Zeboot: ECC + community workshops

General
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As ECC leans into removing friction and barriers and focusing our efforts, we going to convene together soon, and we’re inviting you to join us.

The globally distributed team at ECC will be meeting together in early 2024, just as soon as is humanly possible for a summit, Zeboot. It will be a series of workshops used to evaluate our current focus areas, and define opportunities and priorities moving forward. We’ll look at what will have the most significant impact for increasing the number of Zcash users and weigh that against time and level of effort. We want to look hard at how to best build momentum.

But here’s the thing. I don’t want us to do that in a vacuum. We will open the ECC doors to the community to participate in these workshops. You’ll have to come in person, and you’ll have to pay your own way or perhaps find a grant. This won’t be for lurkers, but for community members willing and able to lean in and add value. We’ll share more once we get the details sorted.

ECC will build things. But we will also come alongside others that want to build things. We want to maximize our depth to unleash many more people and projects. This is where we’ll start.

Here a few of the things I would like to work through:

How ZSAs could be the key to unlocking cross-chain payments, accelerating shielded storage, PoS and architectures, shielded stable coins, the future of Zashi as a feature delivery platform, alternative funding mechanisms, zcashd end of life, DEX support.

What topics would you like to see? Please share your thoughts with me and we’ll curate to the best. We’ll pull it all together and get plans set in January.

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What a slap in the face for so many people who have been a part of this community. Not only are they down bad on their investments, but they also have to pay to attend this event? There ought to be a lottery for people who are interested.

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Hm. I’m hoping that perhaps we can figure out how to get some scholarships for builders and those that are building or want to build, but I don’t have a clear path to that yet. These are intended to be hands-on workshops where we can ideate and hack and prioritize and enable some near term momentum towards the future we all want to benefit everyone. For builders, this will be a great opportunity to engage and get support from the ECC team and the others. Positive vibes and positive energy.

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I’ll be there (if it’s after first two weeks of Jan!) and am open to moderating research sessions around scaling and interoperability.

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Looking forward to that.

I would propose getting frontend-focused people involved (UI/UX/frontend engineers etc).

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@josh when do you think you’ll be able to be more specific on dates and location?

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We’re targeting the last week of January or the first week of February depending on the team’s ability to travel at that time. We’re currently looking at Denver or an option in Mexico. It’ll be the first of the month before we’re able to lock it down.

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Around ethDenver would ne nice, it’d allow for great cross-polination. (And I’d have 2 good reasons to fly to Denver)

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It’s a good idea and I looked at that but unfortunately ETH Denver isn’t until the end of Feb. We can’t wait for it. :wink:

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Then Lisbon and I’ll be in charge for hosting the after party :angel:

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I think end of january might be too little notice.

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We’re moving swiftly and it won’t be the last opportunity to participate.

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My 2 cents:

I think scheduling around https://www.ethdenver.com would be useful to potentially recruit some good people from the ETH community.

Some sort of hackathon with judging, prizes, etc. Have Zcash Media host an entire livestream and publish it through Twitch/X/YT, etc. Could even try to get sponsors like CrowdStrike and other similar cyber security companies to help support costs.

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Congrats on the new position @joshs. I am confident you will be great at it.

I see that you mention accelerating shielded storage, so I would be curious to know your opinion on Android Hardened Wallets when you have an opportunity to do so.

Thanks!

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It’s pretty obvious to me that we’re on the way out:

  1. ZSA. Or was it idle chatter at ZCON that everything is ready for a test network, but I don’t think so.
  2. There are advances in terms of PoS. And that’s what most Zcashers would like to see as soon as possible, because it is:
    (a) will bring them the ability to earn ZECs
    (b) will get a lot of people to take ZEC off the exchange rather than renting it out to shorts at 1% APR
    (c) will additionally create a shortage of coins, because issuance will be redistributed from miners to holders.
    (d) as a consequence, coupled with halving, the deficit will push the price of ZEC up and this will finally create investment demand, allowing to fill the developers’ coffers to the brim.
  3. All the other things that Arborist Call has been saying from meeting to meeting for years in a circle.

I really wish any other far fetched stuff (like discussing hypothetical L2s) would just go away and not distract the developers from the important issues.

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Can there be a discussion and focus on recursion at Zeboot? and what is the path for Zcash to as small as Mina?

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I’m sorry, but I don’t want Zcash to look like Mina. This blockchain is completely transparent and its emission is endless.

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I would like to 2nd @gottabeJay regarding having a discussion on recursion/succinctness at Zeboot. And similar to what @artkor shared in the Sovereign Rollup thread id like to share some quotes from some of those early Halo2 blog posts. @Dodger also recently mentioned this topic and shared this old thread on Succinct blockchains

1) “In addition, this upgrade would pave the way for shielded Zcash scale through proof aggregation and blockchain succinctness, two scalability improvements. This would improve the user experience by eliminating frustrating synchronization time that plagues all blockchains today, reducing the traditional blockchain bloat, and allowing for non-escalating fees as usage increases.”

2) “Scalability will require large redesigns of Zcash’s current protocol that are more involved than simply implementing Halo 2 on Zcash. Halo 2 will be a crucial component of these protocol designs. In the relatively near term, we will be able to leverage features in Halo 2 to reduce on-chain bandwidth and verification time via transaction aggregation. Eventually these features could also allow us to implement a fully succinct block chain, allowing near-instant syncing, and light client support with similar security guarantees to a full node.”

Although I am unqualified to estimate the cost, dev hours, and viability of accomplishing this, I personally think this endeavor is potentially as important as the transition to Proof of Stake.

I see becoming a “fully succinct blockchain” as fulfilling the Zcash vision when Halo2 was first discovered, presented to the community, and implemented into Zcash.

a private, Scalable, L1 payment protocol

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As we move into 2024, under new leadership, the globally distributed ECC team is meeting up in person at Zeboot, a multi-day gathering to collaborate and build strategy. The event will take place in Palm Springs, CA, Jan. 29-Feb 1. The workshops and presentations there will inform the ECC roadmap with a focus on Zcash adoption and user experience.

These sessions may be of interest to other Zcash builders, and because the outcome will have broader implications for the Zcash community, ECC is opening a limited number of seats for active community contributors. ECC won’t cover the cost of travel and attendance for non-employees, but if you are interested in attending, please fill out this form. The Zeboot summit will not be live-streamed and we don’t plan to accommodate remote participation, however we will publish insights and outcomes from the event.

Full agenda and location details to follow.

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I am not sure that I will be able to attend, but will there be recordings?

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