Hi Zeeps,
Happy weekend!
I heard some feedback that I should be more clear in my posts that we’re kicking ass.
So if I wasn’t clear in my last post, we’re kicking ass like freakn’ Bruce Lee.
In all seriousness, the team has been working incredibly hard, some consistently working into the early hours of the morning. It’s not sustainable, but we need to sprint for a bit to get into our new flow. While we are working hard, I won’t be popping champagne corks until we ship Zashi 1.0 for iOS later this month.
The coins want to move.
Iicymi, I published a roadmap last week, a plan for a new system emphasizing movement and utility. The coins want to move.
I saw some confusion from a handful of people who assumed we plan to deliver all the capabilities in each quarterly column during that particular quarter. If you swing your eyeballs to the left, those items sit in a row called User and Market Research. That means these are candidates for us to explore across market needs, regulatory compliance, partnerships, level of effort, and dependencies. Based on what we learn, we may schedule development work and the release of a capability in some future quarter.
As I mentioned in the last post, this roadmap is "directional rather than fixed, flowing quarter to quarter, adapting as we go. The ECC team will update and clarify the roadmap once per quarter along with goals and timelines.”
I plan to use some of these update posts to explain what we have in mind regarding various candidate capabilities so you can lean in to provide input and identify opportunities.
One item that came up several times this past week is “Hardware and DePIN.” I should have separated the two items as they are different, even if loosely coupled.
If Zcash is going to thrive as a new system, outside of the old system, it must be accessible without a dependency on the old. Today, many countries around the world censor and surveil the internet.
What if anyone around the world could acquire a phone with an embedded Zcash wallet that does not require a centralized provider to use the Internet?
DePIN stands for “Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Networks.” Their promise is a better internet, one that protects our freedoms and flips the economic incentives of Web2 on its head.
It’s relatively new jargon for projects that have been around for a while. Our friends at Filecoin are a good example of an early mover, providing decentralized file storage. Other projects, such as Helium, may prove to provide a path to open access to the Internet.
Updates on our work.
Zashi
We are on track to release Zashi 1.0 for iOS at the end of this month and Android next month. All of the front-end security audit issues were addressed. We are cleaning up some things related to ZIP 317 and finalizing Orchard support. The team is also working through a lot of release box-ticking, like completing the privacy policy, collecting screenshots, and building the website.
We moved our product planning to a tool called Linear, and Andrea has streamlined our end-to-end process flow from user research through Linear, GitHub, and the DAG.
We’ve begun the backlog for Zashi 1.1 and user research in support of 2.0 features. Messaging, Liberated Payments, and payments are primary areas of focus. While much of that research will begin in earnest in Q2, we’re getting a head start on some of it, including kicking off several potential partnership discussions related to payments.
Zcash
We did not make much progress on TFS Design Phase 2 this week as the team has been largely focused on Zashi-related work.
Yesterday, the team also published the Android SDK 2.0.7 and Swift SDK 2.0.11 with ZIP-320.
[Edit: Note: the new SDK releases do not contain ZIP 320 support yet, but they have the new spending APIs necessary to use the ZIP 320 support that is coming in SDK 2.1.0] h/t @str4d
Community Engagement
This week, Paul published our plans to establish the Zcash Ad Hoc Caucus (ZAC) to help us gather feedback from the community on the development fund’s expiration and its preferences moving forward. He has begun reaching out to different people and groups and will publish more as it comes together.
Our follow-on to Zeboot is tentatively scheduled for the week of July 8 in San Diego. We’ll formally announce something as soon as we lock in the specifics.
Web
Design was completed and development started for a new ECC-branded website that will be released along with Zashi.
Operations and Finance
Getting our new financial modeling tool has taken longer than planned. We had to change our accounting software to accommodate automation and modeling scenarios with the different coins, lockups, and staking, adding complexity. We’re almost there.
While we would like to bring on board more engineering talent as soon as possible to help accelerate timelines, I’m holding off until April, when I expect to have a better long-term financial picture. I’ve also committed to the team that we’ll look at salaries and benefits mid-year.
Work on the latest transparency report is nearly complete; we’ll publish it before the end of the month.
We also hired a new accountant, who will begin onboarding with us immediately, and are almost done with our tax filing for the year. Super fun.
Hope you enjoyed the update. Now back to kicking ass!
Onward.