Hi Zeeps!
The surrealist Magritte challenged the notion that we could simply describe an object through words or images. A picture of a pipe is not a pipe. An image cannot be enjoyed on a cold evening next to a warm small fire with friends and a single malt. An image is simply a two-dimensional whisper of a true thing, and images like words are “futile devices."
I was reflecting on the nature of community while attending Consensus this week in Austin, as I spoke with people in our earthly space, while in-between checking in with others in digital space across Slack, Telegram, X, and Signal, and on the “great dev fund debate” in this forum.
In our earthly space of Austin, people’s eyes lit up when they learned I was associated with Zcash. It happens all the time at these events. They talked of their early days of Zcash mining, their recent experience with Zashi, asked if the “spam attack” is still a thing, remarked on the shielded pool hitting an all-time high, cheered the new energy they see from the Zcash community, and asked questions about what’s coming next. This week, these people included authors of recent major crypto legislation in the US, the CEO of a giant crypto firm, founders of other crypto projects, and a small team trying to build on top of Zcash to bring extensibility among dozens of others.
I also reconnected with many others active in the forum or Discord, Zeboot alumni, and a couple of Zcash Foundation board members. I spent time with the Brave team, working through shared goals and hanging with them and the Filecoin team at a joint happy hour.
Throughout the week, many hugs, smiles, laughs, updates, and plans were shared. It felt like a community—the real deal—all together in the hot summer of Austin.
So, what is the Zcash community, really? Is it a group of unknown people responding to a survey? Is it a few dozen faceless posters on the community forum? Is it to be found on Telegram or X or Free2z? Is it holders of ZEC or spenders of ZEC, wallet-downloaders, or website visitors? How do we earn the “I’m a Zcash community member” badge? How long do we get to keep it?
The question of community is highly relevant today as we explore ideas about a new dev fund, or the implications of moving forward without one. We all agree that the “community decides,” but what does that really mean? How do we engage with one another to make a decision?
For many, it’s scary not to have a central authority, an outsourced decider-of-everything. But like with all other complex systems, Zcash must increasingly decentralize authority among more of its community if it is to align itself better to achieve optimal outcomes. The community will be more robust and the project will thrive.
“The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design. To the naive mind that can conceive of order only as the product of deliberate arrangement, it may seem absurd that in complex conditions order and adaptation to the unknown can be achieved more effectively by decentralizing decisions and that a division of authority will actually extend the possibility of overall order. Yet that decentralization actually leads to more information being taken into account.” - Friedrich A. Hayek
And while the dev fund itself is the talk of the town, the conversation is as much about the future of Zcash governance as it is about allocating financial resources. Today we, the community, will decide how decentralized decisions will be made.
Ultimately, changes can only be made with a strong social consensus of the community. If sentiment is unclear, the protocol consensus rules do not change. Only when we come together with a clear collective chorus will we bring new things to the core protocol. And, by necessity, it must be a chorus of people without a centralized authority.
Some here are actively engaging communities across Zcash to give them a more direct voice—so good! Some are on Zechub, Free2z or others. But many are not participating on these forums, X, or Discord. And many of our community members don’t speak English. We need more voices from Zcash communities in places like Brazil, Venezuela, the US, Russia, Korea, Nigeria, and elsewhere.
And so, community member, yes, you person with a beating heart, dreams, ambitions, and perspectives on what Zcash means, should be, and will provide for you and our fellow humans, I hope you will stand and find a good place to share your voice. Speak with conviction, and encourage the people beside you to use their authentic voices to join us.
An authentic and diverse high-conviction community cannot be stopped. And, an unstoppable Zcash community will result in an unstoppable Zcash.
ECC updates for the week.
This was a holiday-shortened work week.
I’m taking a couple of weeks off to spend with my family visiting Croatia and India, and these updates will be paused until I return in mid-June. See you then!
Zashi
iOS
- Fixed swiftlint reported issues
- Built a new API for getting memos by transaction’s rawID (included in SDK 2.1.8 release):
- Improved loading speed of the transaction list and deduplicated memos, starting pipeline of Zashi has been optimized significantly, memos are also loaded on-demand.
- Payments R&D and prototyping.
Analytics Update:
- Unique Installs: 1580
- Total Downloads: 1840
- AppStore Rating: 4.9
Android
- Prepared & tested a new production release
- Prep work for Dark Mode finalized - updated and built new design components, consolidated colors. Implementation in progress.
- Added detailed error dialog for displaying syncing errors:
- Interviewing for additional Android support
Analytics Update:
- Production Install Base: 1050
- Total Installs (incl. Open Beta): 2420
- PlayStore Rating: 4.357
On the backend, R&D was done to determine the best path for currency conversion support without leaking wallet-side IP addresses.
Other
We’ll soon send another poll to ECC ZAC members with dev fund-related questions and share the results.
We continued interviews for the open Director of Finance and Operations position, an additional contract Android developer and Product Designer.
Paul Brigner and I attended Consensus. Ampera did an amazing job with their booth and a contest to see how long people could hang from a pull-up bar. People lined up, and the Zashi tees were gone within the first day. The days and evenings were filled with meetings and catch-ups with friends across the ecosystem.
Paul and I also attended the Coin Center dinner, where the importance of protecting privacy was a key issue, and “privacy is normal” was shouted from the stage. If you aren’t familiar with it, this annual fundraising dinner brings together the who’s who in crypto. I won’t name-drop, but important conversations were had with key leaders and influencers, some of whom I was surprised follow Zcash as closely as they do.
We hosted a happy hour along with Brave and Filecoin. The theme was Stand for Privacy, and the room stayed packed well past the end. Many thanks to the Brave and Filecoin teams for supporting the event. It was fantastic to see the community’s energy, meet new Zcashers, and reconnect with others in person.
Radom announced their intention to support ZEC for payments with third-party marketplaces. We have been working with Radom as part of our partnership with Brave and work on Zashi. Stay tuned for more!
We have been in the process of onboarding to banking and exchange relationships to help us diversify and reduce risk. We have also been working on various contingency plans based on potential changes to financial or regulatory winds. We don’t anticipate anything but these plans allow us to ensure we’re prepared for every scenario.
The core team completed the Penumbra Security Audit, logging 31 total man-hours over two weeks.
Oh, and icymi, the Zcash shielded pool hit an all-time high!
x.com
I’m honored to stand with you all. See you in a couple of weeks!
Onward.
