"Yes, chef!" - ECC Weekly Update for April 19

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Hi Zeeps,

One of the team at ECC mentioned to me this week that they get up every Saturday morning and read these updates as part of their weekly rhythm. They said it was cool that we invited the community into our kitchen every week. I love that analogy.

Ever watch The Bear? If you are unfamiliar, it’s a TV series that centers on “Carmy,” a Michelin-starred chef who returns home to take over a struggling sandwich shop left behind by his brother. The transformation of the restaurant and the people who work there is gritty and intense. We people are messy creatures, each with our own quirks, aspirations, frustrations, and demons.

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In Carmy’s kitchen. Everyone calls each other “chef.” It’s meant to convey respect to the other person, the person cooking and creating beside you.

Something is asked of you, “Yes, chef!”

A compliment is given, “Yes, chef.”

But it also goes the other direction.

Pissed off at someone in a stressful situation? “Yes… chef.”

ECC’s kitchen also features a fun cast of incredibly brilliant and skilled characters deeply dedicated to our mission, community, and each other. Like any group of people, we have disagreements, and maybe even more so during times of high stress. But what we’re cooking up together is rockin’, and I love it.

Before I get into all the things we were up to this week, I want to address one dish that was not great. Things got a little messy in the Zcash kitchen yesterday. We participated in a special Arobrist call to align and collaborate with others in the ecosystem on the current state of various development activities and discuss what might be rolled out and in what timeframe.

The meeting originated at my request, and I dropped an agenda in the forum. The Zcash Foundation facilitated the call. Long story short, we didn’t align well or effectively collaborate. We bickered. I heard the same word to describe it more than once: “shitshow.” Well said, Zeeps. If you haven’t watched it, I would watch The Bear instead - better drama. FWIW, part 2 of that meeting in the afternoon Arborist call was much better.

The event demonstrated that we are all…, um, human. We’ll improve. To have a growth mindset is to see failings for what they are, learn from them, and then change for the better. Sometimes, it gets heated in the kitchen, even when we’re all committed to the same thing. Especially when there is so much at stake. But as I wrote last week, “…finding our rhythms is vitally important. We must be collectively dedicated, focused, and working together.”

Before I move on, I encourage you to respectfully call me out, publicly or privately, if something is amiss. If you see something unhealthy or failing, speak out. I will listen.

That’s how we’ll build a better kitchen. That’s how we’ll win — together, all us chefs. We need each other.

Yes, chef?
Say it out loud. You know you want to. It’ll feel good and make you smile.
I’m smiling right now, thinking about you all smiling back.

Alright, let’s get to what we’ve been cooking up this week:

Roadmap

We built and released our Q2+ roadmap midweek. You can read my summary in a corresponding forum post.

I won’t rehash a bunch here other than to communicate something so it’s not misinterpreted. The Zcash portion of the roadmap is our proposal based on much thought, assessment of our capacity, and understanding of where other parties are contributing and will be ready. The work to align is ongoing with another community meeting slated for next week.

Zashi

“zashi, it’s delicious”

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We now have over 1,000 unique iOS app installs in less than 30 days and 40 5-star ratings. We hit 300 pre-registrations for Zashi Android and about 1290 beta participants. You know what that tells me? Our community is much larger than people see on the forum, in Discord, Telegram, and X. Growing this user base will be a blast!

We dropped iOS 1.0.5 this week. Make sure you update! More details are in the ECC Discord.

We also shipped our final beta version of Android. Version 1.0 will be out before you know it! :wink:

Zcash

We had several conversations about zcashd plans and worked through what we think is a reasonable timeline and set of expectations for zcashd deprecation, NU6, and NU7.

The team also worked through getting zcashd 5.9.0 out the door. This maintenance release updates dependencies and sets a new end-of-service height to ensure service continuity. We had a couple of hiccups and are trying to get it out as soon as tomorrow.

We also spent some time working through ideas for improving note management and dealing with machine and build issues. Str4D also managed to solve an Xcode bug that was affecting a lot of projects, including ours.

Others things on our plate

Paul hosted another PGP for Crypto event, with a massive lineup!

We met with Deloitte to discuss the potential impact of the possible Treasury Broker rules and IRS draft 1099-DA.

We adjusted our treasury management and prioritized the sale of other assets over any ZEC sales to cover our expenses. We also have a new bookkeeper joining us next week.

