Hey everyone, with the news that zecwallet and zecwallet lite are ending (but @zancas is working on reviving it), there is no desktop wallet for zcash. And there is only the command line, full node, option.
There are mobile wallets (does anyone know if Nighthawk/Edge/Unstoppable will support UA and the Orchard Pool by the 31st when Halo2 is activated?).
But it is considered pretty standard for a crypto project to have an “official” desktop GUI wallet.
It seems a shame that with such a major upgrade coming on the 31st, that this could seriously hinder mass adoption if we do not have a desktop GUI option, and it would be kind of a waste of such amazing tech, if most people won’t be accessing it because there are no compatible wallets.
I’m pretty new here so am a bit clueless, but have the devs/ZF or anyone made a statement about this?
I feel like the dev fund/grants should be used to emergency fund an official GUI desktop wallet that will work with UA and Orchard, so people can actually use those features on the 31st.
With all the funding available, it just feels odd to have a major release without a compatible desktop GUI wallet that people can use.
Tl;DR We’re a “we”, we’re decentralized, we’re autonomous, we’re organized, we’re pro-POS, we’re actively seeking to provide alternatives to “official” centralized technologies and orgs, economic viability is intrinsic to our design, we’re hacking on zecwallet
I’m part of a group that is focused on creating/maintaining a viable version of zecwallet, going forward. I tend to be the loudest, but I’m not writing the most code.
Our intention is to be self-funding ASAP… but much work remains to be done.
We’d love to get financial support, in the interim. We aim to start providing invitations to test our beta soon.
We’re not now, nor will we ever be “official”. A significant motivator for us is to distribute responsibility for privacy tech away from the ECC and the ZF.
To be clear, we hope to provide a viable sustainable alternative to any, e.g. ECC wallet, because:
centralization of authority/responsibility is toxic
we believe that migration away from energy-intensive consensus is critical, and we want the ECC to focus on that
This is very interesting to me since I believe a healthy “$zec-powered economy” (a concept I am toying with) should have many entities who can make a living by providing a good/service in the “free market”. Some things can have no viable business model - like the most basic research - and require “public goods” type funding. However, other things could use a spectrum of public goods startup funding and/or a viable business model for sustainability. I’m glad you are experimenting with this.
It is an interesting experiment (micropayments provided by users if they wish), but if we aren’t using the dev fund for such vital projects as a desktop wallet when we do not have other options, there’s no real point in having a dev fund still taking 25% I think?
I agree with the sentiment of immediate availability of access to transact with the Orchard pool & Unified Addresses(UAs) for the end-user. It must be noted that NU5 itself was delayed a couple of times and has been in the works for a while. Both @NighthawkApps & ZecWallet were funded last year to deliver Orchard support by end of the year, the ZOMG had funded @cakewallet & Trezor Hardware wallet to add Orchard support as well, but with moving timelines for NU5, the teams managed to maintain the existing wallets and follow the development and deployment of NU5.
With the NU5 launch, advanced users will be able to utilize UAs through command-line interfaces using the zcashd full node wallet. I hope we see the front-end UIs developed in the coming weeks to play with UAs. UAs bring new concepts in address management and changes in user experience for providing maximum privacy when transacting with Shielded ZEC. I believe the release of wallets with end-to-end UA integration & best privacy-preserving practices incorporated might take a few weeks to months to release. It does feel odd to announce a major upgrade to trustless zk-SNARKs money without having easy-to-use wallets available on the go. But that is where we are today, we can learn from this to prepare better for the next major upgrade.
Here are a couple of existing discussions on the topic to follow:
Sure I think the DF should be used! Just pointing out that coming up with business strategies for sustainability and “sovereignty” is very empowering for people and should be explored. There can be more than one “positive feedback loop” in the Zcash ecosystem.
Thanks so much for the welcome and all this information! I’m brand new so don’t know what has been happening.
Some follow up questions I have:
What is the ZOMG and did Trezor and cake wallet end up adding Orchard/UA support with that money?
Did nighthawk add Orchard/UA support? I know zecwallet has not, though I did not realize they had received money to do so.
I recently read about the migration tool for sprout to sapling that helped preserve users’ privacy compared to if they were to do the migration themselves (send to transparent and then send to sapling address).
Are there any plans for a sapling to orchard migration tool?
I know Trezor has been making progress and I recently saw @dontbeevil comment on Twitter that they have been monitoring their Github. Maybe they could provide an update from their point of view?
Cake wallet is more contentious from what I can tell due to XMR community. Cake wallet posted that they will not start their work until Orchard is activated. So I would expect an update from them when NU5 goes live if they are indeed going to proceed with their integration.
This link also suggests that Gemini, Edge, Unstoppable, and Nighthawk have indicated support for NU5 upgrade with auto-shielding and/or unified addresses: ZEC & Halo - Cypherpunk Zero
The ZOMG is now ZCG zcashcommunitygrants.org which evaluates grants and funds ecosystem development. CakeWallet’s status of adding ZEC support is still unclear, they haven’t officially submitted KYC docs to receive funding and add ZEC support to their multi-coin wallet. Trezor’s milestones are in progress, I believe they will resume the pending work following the NU5 upgrade. I am personally looking forward to testing UAs on Trezor Model-T.
As of now, it’s all a work in progress to get Orchard/UA support on Zcash user wallets. You can follow @NighthawkApps monthly updates for more info, the UX for Orchard is in preliminary steps as of now.
I am looking forward to learning more about the Orchard migration tool too!
Cake Wallet is still interested in adding Zcash, but we only got the ability to be able to build upon Orchard yesterday. We aren’t going to be ready by May 31st, but we are actively looking at this
I see here under the zcash community grants wishlist: https://zcashcommunitygrants.org/ that wallets are listed, but under that subsection it lists web wallet, mobile wallets, hardware wallets, but not desktop wallets, which in my opinion are also badly needed since there is no alternative to the full node zcashd command line option right now.
