Supporting zec-qt-wallet and an iOS Reference Wallet

Ecosystem Updates Zcash Foundation
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Exciting news! home - zcash foundation

Over the past few weeks we’ve been able to share some of the work @acityinohio has been doing behind the scenes to develop partnerships. This is the latest installment.

I’m gonna copy-paste the blog post below for those of you who don’t want to click through.

The Zcash Foundation has formed agreements to financially support the ongoing development and maintenance of zec-qt-wallet, created by Aditya Kulkarni, and a new iOS reference wallet to be developed by Justin Smith, maker of X Wallet. zec-qt-wallet will continue with its existing license, and the iOS wallet will also be open source.

Wallets that are both full-featured and easy to use are critical for Zcash adoption. Open-source products, by virtue of being available for anyone to freely access, audit, or improve, have facilitated growth in the mainstream tech industry for decades. The cryptocurrency world, including the Zcash community, has strongly supported open-source infrastructure from the start.

zec-qt-wallet is a cross-platform wallet GUI and full node that encompasses support for shielded Sapling addresses. Next week, zec-qt-wallet will make a triple 1.0 release, adding MacOS to Linux and Windows for the first tiem. MacOS users will be able to benefit from Kulkarni’s work building out this foundational infrastructure for Zcash usage.

X Wallet has served Monero users on iOS for a year, and its maker has proven a dedicated advocate for mobile wallet privacy. Smith gave a presentation at Zcon0 about X Wallet, including a UX scorecard to help fellow mobile wallet creators evaluate their approaches.

“Zcash is the perfect infrastructure for reducing ‘behind the scenes’ friction in mobile banking,” Smith said about today’s announcement, “and we’re excited to help make this new and greatly improved banking format more accessible to consumers.” He added, “This project takes us one step closer to the end of paper notes, and one step closer to digital money that merges the utility of cash and electronic bank transfers.”

In funding zec-qt-wallet and the upcoming iOS reference wallet, the Foundation is furthering its mission to create privacy infrastructure for the public good. We believe that financial systems that prioritize autonomy and consent are an essential human right. Both wallets will continue to enable this critical freedom, and the Zcash Foundation is proud to play a part in supporting the creators’ work.

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Absolutely wonderful. If X Wallet is financially supported by Zcash, will that mean their app will be free? Their current one is on the app store for 0.99$ with the name “You’re not the product”, which I quite like.

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Are there any screenshots or whatever available to see these wallets or projects allready?

I personally think the windows wallet issue should be on the highest priority list and ZEC should come up with a top notch ZEC windows wallet asap!

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You can download and use zec-qt-wallet now Releases · ZcashFoundation/zecwallet · GitHub.

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Thx, i got the first time ever this message from google chrome. Just letting you know. Other than that the 700MB download was fast, syncing now to see. All over the first impression is ok, nothng special but at least easy to handle, so far at least… What i miss was a prompt for installation folder and/or folder where to keep the wallet data, i guess it’s stored in teh %appdata% again like many other qt wallets, which often isn’t a good solution for users that want to keep C: clean. Just some feedback … :slight_smile:
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@adityapk00 is the dev of this so adding them so they see your feedback

I agree the Windows packaging could be improved with an installer as opposed to simply running the executable and make it more accessible to new users rather than downloading from GitHub. Given the funding has literally just been announced I’m sure all of this stuff is planned.

I think the mass market appeal for a full node client is limited but for the users who do want that functionality and while we wait for light clients and their respective protocols to be developed this is a great addition to the ecosystem.

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So far i have downloaded, used and tested about ~200 desktop wallets, some are literally unusable, some very difficult to use and some are very easy.

This ZEC qt wallet is for sure a good one, absolutly easy to understand and to use, thumbs up! I was first afraid it’s again one of these poor designed wallets but it’s a very good one, just some minor features/options missing.

  • decrease fee option from sending amount
  • choosable extracting folder so it’s not automaticlly stored in the $appdata% folder. Many users like me want to have C: as clean as possible and prefer using other harddrives and/or folders.
  • option for choosing an .exe file, many users like it more easy.
  • full node download is ok, i personally prefer it as i have a lot of free HDDs, howerver and as you mentioned allready, some users with limited harddisk space might prefer a light wallet. A light wallet will for sure attract some more users.
  • add the download link asap to the homepage. Seriously, when i first came to ZEC and saw there is only a linux wallet (without digging deeper) i was shocked. Thankfully i came across the Exodus wallet than back with the T-adress option that literally safed me, having in mind privacy isn’t an issue for me.
  • pretty sure it’s planned, but just in case, add a bootstrap file for download so users can download the whole node instead of syncing. After about 1 and 1/2 hour i have synced 11%. For me it isn’t a problem as my PC is 24/7 online, but other wallet users might prefer a faster option, hence the bootstrap file is a perfect solution for these.
  • other than that the wallet looks perfect, really good handy designed. I really like it. Good job :heart_eyes:
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Thanks @boxalex for your feedback. To quickly address some issues:

