grace.
Zcash has its own unique story, its own tempestuous history. The founders discovered magic and brought it to life. Zcash was going to be the “Better Bitcoin,” the one Satoshi intended.
But then the winds shifted. Outside, tempests raged. Exchanges delisted “privacy coins.” Zero-knowledge proofs weren’t performant. And then there were the haters, the fudders, and the flat-out liars.
But the most damaging storms brewed inside our own heart, within our ecosystem. Instead of unifying against our common foe, we too often turned fractious.
This week, though, I saw something different. I had the chance to work with @Alex_ZF (Zcash Foundation) and @aquietinvestor (Shielded Labs) on how best to engage our community around a critical question. We worked together—listening, building trust. A sea-change. It’s not just us; this shift is rippling across the Zcash ecosystem. Teams are collaborating, encouraging one another, lending strengths and collectively driving us forward.
Like Prospero, we’ve been weathered by time. Storms—inside and out—have tested us. Many thought us lost at sea, presumed us dead.
Yet here we stand, very much alive. With a renewed spirit burning fiercely, we still hold magic in our hands. Now, though, it’s tempered with confidence, dialogue, and collaboration. The sun is rising, and the days ahead will be rich and strange.
Here’s some of our magic for the week:
Zashi
Zashi Design
- Made progress on App Redesign:
- Shielding UI
- Syncing + Restoring UI
- Balances UI
- Added Wallet Birthday Height to the Keystone Connect flow
- Made a bunch of ad hoc product and engineering requested edits
Q&A and Dev Support
- Project Management - helping with tracking issues in GitHub and Linear
- Testing redesigned Android app
- Community and Socials Management
- User Support
Zashi iOS
iOS 16 Navigation Stack PoC:
- All Settings screens
- All Scan flows
- Keystone integration
- Transaction Detail flows
- Address Book flows
- Hit the issue of TCA stack overflow, investigating of our options
Release 1.5:
- WIP: Transparent Gap Limit Handling
- Fixed issue of the background sync task causing Zashi to crash
Analytics Update:
Unique Installs: 6.89k
Total Downloads: 8.19k
AppStore Rating: 4.9*
Zashi Android
All dependencies updated to their latest version!
- Resolved several known issues and limitations as a part of this task
Restore Redesign:
- Recovery Phrase screen redesigned & fully refactored
- Wallet Birthday Height screen redesigned & fully refactored
- New seed input fields implemented
- Estimate Block Height feature + screen
- Implemented fully custom iOS-like year-month date picker
- Implemented new bottom sheet explainer
- WIP: business logic
Home Screen performance updates:
- Initial loading after wallet creation/restoration improved significantly without blocking user UI
- Changes include balance, account (top bar), and exchange rate loading
Onboarding Redesign:
- Restore Wallet navigation refactored
- Create Wallet navigation partially refactored
WIP: BIP 39 dependency update
Analytics Update:
Total Install Base: 3.72k
Total Installs (incl. Open Beta): 16k
PlayStore Rating: 4.447*
Zcash Core
- Successfully rescued locked funds from an old Ledger wallet by importing the seed phrase into Keystone & shielding with Zashi!
- Added zallet implementations of listaddresses , z_listunifiedreceivers, and z_getaddressforaccount RPC methods.
- Updated zallet to use the abscissa component architecture, upstreamed relevant changes to abscissa interfaces.
- Numerous updates to the ff crate, release of ff 0.13.1 and ff 0.14.0 crate versions.
- Added zcash_client_backend functionality that enables privacy-preserving transparent UTXO checking for use with ephemeral ZIP 320 addresses, to ensure that a lightwalletd-compromising adversary can’t link ephemeral addresses to other transparent addresses in the wallet.
- Significant ZIP editing progress on the V6 transaction format.
- Added utilities for checking for & fixing note commitment tree errors to zcash_client_sqlite. These will be added to Zashi in the next release, which should fix some issues that a few users have encountered with funds appearing stuck.
- Design and research work for secure automatic seed phrase backup options for Android & iOS wallet SDKs.
- Added utilities to zcash_devtool for note commitment tree debugging, transparent wallet recovery & address rotation.
- Reviewed lockbox disbursement proposals & worked on disbursement mechanism design.
Other
Alex, Jason, and I worked together to draft a plan and post on how to move forward with the development fund.
Alex joined Jason, Jon, and me for biweekly ZSA outreach planning.
@Andrea, @peacemonger, and I met with members of the NEAR team to plan our work together.
We were notified by our attorney that they consider our SEC subpoena matter closed!
Nice to see Zcash getting some love on what we’ve delivered to the world here, here, and here.
That’s all for this week.
Sailing,
Onward.
