We only get so many shots to break free from gravity with the right trajectory and momentum. Our launch window is small, and it may not come again.
The launch window from Earth to Mars comes once every 26 months because they orbit the Sun at different speeds. We launch our rockets to surf the most fuel-efficient path, called the Hohmann transfer orbit. Missing the “launch window” means waiting another two years for the next attempt. The celestial bodies are only correctly aligned for so long.
Zcash also has a launch window, a time when everything aligns. But unlike the case with rotating celestial bodies, we may only ever get one shot.
We’ve been preparing for years. We’ve delivered decentralized, encrypted money and made it performant. We recently delivered the foundations of a world-class user experience with Zashi and worked with others to add cross-chain interoperability.
And this week, we began to see regulatory alignment. The US Securities and Exchange Commission hosted a round table on crypto surveillance and privacy. Chairman Atkins acknowledged the challenge with transparent cryptocurrencies, remarking:
“With the advent of crypto, it is no great leap to imagine a steady migration toward a future where the government, and a constellation of intermediaries, can peer into almost every dimension of an individual’s financial life. While regulators may have a voracious appetite for data, that proclivity is obviously—and fundamentally—incompatible with the kind of free society that has made America great.”
Commissioner Hester Peirce followed with her speech, saying:
“Government should not assume ill-intent when people take steps to guard their privacy. Protecting one’s privacy should be the norm, not an indicator of criminal intent. Government should resist the temptation to force intermediation for the purpose of creating a regulatory beachhead or facilitating financial surveillance. Relatedly, the government should avoid imposing regulatory obligations, including Bank Secrecy Act obligations, on a software developer who does not have custody of users’ assets or the ability to override users’ choices. Additionally, the government should pursue bad actors who use privacy-protecting tools for nefarious purposes while protecting good actors who develop and publish these tools and the law-abiding citizens’ who use them to protect themselves from bad actors.”
Remarkable.
While I am heartened, we cannot assume this openness will last. Regimes change. After all, it has been just months since the last one tried to destroy our efforts to build a free world, permanently.
To be truly unstoppable, we need to use the launch window we have in front of us. We must prepare by shedding the dead weight of some of our legacy code (zcashd), deliver scalability (Tachyon, etc.), and build more user-accessible capabilities (more platforms / Zashi Vault). We must also continue to work to build broad coalitions and distribution.
We should focus on these things and drop anything that adds unnecessary weight to the payload. We have a small launch window. Some say we have 1000 days. It may be less than that. T-minus 10, 9, …
Here’s how we prepared this week:
Zashi
What we did:
-
Released Zashi 2.4.10 and Zashi 2.4.11, focused on bug fixes of user-reported issues, and minor UX/UI improvements.
-
Progressed on a new iteration of the Duress/Decoy Wallet & Setting a Passcode for the Zashi app.
-
Started looking into improvements for the Swap/Pay features to improve user visibility and troubleshooting in case of issues.
What’s up next:
-
Focus on troubleshooting user-reported issues.
-
Focus on addressing tech debt items.
-
Continue iterating on designs for the Duress/Decoy Wallet and setting a Passcode.
-
Planning and preparation for the January Z|ECC Summit.
iOS Analytics
-
Unique Installs: 33.6k (0.6k increase)
-
Total Downloads: 38.9k (0.9k increase)
-
AppStore Rating: 4.9* (unchanged)
Android Analytics
-
Total Install Base: 16.3k (0.1k increase)
-
Total Installs (incl. Open Beta): 39.8k (0.8k increase)
-
PlayStore Rating: 4.22* (0.03 decrease)
Swap Volume
-
December: $56.2M
-
YTD: $371M
Zcash Core
What we did:
-
Evaluated the Zypherpunks Hackathon submissions and determined the winners. Thanks to everyone for their contribution, and congratulations to the winners!
-
Released Zallet alpha 3. (wallet#352)
-
Made significant progress on Zcash-devtool functionality required for the disbursement of lockbox funds.
-
Prepared PRs exposing WalletRead::get_received_outputs over the Swift FFI & Android SDK (zcash-light-client-ffi#273 and zcash-android-wallet-sdk#1868) to fix Shielding/Receiving transaction progress.
What’s up next:
-
Zcash-devtool: Finalize functionalities required for creating lockbox disbursement transactions, and run the disbursement.
-
Review PRs for adding P2SH multisig support to Keystone.
-
Zallet Next: focus on Zallet 0.1.0-alpha-4 - https://github.com/zcash/wallet/issues/288.
-
Continue work on transparent address rotation - a pre-requisite librustzcash#2036.
-
Make it possible to rewind to a precise target block height. (a requirement for the Resync Wallet feature)
-
Review non-ZSA changes within the Orchard ZSA PRs (non-ZSA note-commitment circuit changes)
-
R&D: Create ZIP drafts for an alternative V6 transaction format that will enablemore minorr network upgrades & incremental deployment of proposed NU7 features. (tracked for Hacker House discussion, if we do not get to it earlier, deadline for the ZIPs is Jan 16th)
Other:
We hosted the monthly PGP meeting.
Paul attended the SEC Crypto Task Force Roundtable on Financial Surveillance and Privacy. Catch Zooko’s presentation!
I joined Cypherpunk as an advisor. Stoked!
Haven’t tried Zashi CrossPay yet? Pretty simple.
Check out the 12 days of ZECMas! There is still time!
Imcyi: an excellent post on Zcash and quantum computing
Shapeshift added ZEC. Feels right.
Few.
That’s all for this week! Happy holidays, everyone.
Preparing to launch,
Onward.