August 4, 2017 - Dev update

1.0.11 RC and release & 1.0.12 planning
We decided to shift our schedule for 1.0.11 as documented in this forum comment and ended up waiting until this past Monday to create the 1.0.11 release candidate. The official release is scheduled for this upcoming Monday (August 7th) so be sure to keep an eye out for that and be ready to upgrade.

We also started some initial steps for planning the 1.0.12 release which is (as mentioned in last week’s update) going to come 6 weeks after 1.0.11 which sets it up for a release on September 18.

XCAT
We had an internal demo of the ZBXCAT implementation (a protocol for exchanging Zcash & Bitcoin without a central party) this week and are planning for a public demo via livestream in the coming weeks. We don’t have any specific release dates for the first version yet, but progress is moving along nicely and we’re now at a point where we can focus on refactoring the code and writing tests.

Payment offloading
A version of payment offloading for transparent addresses was also completed (PR 2120) and should be ready as an experimental feature very soon. This version of payment offloading will allow clients without the minimum resource requirements to generate a zero-knowledge proof to send from a transparent address to a shielded address by delegating the high-demand processes to a server-like proving service. It will be a big step towards improving mobile and hardware wallet support in the Zcash ecosystem.

Hiring
As you may (or may not) have noticed, the past couple months at Zcash have been slower moving than the months following launch. This is due to many circumstances but in the end, it comes down to a lack of sufficient engineers to keep up the pace. So we’re hiring! While we’ve been asking around for recommendations on a semi-private basis, we also wanted to reach out to the public as to not miss out on any candidates we wouldn’t notice otherwise. Before going public, however, we wanted to set up an efficient process for hiring and are now at a point where we feel comfortable announcing the first role we’re hoping to fill soon: an engineering project manager.

So if you know of anyone who might fit the description in that listing, please forward the above link to them and tell them to reach out to us ASAP. We also plan to include additional job listings very soon so keep an eye out on the jobs page of our website.

Show & Tell
Finally, we’re excited to announce that next week we’re hosting @jasondavies to demo his alternative Zcash zk-SNARK verifier, zcash-sprout-verifier. The livestream will take place Friday August 11 at 18:00 UTC and can be accessed here.

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What do you mean, ready to upgrade? Is it a figure of speech or do we have do something? What about wallets like zcash4windows will they be safe after the upgrade?

Whether you have to do something depends on how you installed Zcash and how your system handles app updates. For example, in Qubes I get a notification when there’s updates available for the linux Zcash client along with any other library or app I installed via apt.

I’m not familiar with Windows for the most part but I suspect there’s some software that handles app upgrades? @anon47418038 is there an automatic update option for zcash4win users or is this a manual process? (Might as well confirm for zcash4mac users as well)

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Main question here is, should we send the ZEC to something like JAXX until everything is settled?

Would it be safer this way?

No, you don’t need to send ZEC elsewhere. Jaxx runs a Zcash client on their backend anyways so will presumably be updating soon after it’s available as well.

While you’re hiring, why not look for a marketing manager?

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You don’t get automatic updates on mac or win from the platform itself unless you are in their respective stores…adding that is on the TODO list but it might be a while

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So, i have simple question :slight_smile: Will be actual version (1.0.10) z4win working after update ?

I’m sorry if you’re having issues, zcash4win has over 1k downloads per day
and should run just fine. Nearly all issue reported by users are issues
with initial syncing, amd improving error handling on systems with slow
syncing issues is being worked on.

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Sorry, i am not so good in english. I have not problem with zcash4win for now, everything works fine to me. Its good app and thanx for it radix. But my question was about compatibility with new zcash update 1.0.11 :slight_smile:

I’ll be updating to either 1.0.11 or 1.0.12 and thank you!

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I want to thank @anon47418038 too for the Windows port. I think that if the Zcash Core team is hiring someone, @anon47418038 is the first they should hire. I don’t think that such important work as the Windows port of the best privacy-focused digital money out there, should be paid only with donations.
Keep the good work,

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While we recommend that users update to the newest versions as soon as they’re available, older versions of Zcash clients will be compatible with updated clients unless otherwise noted.

This post should give you some clarity on the lifetimes of releases: Release Cycle and Lifetimes - Electric Coin Company
(Hopefully your native language is one supported on the website.)

thanks for the good word, but I’m fine where I’m at right now!

@paige is LMP- Low Memory Proving (allowing smartphones to run z-addresses), still in the schedule for the 1.0.12 update?

Not sure! Where did you see LMP was scheduled for 1.0.12? The 1.0.12 release planning team has some proposed issues in the project but I don’t believe they’re decided on anything for sure: Release planning · GitHub

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Found it here

They are working on two approaches: LMP- Low Memory Proving, reducing the RAM required for z_addresses from 3.1GB to 1.4GB allowing for the average smartphone to be able to run them (this has been proposed for the next 1.0.12 release!)

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Ah, I see… yeah… it’s still in “proposed” column of 1.0.12 project but not set in stone. You can keep track of 1.0.12 ticket prioritization in the project I linked to in last comment.

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