The team also looked at staffing needs based on our roadmap, what we’re learning, and funding levels. I hope we can begin hiring as early as next month.

@paulbrigner and I met with Bitmain to discuss possible paths for the ongoing ViaBTC concerns, including introductions to others in the Chinese Zcash mining community.

Excited as much as I am about Maya? Catch me here with the @mayaprotocol and @hanh next Monday!

Oh, and happy Bitcoin halving day! Too bad it’s been captured. :open_mouth:

Alright, we’re cooking!
Let’s keep turning up the heat. :fire: :fire: :fire:

Onward.

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The only thing missing in this Abortist call was Technical Analysis. #Fib

Regardless of what most think, I enjoyed it. It was necessary, raw and open. This felt like real cypherpunk stuff (not that I’ll know what cypherpunk feels like even if it slapped me in the face lol). But it felt real because I care and I could see that you all care as well. It hit hard when @nuttycom said he’s been working hard all these years and that he couldn’t go any faster, he meant every word of that man :cry:. @secparam was a necessary evil in this plot lol, I love ian, he’s real, we should all love ian, none of us would be here if not for his work and dedication to this cause.

I was feeling demoralised because of too much silence and textbook tweets and posts and you know all the “corporate” artificial stuff. This surely woke me up and set me straight, Zcash is anything but “corporate” or artificial. It’s as real as it gets. This was indeed healthy, if anything, for the community. I probably won’t watch it twice, but I know it’s there for whenever I feel Zcash is losing its way.

Thanks chef. Keep cheffing :man_cook:t2:

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I agree with @ZcashRabbi

The call felt real and necessary, on many levels. Afterwards, I received a couple of messages from the zeal, commenting on the heat in the kitchen, but I felt energized, refreshed and remotivated.

It’s nice to be reminded that y’all are still the awesome and committed humans I’ve come to know and love.

Bring on the feast!

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Overall I don’t think the call was too bad.

There was a bit too much discussion about “What have you been doing over the past year?”

vs

“What work is left to do and what’s the most efficient way to get there?”

It seems like both teams are aligned on key issues like depreciation of Zcashd and ZSAs, just a matter of division of work and conquering objectives.

A little friction is not a bad thing, that’s what having multiple passionate teams get us. If it was just one team calling the shots then it wouldn’t be very “decentralized” would it :wink:

Perhaps someone neutral could serve as a moderator to keep the conversation from veering too far off course next time?

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Hire.

More.

People.

The skeleton crews at both of these organizations is not how you make progress. People burn out and then they leave.

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Shawn, you know darn well that is a lie. This project is still under the thumb of the foundation.

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I think the team at ECC would disagree with that statement.

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this is awesome! seeing ECC getting closer to the true “all in zcash” vision makes me smile.
now we only need to get the foundation to do the same! if not, we as the community should take that into consideration when we decide for the funding over the next years.

appreciate the updates @joshs

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So that’s why Josh had to practically beg jack for a meeting to figure out who’s on first?

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Hands off @nuttycom! That is all. :slight_smile:

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I have worked in disjointed companies where individual departments compete with one another and have different vision/goals and it leads to toxicity without a doubt. I think we are only seeing the tip of the iceberg on display. One thing that is clear from that arborist call and prior forum posts is one hand doesn’t know what the other is doing as the confusion between QEDiT ZF and ECC over ZSAs is pretty silly, since theyve ben under development for like 2 years?

I can understand the position of ZF feeling like they get pushed around by ECC as the smaller dev fund recipient, however there is almost NO engagement by ZF to the community forum so from the start it is a one sided dialouge. The different personalities in here is like herding cats sometimes (all the time), but if there is no conversation from ZF we don’t know what they think

Clearly the communication between the two orgs is insufficient, and there needs to be more, probably in private, so there is a unfication in vision.

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I think this is the crux of the issue, one million percent. At least @joshs is attempting to do community outreach.

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We are all the community. It’s important to have these conversations, in public with broad community engagement and visibility. I’m not a fan of closed doors in this context.

Jonathan and I meet once or twice a month. My goal with this call was to get alignment on the path ahead and the collective steps we need to take together. And, to give all of us in the community clarity.

While this call fell short, imo, I believe we heard one another and I can see a clear path.

