In case you missed it, the Zcash Foundation announced a Grant Program last week and submissions are still open! The Foundation is planning on disbursing $80,000 in ZEC for community ideas. First deadline is September 15th to open a GitHub issue to discuss your proposal idea. Check out the details here:
4 Likes
Grant awardees have been selected! Check more here:
2 Likes
vgm
November 21, 2017, 7:16pm
4
Didn’t hear of this when it was first announced. Anyone know if there are plans to award additional grants next quarter?
The Foundation is definitely planning on future grant programs—using this inaugural program and its results as a baseline for comparison. We’re not sure about timeline for the next series of grants but we’ll definitely be communicating it widely—I’m sorry you didn’t hear about this quarter’s program! (though that’s good feedback that we need to cast a wider net)
2 Likes
xyZcash
November 22, 2017, 11:29am
6
Fantastic news! A special thank you to everyone involved with the Zcash Foundation and of course the wider community here.
Really looking forward to getting fully started with my project and achieving our mutual goals for enabling true financial privacy and hopefully exceeding community expectations.
On a personal note, I would like to reiterate how the ongoing Zcash Foundation Grant Program will continue to provide excellent opportunities for applicants and their Zcash related projects in the future. I’m certainly proud to have a successful project in this inaugural funding round.
3 Likes
kek
April 16, 2018, 9:15am
7
what happened with this? have any of these projects been completed?
This one at least…https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.guarda.zec
2 Likes
Thanks for that shout out @Ecoinomical and fair question @kek . The grants were fully transferred toward the end of December and the grant recipients are not (strictly) required to post any updates on their projects until their full report six months afterward. I’ve pinged them to ask for more public updates as well, though that wasn’t a strict requirement—for the next grant program we will stipulate more frequent updates.
In addition to Gaurda’s app, you can find additional discussion after they received an award in the GitHub issue here:
opened 07:54AM - 13 Sep 17 UTC
wallet
UX
complete-submission
awarded
**Guarda Wallet** team application for Zcash foundation grants 2017Q4
## **… Motivation and overview**
We are a group of blockchain enthusiasts with background in software development and product management. We have a distributed team from EU, Russia and Ukraine. At the moment we have experts from IT, fintech, blockchain, security, marketing, design, UI/UE.
Recently we have united together to develop a project called Guarda. Mobile cryptocurrency wallet which would make using any cryptocurrency easy, accessible and secure.
Our wallet for the first currency was launched this week in [Google Play](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.guarda.ethereum)
Zcash is one of our favourite blockchains thanks to technological supremacy, great development team and clear value proposition. As a team of crypto enthusiasts we believe in anonymity as key feature of decentralized currencies and blockchain technology overall. Zcash already is in our development roadmap. However development of Zcash light wallet is yet an issue due to the lack of open source mobile light wallet implementations.
## **Technical approach**
We are guided by several core principles:
- Building trustless solutions.
If customer wants to rely on other cryptocurrency node he\she can type in this information.
- Multicurrency approach.
We thoroughly choose best cryptocurrencies and willing to support them all.
- Respect customers privacy.
We do not require any KYC or customers data. No registration is required as well.
- Never touch customers funds.
The proposed wallet is a light wallet allowing customer manage his\her keys himself
- Never touch fiat.
Purchase of cryptocurrencies will be delivered in collaboration with professional payment gateways.
In general the wallet consists of the following parts:
- Server side node
Blockchain community developed solution. Open-source and distributed free
- Lightwallet library
This allows you to work with the cryptocurrency blockchain, without the additional overhead of having to write your own integration code for the platform. Usually the library interacts with the server side node through JSON RPC. As we are applying for a grant we believe this part of our work should be open sourced and available for public on a royalty free basis.
- GUI layer
Customer experience oriented graphic user interface running on mobile operating system of the mobile phone.
