With the end of the year upon us, I hope people at ECC and in the Zcash Community are finding some time to relax, recoup and enjoy a little vacation time after what has been a tough year - at least for the markets.
Hopefully, like me, the attraction to crypto and to ZEC in particular isn’t about the dollar conversion rate, but more about the technology and the development of a solid, reliable and easily accessible privacy coin.
And so, with that, I want to hear about what you are looking forward to in the year ahead.
Are you developing something cool? If so, what’s your 2023 roadmap look like? Are you just an end-user of Zcash and have some projects you’re keeping an eye on? What’s the best of what’s to come in 2023?
With the advent of ZSAs, an ever increasing demand from Zcash and crypto holders in general to try new applications and services; presents a huge opportunity for builders to utilize the next year and build, service and promote new & existing applications using ZEC.
I believe the community is open for new ideas and funding teams & individuals alike to spread the magic of Zero-Knowledge Money to more holders.
I look forward to ZEC integrations with Railway wallet, Thorchain, Ledger & Trezor hardware wallets. Improved usability of zebra node client & its lightwalletd counterpart, ongoing development of Free2Z, Ywallet, ZGo!, QEDIT proposals and ZingoLabs & ZecWallet updates. I’m also expecting a proposal from Nym Network to build libraries for Zcash wallets to provide network level privacy, Tor Project’s Arti is also available to integrate today.
With so much major ongoing work in parallel from top teams, I might have missed some projects!
For @NighthawkApps the arrival of DAG-sync and adoption of ZIP-317 is expected to improve end user experience. @vamsi & developers are still working on the tail end of ZEC x Thorchain integration.
How about you @egg? What are your visions for Zcash & UX? (My team plans to deliver your UI/UX work to the masses next year : )
Security is important for cryptocurrencies. Other coins do not. Zooko, the founder of Zcash, works hard. He is a cryptography expert. Zcash is the only thing that differentiates it from current finance. It’s hard to do, but in the distant future, zero-knowledge proofs will be used a lot, and zcash will be used by many people as a store of value.
Of course, I am looking forward to seeing how Nighthawk Wallet progresses.
Elsewhere, I’m really looking forward to seeing what progress is made in the way of utility; to see progress in wallet development – with a focus on speed and ease of use. The flows from fiat to ZEC to spend.
Speaking of spend, there needs to be places to spend ZEC. ZGo! is a great start. One thing is making it easy to use and getting the UX correct, but the other is making it easy to adopt, the marketing and awareness. This is a tough one that requires some attention. As a business, I need to know the reason why they should support (or trial) Zcash as a payment method and how to do this within the laws, regulations, and tax of the nation they are in.
If they don’t already, projects like ZGo! should have a decimated sales / account manager, in my opinion. Someone who has the responsibility of going out, speaking to businesses and getting them onboarded to the product, providing ways of how to correctly adopt ZEC and advertise this to their customers.
Oh, and hardware! Trezor keep promising shielded addresses on a hardware device is on its way. Ledger are keeping quiet. Both have taken way too long to implement this and I am keeping my fingers crossed for 2023.
