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.
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
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! 
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. 
Alright, we’re cooking!
Let’s keep turning up the heat. 
Onward.
. 
Hopefully this will encourage more folks to join and we’ll have many of productive and healthy conversations here in the future.