Zcash Shielded News is a community article format based on the weekly Zcash Ecosystem Digest Newsletter.
Providing insight on current events and informing the community about important news in the Zcash ecosystem.
Check out the best Highlights below
The Zcash Foundation has developed a discussion draft and an AI-generated audio companion to help the community explore potential Participatory Grantmaking (PGM) models. This document provides an overview of various approaches without endorsing any specific model. The inclusion of a funding model does not imply support or preference from the Foundation.
PGM aligns with Zcash’s principles of decentralization and community governance by enabling community members to participate in funding decisions. This approach aims to uphold Zcash’s core values, including privacy, decentralization, equitable participation, transparency, and community engagement.
The Foundation encourages open discussions on the Zcash community forum to collaboratively assess different models. The success of any chosen PGM framework will depend on active participation and thoughtful deliberation, with final decisions resting in the hands of the community.
Last week, the Zcash Foundation officially announced Taylor Horby & Ted Hoffman as the new members of the ZF Board.
If you don`t know them:
Taylor Hornby, known as earthrise on the Zcash Forum, has extensive experience in the Zcash ecosystem. He worked at the Electric Coin Company (ECC) before Zcash’s launch, returned in 2018 as a security engineer, and later served as the Zcash Ecosystem Security Lead in 2023. His focus is on aligning engineering efforts with product improvements and adoption, fostering unity among community leaders through dialogue, and promoting collaboration and accountability.
Ted Hoffmann (boggerster on the Forum) is a multilingual European cryptocurrency expert with nearly a decade of experience, particularly passionate about Ethereum and Zcash. He views Zcash’s privacy features as essential for protecting financial freedom and democracy. Advocating for a community-first approach, he prioritizes effective communication, streamlined technology, better onboarding, and transitioning Zcash to proof-of-stake (PoS).
Taylor and Ted are joining the board as Peter Van Valkenburgh and Amber Baldet depart. Peter has been a key figure in shaping the Foundation over the past eight years, advocating for its mission and supporting decentralization efforts.
As he moves into his new role at Coin Center, his contributions to privacy and open-source innovation are acknowledged with gratitude. Amber played a crucial role in Zcash’s early development, leveraging her expertise to keep the Foundation focused on its mission.
While she is stepping down from the board, she will continue supporting financial privacy through the Financial Privacy Foundation. The Zcash community thanks both Peter and Amber for their leadership and lasting impact.
Attendance:
Artkor
Brian
GGuy
Jason
Zerodartz
Alex (FPF resource, notetaker)
Open Grant Proposals
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A vibrant discussion took place on the Forum, raising many questions about the proposal. Ultimately, the applicant withdrew the grant request. This serves to memorialize that the grant has been withdrawn, and no further action is required by ZCG.
“Zcash Privacy Academy” Course
This $7,000 grant request proposes an educational online course on financial privacy, Zcash’s privacy mechanisms, and secure usage. Participants can earn ZEC rewards for completing tests to encourage adoption and best practices. The forum post was made over a week ago, but since the GitHub request was just posted, the ZCG review period has not yet started.
Thoughts from ZCG Commitee about it:
Gguy is skeptical about funding this grant, as similar past grants haven’t shown meaningful results. He hasn’t seen evidence that this proposal will be different and is leaning against approval. He invites the community to share their thoughts on whether it should be funded.
Jason: ‘‘I agree with Gguy, I’m leaning towards not funding this request. I’d like to see them request funding via ZecHub and see how they view the project.’’
Brian: ‘‘I agree with both Gguy and Jason’’.
Zerodartz: ‘‘I agree that ZecHub should consider this project for funding. But, the budget seems a bit high especially considering recent market conditions.’’
Artkor: ‘‘I need to consider this grant further, however, I am also concerned about market conditions.’’
Brainstorm Session Follow Ups
Saas Development Initiative (SDI) for Building a Zcash Economy
Note that this request hasn’t been posted to GitHub so ZCG is providing initial thoughts on this grant idea as per the proposer’s request.
There was a free flowing discussion that focused on the following points:
The actual output of the proposal isn’t clear to several ZCG members.
$50,000 seems high based on ZCG’s understanding of the grant’s outputs.
The general consensus would be a “no” vote based on the information provided by the prospective grantee thus far.
Ledger
ZCG had a call with Zondax and ZF to discuss potential next steps for getting Ledger to fix existing issues and implement a future Ledger Live implementation.
ZCG stated that the Ledger solution for shielded ZEC is not very user-friendly and is difficult for other wallets to integrate.
ZCG acknowledged Zondax was doing the best they could given Ledger’s bureaucracy and the perceived lack of Ledger’s willingness to work with the Zcash community.
