July 6th, 2018 Weekly update (Engineering)

This week, the engineering team completed their hybrid Zcon0 sprint. Zcon0 provided a ton of valuable input from the community, which we intend to integrate into upcoming sprints. You can view each team’s progress in Github projects. Other equally important items, Overwinter successfully activated on June 25th and v1.1.2 was released.

Overwinter
If you run a Zcash node, make sure you’re on 1.1.0 or later. Download the latest version of zcashd and check out the new user guide while your at it. Additional information can be found on the Overwinter information page.

Below is each team’s update which includes big picture accomplishments for the last sprint and forward looking goals for the next sprint.

Zcashd Team
This team focus on development of the zcashd client but stands distinct from consensus protocol (which is a separate team).

Accomplishments:

  • Overwinter successfully activated
  • v1.1.2 released
  • Continued progress on Sapling keys, addresses, and notes
  • Sapling key test vectors implemented
  • Solid progress on pairing library refactor
  • Created https://chat.zcashcommunity.com/channel/zcashd-team for public discourse on Zcashd topics/features

Upcoming Goals:

  • Send Sapling transactions on testnet
  • Finish pairing library refactor to provide support for new proving systems

Consensus Protocol Team

This team focuses on the Zcash consensus protocol current and future upgrades which include R&D, specification and interfacing with the ZIP process.

No updates this sprint.

Development Infrastructure Team
This team works on making sure developers have the tools and infrastructure they need to efficiently collaborate, design, implement, review, test, and ship high quality projects.

Accomplishments:

  • Mac & Windows CI implementations are nearing preliminary completion
  • Phase 1 of Network Observer is complete

Goals:

  • Fix remaining issues with Mac and Windows builds
  • Begin work on Phase 2 of Network Observer
  • Optimize test framework in existing CI system
  • Continue Phase 1 of IAC(Infrastructure-As-Code) investigation/refactor

Ecosystem Team
This team is the interface to everything not directly related to zcashd or the protocol and include support for third-party tools and services. Ecosystem projects developed by Zcash Co. also get handled in this team. Tracking for this team is kept private to prevent information leakage about third-parties.

Accomplishments

  • Continuing to work with partners on Overwinter upgrade.
  • Zcon0 and outreach
  • Completed Zendesk setup. Now integrating into Slack. Will officially launch the dev support desk by next week.

Upcoming Goals:

  • Plan post Zcon0 sprints

Documentation Team
This team works on improving the accessibility of zcashd and Zcash overall.

Accomplishments:

  • Slowly migrating existing links from the Github wiki pages to their correlated RTD pages
  • Spanish and Portuguese translations of the new documentation in RTD is done but not yet integrated
  • Overwinter banner on homepage deployed for activation and updated to reflect post-activation messaging
  • Created https://chat.zcashcommunity.com/channel/documentation for public discourse on Zcash documentation

Upcoming Goals:

  • Figure out how the translations and switching between them gets integrated into the UI
  • Investigate Gitlab as the new backend for RTD

Community & Communication
You can check out last week’s community and communication update on June 29th for the latest info.

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