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Hello @pkr. This is also for @zkcroc

@decentralistdan and @Autotunafish and myself are constantly hosting public calls. The Arborist Call and Friday Lounge specifically exist for this purpose. Those two Zcashers work endlessly to distribute information and keep everyone up to date with the current standing and path for their organization and Zcash, as a whole. They are always available and open to feedback. Other people, projects and orgs are invited to these calls (which do get broadcast out of their walled gardens) and I am doing everything I can to strengthen the comms bridges between the orgs, all of us here, and the public.

It’s absolutely incorrect to say that ZF doesn’t do community engagement. I see them and speak with them in public calls, multiple times a week. The entire community (literally everyone) is invited to join us.

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Ok That’s fair, I’m not trying to diminish the effort that ZF puts in, however a live call is not suited to everybody, particularly for those that live in an Asian timezone or people who have a busy existance IRL. This forum is the most accessible and also the main focal point for long form debate, it would good to get a but more back and forth from ZF reps

The crux of what I was getting at is this, to have the two main block reward recipients not being completely clear with what one another is doing or pivoting unexpectedly, is fraught with danger in inefficiencies and rework, zcash is already running on a tight budget!

It’s a strange and unique situation these guys find themselves in, having to answer to and take feedback from a bunch of internet anons, but overall I commend everyone on doing a brilliant job, you can feel the energy building around here and I’m excited for the future of zcash.

Just remember to take a break, burnout is REAL

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:100: :100:

The concerted effort made by @joshs, to revitalize the vibe and engage community momentum in the forum, is seen and greatly appreciated :sparkles: Hopefully this will encourage more folks to join and we’ll have many of productive and healthy conversations here in the future.

To summarize: devfund orgs are understaffed and overworked, should be doing more, faster, for an uncertain amount of pay, and also take time to do nothing but rest.

Sorry about the snarks, can’t help myself.

Quite frankly, the health of all these individuals is the most important thing. In recent years, I have personally seen many amazing people leave Zcash (and Tech, entirely) due to burnout and, when that happens, it hurts everyone :heart:

Finally …

Join ZconV in just TWO WEEKS for a lot more of that :fire: :fire: :fire:

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Relatedly, I posted this in a Telegram chat (slightly modified for clarity here) and reposting for visibility:

The two engineering teams (ECC and ZF) meet every week with the exception of the last couple weeks due to PTO and planning conflicts. [note: these are intended to be engineering to engineering and I don’t personally participate]

The primary confusion has been related to the wallet. zebrad has no wallet. Until there is a wallet that works with zebrad, it can’t be used by miners and exchanges, which is required if ZSAs are not supported in zcashd.

ZF has been clear that it won’t build a wallet for zebrad. That means that ECC or someone else must. We have been building infrastructure that direction with the Zashi backend. Zenith (grant funded project) is one possibility but its my understanding that they they won’t be ready in time for ZSA activation.

Jon didn’t know who was responsible for a wallet that works with zebrad. That’ll be necessary for ZSA activation. He and I talk 1:1 every couple weeks. The last time we spoke, he told me they might be able to help but it was unclear who was going to be responsible for what.

There is also the question of who needs to work with the exchanges and miners on switching over to zebrad.

All of this is why I reached out to ZF to ask them to join us (along with Qedit and Shielded Labs) for this call. The objective was to jointly determine who was stepping up to what and when and close these gaps. That was the agenda - full stop.

In the call, we introduced the idea of Transient Testnets in our roadmap and on the call. It got lost in the noise. This would allow Qedit to deploy ZSAs for testing by the community ahead of audits, a fully integrated and audited wallet, etc. I’ll follow up with Jon on that.

It sounds like Qedit might be ready for that kind of testing mid year but @_jon will need to confirm. If I’m not mistaken, we also need to settle on a fee model.

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I confirm that’s our target :slight_smile: Exactly for this goal, we’ve planned a ZSA-testnet that’s not dependent on NU6 merge. But also in parallel we’re starting audit efforts.

I like how things are getting concrete in these calls. There’s a lot of work from a lot of people that needs to fit together…

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You need a project manager or something for an interface between ECC <> Zcash Foundation. Clearly (mis)communication is the issue…

…Which brings us back to my “Who’s on First” question.

Why don’t you have an editor to cut clips from all of these zoom calls no one has enough time to watch, and re-post them on your Twitter (Zcash/ECC) accounts.

This is easy content, Josh!

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That is a great idea!

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