Here are the updates from this week:
- Canopy active on Testnet. Make sure you are prepared for mainnet activation. General instructions are available here. Node upgrade instructions are available here.
- “Experts” weigh in on zkSNARKs. Their responses are not what you’d expect.
- ICYMI, Sean spoke about Halo at ZKP Privacy Summit, 10/19
- Zeal calls are back and just in time for Zcash’s 4th birthday. This month we’re joined by Flexa and Gitcoin. Don’t miss it! Register here.
Mark your calendars,
- 10/27 – Zeal calls are back! Register here.
- 10/28 – Zcash 4th Birthday
- 10/28 – Zcash 101 webinar with SHE256, register here.
- 11/3 – November Gardening Club
- 11/5 – November Arborist Call
- 11/18 – Canopy Activation
Community Shout Outs – Shout out to @Shawn and @antonie at the Zcash Foundation. Whether it’s governance discussions, forum moderation or foundation operations, we appreciate your efforts to the Zcash community. Kudos to @adityapk00 and @oxarbitrage for your community PRs this week.
Ecosystem
- Zcash (ZEC) is the first coin supported by Wrapped, Tokensoft and Anchorage’s cross-chain bridge. WZEC aka wrapped zcash is an ERC-1404 that “is a 1:1 representation of zcash on Ethereum held in custody by Anchorage. Wrapped tokens provide a big shot of liquidity to DEXs and offer otherwise staid assets the ability to frolic in the wilds of decentralized finance (DeFi).”
- Bisontrails QT platform offers a secure infrastructure to run Zcash nodes, making it easier for businesses to support Zcash.
Documentation
- New cross-site rtd feature: copy button for code allows you to automatically copy all code snippets
- Improvements to upgrading instructions for Canopy
DevInfra
- Public Tekton complete existing production build and full test suite
Core
- Sean presented Halo at zkp & Privacy Summit
- Clang and C++ Build system improvements complete!
- zcashd now builds its C++ (and C) dependencies entirely with a pinned version of Clang, and statically links libc++ instead of dynamically linking libstdc++.
- This migration enables us to reliably use newer C++ features while supporting older LTS platforms, be more confident in the compiler’s optimisations, and leverage security features such as sanitisers and efficient fuzzing.
- Additionally, because both Clang and rustc use LLVM as their backend, we can optimise across the FFI boundary between them.
- This reduces the cost of moving between C++ and Rust, making it easier to build more functionality in Rust
Security
- Review of connection-handling code.
- Learning Rust
- Infrastructure improvements
Wallet
- 3rd newsletter sent to Light Client Working Group, to receive the emails, please reach out to me.
- 8 preventative security findings for upcoming iOS upgrade reviewed and merged
- Autoshielding initial UI concept
- Began integration with Data Access API + demo app to exercise integration
This week in privacy, the New Yorker profiled Moxie Marlinspike, founder of Signal. The Markup announced the Citizen Browser Project, an initiative to audit the algorithms that drive disinformation.
In crypto news, Paypal will allow users to buy and sell bitcoin. Meltem weighs in on CNBC. WEF releases an overview of global blockchain technical standards, Zcash/ ZIPs get a mention. University of Cambridge released their 3rd Annual Global Cryptocurrency Benchmarking Report. DCG published their State of Crypto report. Filecoin miners end the week on a high note. Check out Crypto Startup School, a short doc from a16z. China airdrops digital yuan to about 50,000 people.
