The North Face Meru Expedition, Renan Ozturk
Happy halvening Zeeps!
“Look at that idiot,” my wife remarked to her friend as they drove into the Garden of the Gods park in Colorado many years ago. Some guy was over 5 meters up a rock wall, climbing without a rope, and clearly not as skilled as he should be for taking on the challenge. What she didn’t see was that “idiot” was me.
Some friends and I arrived at the park early and found the route we were set on climbing. It was bolted in, but the first anchor bolt was a bit up the rock face. Though I was just an average climber and likely not the best of the friends I was with, in my bravado, I began the ascent to clip in.
The rock was still cold and hidden from the sunrise of the early morning. I was still a couple meters from the anchor when I lost the feeling in my fingertips. At that point, the only way forward was up. I got there, but not without recognition that I might not. One wrong move, and there would be nothing but the rocks below and pain.
I attended the DCG Summit this week. There were 150 of us on the first day, including the DCG team and fellow founders and CEOs from the crypto industry. We were there to reconnect, collaborate, and refuel with insights from inspirational speakers from other places. One of the speakers was Jimmy Chin (in the photo above). Jimmy is an accomplished climber, photographer, author, and film director. He was a director of Free Solo and a subject of the documentary Meru.
I highly recommend these. I am in complete awe of what these people have accomplished. My stomach twists when I see the footage, hear their stories, and watch what they do. My little jaunt up to that first bolt was nothing. And it’s clear that in that sport, they are wired in a way that I, and likely most of you, are not. But in some ways, we are.
We have our own seemingly unconquerable mountain to climb, with a unique set of skills, dedication and commitment to build, sustain, and grind our way to the top. As a team, we are “the sum of our collective experience,” and our experience runs deep.
We’re building “trustless,” private electronic cash. But we do it with trust in one another. I just jumped off the NU6 and halvening engineering call. A group joined from across timezones and worldwide to ensure that NU6 activated without a hitch. It included members of ECC, the Zcash Foundation, and community members. One collective team working together. High function, high trust.
In climbing the most daunting of peaks and delivering money that sets people free, our success will depend on this cross-ecosystem collaboration, where “slow is fast,” our route is deliberate and clear, and our work is relentless. We prepare and we improvise and we move forward, one pitch at a time.
We climb.
Here’s ECC’s contribution for the week:
Zashi
Zashi 1.2.3 Released with support for Spanish, fixes and fun.
Zashi Design
- Ad hoc engineering edits and requests
- Working with third-party animator on a new project
- Localized designs for AppStore and PlayStore listings
- [In-progress] High-priority focus on Keystone Wallet integration designs
Zashi iOS
- Zashi 1.2.3 + SDK 2.2.7 Release
- AddressBook encryption resolved
- Testing + bug fixes
- Released to Production!
- Keystone Hardware Wallet Integration
- Keystone SDK fixes
- Animated QR player and scanner implemented and tested in Zashi
- Started iOS SDK work - refactor of the account
- Flexa
- 1.0.6 adopted & tested
- A disclaimer for Integrations screen implemented
- New status screen implemented for cases when Keychain fails
Analytics Update:
Unique Installs: 4.08k
Total Downloads: 4.85k
AppStore Rating: 4.9*
Zashi Android
- Zashi 1.2.2 + SDK 2.2.6 Release
- We finalized the Address book auto-backup feature that enables user migration on a new device
- We added the ability to switch the system language on the Zashi app level
- Bug Fixes:
- We fixed seed phrase blurring on the Seed screen for pre-Android 12 devices
- We fixed the first Zashi app launch authentication decision logic
- We also fixed this newly redesigned Seed screen UI for very small screens
- Released to Production!
- Flexa
- Flexa 1.0.6 has been integrated and tested
- We added a new Disclaimer widget on the Integrations screen
- Keystone Hardware Wallet Integration
- Zashi - implementing new designs
- SDK - with analyzing PCZTs and multi-account support
Analytics Update:
Total Install Base: 2.43k
Total Installs (incl. Open Beta): 9.16k
PlayStore Default Rating: 4.667*
Zcash Core
NU6 activated!
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Keystone Support in DAG
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Worked to design a protocol for Keystone to expose account details to a Zashi wallet.
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ZIP Sync in which we discussed action groups for ZSAs and started the candidate NU7 ZIP selection process.
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Developed an ephemeral Diffie-Hellman protocol for hardware wallet enrollment.
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Updated the Swift SDK PR for ZIP 32 arbitrary key derivation with the FFI 0.11.0 build (zcash-swift-wallet-sdk#1501).
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Reviewed:
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Opened:
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Merged:
Other
The DCG Summit was fantastic. Much of it was off the record, but it was good to meet and catch up with executives from DCG, Ripio, Ledger, Railgun, Coin Center, and Brave, among others. The Zashi roadmap with Flexa, upcoming Maya support, and ZSAs were particular highlights for people. Many told me that they installed Zashi or are brushing off their old wallets to play with ZEC, which has laid dormant for some time.
I attended a Universal Privacy Alliance board meeting this week. The UPA is moving forward with plans to create working groups to support event planning and research on use cases and adoption, which we’ll be a part of.
We’re looking for someone to join our core team! Check out the job description and apply here!
Now is the time to begin our next governance and funding conversations. I posted on that topic here and look forward to your engagement.
Interested in helping ECC shape its roadmap? We’re coming together in Mexico this January. Apply here to join us!
That’s all for this week.
With you to the top,
Onward.