  • Decrease fee option: You can do this today by going to Edit->Settings->Enable custom fees (Although note that this is not recommended for privacy reasons)
  • The Windows installer is coming next week! It will allow you to chose an installation folder, etc…
  • The chrome warning: I’m not sure how to get around it. Do you have ideas? One option I was thinking was to actually submit it to the Windows App store, so that way it will be signed and users can get it easily.
  • Light wallet support is some time away, as it needs some changes in the protocol. But I know the zcash engineers are working on it!
  • Takes too long to sync: I know, this is an issue. I’ve been thinking about what can be done here. We could do a download, but that will also be slow. Light client is probably the best option.

Again, thanks for trying zec-qt-wallet, and please send any other feedback you have my way.

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Just following up. There’s a new release this week that addresses a lot of your feedback (Installer, choosing directory, custom fees)! Once again, thanks for your feedback and let me know if you have any other feedback!

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Great!

Just downloaded and installed it with the windows installer. Everything smooth this time, no google chrome warning, no other warnings, just perfect.

Only thing i’am still missing is the option choosing a folder for all the data which is currently automaticly set to appdata/roaming/****
This is a pain if you want to keep C: clean or have limited space on C but other harddisks with more free space. The best wallets i used so far give you the option on where to store these files during installation and/or starting the wallet.

Other than that, as said, i like it, simple, easy, perfect. Good job!

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Oh, I see what you’re saying. I misunderstood you the first time. You want to chose the data folder, which is a good idea. I can build it in.

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How many more features are planned for the wallet?

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How many more do you need or would/could be an option?

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Was hoping for maybe some more pleasant surprises like the turnstile migration feature we got.

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…well, I’m translating it into Spanish at the moment, so there’s that…

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If you have specific features that you’d like to see, please feel free to let me know. I’m happy to incorporate them into the roadmap.

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It’s nice to see that you really care about the wallet and are willing to make it a really good one. This doesn’t seem to be often the case and it’s like fresh air to see it happens with the ZEC wallet. Thumbs up for this.

Only other features that come into my mind is eventually some kind of automatic updating to newer versions once they are released and a backup information for the privacy keys or wallet data file.

  • About automatic update: Everybody using qt wallets or other desktop wallets knows it’s not really comfortable to update them once a newer release is available or even mandatory. I could very well imagine that a notification + hit the button for automic download/install would be a very good feature to make it way more easy for the average joe. Maybe someting to consider as in my opinion, if we want to have such wallets used by as many as possible people, we should have in mind that the majority are not the PC professionals and hence they leave their holdings on exchanges and/or use multi currency wallets where such things are automated.
    The check gifthub link is allready a good way, but could be improved even further. Of course just my personal opinion as i allways try to see things from the point of view from someone with less knowledge than us.

  • About the Backup function. This could be a good feature combined with the auto update function to make the user more comfortable while updating. For example bevor auto-updating or even manually updating the user is given the option to backup all crucial files into a given location or backup folder. Pretty sure this would increase the users comfortability.
    Currently i’am doing this manually each time i update some wallet just by copying all important files to another harddrive and backup folder for the given coin, but it would make someone life easier if this process could be handled by the wallet of course. Just a suggestion of course.

Would be good if more forum members share their views/wishes/thoughts on what would/could be an improvement for the qt wallet.

Again, i’am very happy to see the QT ZEC wallets is a good one. Wallets are often, especially at ZEC something it’s importance is underestimated and i’am very glad to see it gets fixed finally.

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Automatic update is a good idea. I had initially looked into it, and it seemed complicated, so I just added the check github link. Let me investigate again.

Your point about backups is also good. Let me think about how to add it properly.

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For Linux what about supporting snaps if possible as these auto-refresh? Create your first snap | Ubuntu

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I briefly looked into snaps a few weeks ago, but I couldn’t get around the snap confinement requirements. zec-qt-wallet needs to access the file system (for zcash params, embedded zcashd etc…), and I couldn’t figure out how to access hidden files/folders from a snap.

There is a “home directory” permission, but it wouldn’t let me access ~/.zcash/, probably because it is “hidden” in the Linux sense.

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