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Hi Zeeps.
I received a text from my priest yesterday morning after visiting a friend of mine, a man I deeply admire. After a long struggle with his health, my friend’s body was shutting down. His spirit left him yesterday afternoon.
I met Craig over a decade ago. I had seen him before at my church but never took much notice. He was older and didn’t say much, was a humble handyman with a goofy laugh, a guttural “har har” kind of laugh, and not someone remarkable by wealth, title, career accomplishments, or ambition.
I was surprised when I attended a class on how to listen to Jazz, and noticed him sitting near the front. He didn’t strike me as the type who would be interested in that type of thing. But what really drew me to him was his intellectual curiosity over the series of lessons we attended. He asked simple but profound questions, questions I might have been afraid to ask for fear of sounding dumb. He saw things and made connections that I did not. I began to listen closely to him, keying off of what he was discovering.
As I got to know him over the years since, I found him to be a humble and gentle man. When he later got sick and as his body was failing him, he would still carry a smile and laugh, even amid his deep pain and frustration.
In that class, I met Craig in a common place of exploration, seeking a common understanding and appreciation of an art form, and found something beautiful and unexpected—our individual improvisations on top of a shared baseline created music in my life.
This week was also emotional for some as the US voted on who would govern in the years ahead. As I spoke with friends, family, and co-workers, some were happy and hopeful. Others were depressed and fearful. At ECC and in our Zcash community, there are many people on both sides of the political spectrum. But unlike most of the angry and polarized world, this community is marked by care and love for one another. We share a common understanding and appreciation for one another and the magic we are creating for the world.
When we come together and listen to one another, it lays a beautiful foundation for our improvisational expressions, which add to our collective song. We bring our solos on top of a common baseline.
The different sounds and perspectives we bring are our strength, yielding surprises and connections that would never happen without them. There is something special about the Zcash community, this tapestry of differences coming together to create music. Much love and peace to you all.
And to you, Craig, thank you for teaching me the color of jazz.
Here’s ECC’s contribution this week:
Zashi
Design
- Finalized Transaction History Redesign
- Making progress in design explorations for Home Screen and app navigation
- Finalized designs for Transaction Success/Error screen
- Working on getting the progress animations
- Continued exploring ideas for Multiwallet and Multicurrency support
- Ad hoc engineering edits and requests
- Designed a Zashi marketing poster (page 27) for the BTCTKVR magazine right after @squirrel’s article.
- Continued Onboarding redesign
iOS
- Updated all tools and systems to the latest, latest SourceTree messed with the GitHub setup of the project, but we found a fix after troubleshooting
- Custom Tooltip tweaked to be able to point downwards as well, used in Recovery Phrase screen explaining birthday
- Adopted @yasserisa’s Spanish translations, troubleshot and resolved some project setup issues around localization and prepared internal build
- Reviewed & Updated str4d’s Address Book encryption PR to be buildable again
- Address Book encryption task
- migration of unencrypted data → encrypted
- remote storage activated & successfully tested for many scenarios
- Working on redesign Send Confirmation screens with success/in progress/error states
- Flexa testing
- Sign out after reset Zashi
- Total spendable balance instead of Total balance fixes
- Token icon added
Unique Installs: 3.82k
Total Downloads: 4.54k
AppStore Rating: 4.9*
Android
- Finalized redesign of all Settings flows
- App launch authentication finalized
- Working on redesign SendConfirmation screens with success/in progress/error states
- Adopted Yasser’s Spanish translations and prepared an internal build
- Started working on Address Book encryption
- Implemented authentication for Flexa purchases
- Troubleshot user reported issues
- Flexa:
- Repeatedly tested and reported some issues to Flexa
- Updated our implementation on the waiting PR
- Waiting for 1.0.6 release from Flexa
- Address book Wallet & SDK PRs prepared
- Android Auto backup feature used for the Address Book cloud backup
- PRs reviewed and tested manually + prepared automated tests
- Few bug fixes in the wallet, mainly:
- Address book Toast on the Send screen fixed
- Fix for the broken navigation after the wallet deletion
Total Install Base: 2.32k
Total Installs (incl. Open Beta): 8.45k
PlayStore Rating: 4.710*
Zcash Core
- All NU7 Candidate ZIPs are published!
- Zcash Shielded Assets (2 ZIPs)
- Memo bundles
- Explicit fees
- Disallow v4 transactions
- Remove the dependency of consensus on note encryption
- NSM ZIPs from Shielded Labs:
- Voluntary burning
- Issuance smoothing + reissuance from burning
- Burn 60% of transaction fees
- Version 6 transaction format
- Kris participated in a Twitter Space about the NSM.
Working on:
- Address Book encryption (getting the right keys to the SDKs).
- Privately querying lightwalletd for transactions using ephemeral addresses.
Other
Over 1.8M ZEC is now in the shielded pools, an ATH! 
@andrea, @peacemonger, @tonym, and I met in Austin for the week to discuss long-term ECC financial sustainability, user and market research for Zashi Vault, staffing and budgeting, the Z.cash website, and design options for things like Zashi multicurrency support and ZSAs, multi-wallet support, and other elements. We may have also visited the Mothership on election night and enjoyed a life-changing BBQ!
Various conversations with teams from Flexa and Maya in support of integration and co-marketing.
Our next Z|ECC Summit, ECC’s bi-annual team + community planning, has been scheduled for the week of January 13th in Cancun, Mexico. Builders in the community are welcome to join us. The application will be up soon.
We’re hiring! Join us. 
[EDIT] We stopped taking applications for the marketing role for now as we received 500+ applications within a week.
Less than two weeks until the 2nd Zcash halvening!
That’s all for this week.
Making music with you all,
Onward.