High level architecture can be described as follows:
<img width="616" alt="hl arch" src="https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/31130561/30365728-4efe5f1a-9871-11e7-8a73-ed2278e5433f.png">
Network HL architecture:
<img width="279" alt="net hl arch" src="https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/31130561/30365745-567e2fcc-9871-11e7-97f3-be6f860cb7bc.png">
We have three basic stages for the wallet implementation.
- Everything starts from the own blockchain nodes deployment. We have own primary and backup nodes for the wallet support. In addition we offer a range of third party nodes that can be applied by user. We are using sophisticated proxy for the node balancing in order to get up-to-dated blockchain status.
- The next step is mobile client library implementation. It is used by mobile wallet to manage transactions and abstract blockchain, security, cryptography layer from GUI developers.
- The last stage is the design implementation of mobile application. We are thriving to use trendy and cozy interfaces in our wallets to provide best customer experience.
We are developing light wallet which means that user private keys are always under the user control. The private keys are always on the customer device and managed only by user. The wallet signing a transaction on the device side and transmit the signed transaction over Internet using ssl to blockchain node.
The Guarda wallet implemented functions are:
- send coins
- receive coins
- exchange cryptocurrencies to zcash,
- PIN code app protection
To be implemented in following two months (before Zcash wallet to be released):
- purchase zcash for the fiat .
Our committed partners for card transactions and SEPA payments are available to be disclosed upon request from Grant Review Committee.
- other node usage
- mnemonic phrase
- password encrypted keyfile
## **Team background and qualifications**
- Paul S., CEO, has three years experience in blockchain, 10 years in fintech. Certified banking cards security and business expert. Launched over 6 successful projects within last three years. Paul interests are: cryptocurrency exchanges, wallets, smart contracts, oracles.
- Ondrej H., product manager, has 15+ experience in IT product management. Has in the portfolio projects from mobile ads, SaaS enterprise solutions, high load IT solutions, mobile app development and production.
- Vlad A., senior Android developer, 7+ years of mobile development
- Valentin S., senior Android developer, 6+ years of mobile development
- Alex N., senior iOS developer, 6+ years of mobile development
- Roman L., senior backend developer, expert in blockchain, has 3+ years of experience for blockchain development, cryptocurrency mining, etc.
## **Evaluation plan**
We have quite tiny and reasonable schedule for the wallet implementation. The distributed team with a variety range of professionals gives us ability to launch in the parallel main project phases: blockchain node deployment, mobile library and wallet GUI development.
We are using agile approach with continuous delivery, so in any time of moment we are ready to present our progress and performance to the Grant Review Committee.
## **Security considerations**
Security is our priority. The light wallet approach itself is our vision for the secured blockchain wallet. The customer private keys are the most important and sensitive aspect.
We store keys in OS secure storage in an encrypted form.
We are using additional product features to increase the product resistance for the attacks. The team has already implemented PIN-code for the wallet access, password keyfile encyption is expected by the middle of October.
At the node side we are using network security tools, like a WAF with ML.
## **Schedule**
We are estimated the whole zcash wallet duration as 11 weeks:
- **1 week** hosting & node setup, UE
- **2 week** node proxy, setup net security tools, mobile library, UI mock ups
- **3 week** mobile library development, UI prototyping
- **4 week** mobile library development, UI design
- **5 week** mobile library development, mobile app implementation, UI design
- **6 week** integration with third parties services, mobile app implementation
- **7 week** mobile app implementation
- **8 week** alfa release, QA, bug fixes, mobile app implementation
- **9 week** QA, bug fixes, beta-release
- **10-11 week** Project Risks worked
## **Budget and justification**
We have estimated preliminary costs estimation for 60K USD for the project that will cover almost all issues.
[Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/guarda.co/)
[Twitter](https://twitter.com/GuardaWallet)
[email](mailto:hello@guarda.co)
[github](https://github.com/guardaco/)
Coincentrix also provided an update on their activities in February on the Zcash Foundation general email list:https://lists.z.cash.foundation/pipermail/general/2018/000003.html
I expect to receive more updates on the GitHub issues and Zcash Foundation mailing list, and will definitely promote links and summaries here and on the blog when the final reports are available.
3 Likes