ZCG discussed prioritizing the work that needs to be completed, focusing on fixing the pain points with transparent and then discussing with the community how to prioritize next steps, if any.
Zondax is preparing to submit a proposal to ZCG
Tor
Arti grant completed.
ZCG to reach out to TOR to discuss better coordination and mutually beneficial actions/partnerships since the TOR and Zcash missions are so complimentary.
Least Authority
ZCG discussed which projects should be prioritized for audit in the coming weeks as the docket is pretty full.
ZCG to discuss prioritization with Least Authority.
This week, Josh published an analogy between Formula 1 and the philosophy of building successful teams in other areas, such as technology or business (crypto) - Highlighting the combination of engineering in F1. Josh emphasizes that success in any other field requires a combination of engineering, skill, teamwork, and trust, with no single person or skill being solely responsible.
Josh stressed the importance of creating high-performing teams guided by a common mission, experience, and complementary skills, also addressing that success requires community collaboration. In summary, the message is about coming together as a team to solve problems creatively and achieve success.
ECC Progress
Zashi (@Andrea)
Zashi Design (Pablo)
Exploration and discovery work for Zashi Vault
Adhoc stakeholder and engineering edits and improvements
Adjustments to the Keystone signing screen
Designing Zashi Vault mockups (15+ new screens)
👨🏻💻| Q&A and Dev Support (@decentralistdan)
QA testing for Zashi F-droid release
Tax Export feature testing
Zcon Coordination
Zashi Website content aggregation
Zashi/ECC/zcash socials
Begin ECC Discord revamp
Handling user support communication
Near Intents research & testing
🍎| Zashi iOS
Analytics Update:
Unique Installs: 6.48k
Total Downloads: 7.73k
AppStore Rating: 4.9*
Tax Export feature
Implemented a dependency handling the data export
Implemented UI and flows
Resolved GitHub CI action failures due to macos14 drop of support of xcode16
PRs reviewed & merged SDK PRs for the Transaction History redesign
Adopted redactPCZTForASigner
- Tested it, identified a latency issue in Zashi → and fixed it
Adopted sapling params PCZT check, which seems to resolve Keystone Send issue. (Thanks @str4d!)
Made progress on User Metadata Serialization but realized much more complex handling is needed when remote storage is part of it
- Created a document describing the challenges and options
📱| Zashi Android (Milan)
Analytics Update:
Total Install Base: 3.56k
Total Installs (incl. Open Beta): 14.7k
PlayStore Rating: 4.477*
Released Zashi through Github and F-Droid!
Alternative Deployment (coop with @Yasser)
F-Droid FOSS app build
Resolved app signing issues
Fixed about 1 million other blockers :right-facing_fist::skin-tone-4::left-facing_fist::skin-tone-4:
Working on reproducible builds
Prepared GitHub .apk release
SDK PCZT API changes adopted
Implemented persisted transaction metadata encryption
Implemented Tax Export feature
🌐| Other
Josh spent considerable time on their current financial position.
@peacemonger surveyed the community to get feedback on Zashi Vault. ECC will have some things to show you at ZconVI! Some of you have been giving her feedback via interviews.
@paulbrigner was asked to be the industry expert on Virginia’s Joint Commission on Technology and Science Blockchain Advisory Committee.
This week’s PGP is focused on digital identity. Please RSVP if you plan to attend in person! You can also watch the live stream on YouTube, LinkedIn, and X, beginning Feb 25th at 10 am ET.
ECC is finalizing draft ZIPs for the zBloc and Community + Coinholder Funding Mechanism and will release them for review and feedback this week.
Outreach: Focus is on Tier-1 contacts to maximize outreach. Special thanks to core developers helping respond to exchange and mining pool inquiries for NU7.
Zcash Foundation (ZF): ZF is pausing further development on FROST as resources are being directed to Zcashd deprecation, with 42 of 46 agile points dedicated to this. A post by @dodger outlines a potential path toward NU7.
Zaino (ZingoLabs): Milestone 2 is progressing, and the team is catching up to previous delays. Two outstanding tasks remain, and developers are encouraged to review PRs.
In-Memory Backend: Review for this PR is still pending.
Zallet (Zcash Wallet CLI): The project is delayed by 2 months but is catching up. A recent release of librustzcash lays a foundation for the ecosystem.
Wallet Export Format: Ahead of schedule, with updates to the wallet export format being reviewed and improvements proposed for the librustzcash SQLite crates.
Testing: Wolf McNally is ready to test wallets to ensure compatibility. Testing and feedback are crucial to moving this forward.