Happy Lunar New Year! 2021 is the year of the ox. The Ox is the second Zodiac sign in the Chinese lunar calendar and represents hard work, intelligence and humility. This sign embodies virtues of honesty and earnestness. Those are great goals for the year ahead!
Here are your weekly Zcash updates:
- ECC proposed an update to the NUP 6 (Network Upgrade Pipeline)
- ECC and Zcash Foundation are both hiring. Check out the posts here 11 and here 4.
- Gardening Club recording 9 is up on ECC’s youtube channel, Arborist call will be posted shortly.
Mark your calendars–
- Tues, Feb 23: Zeal Call, special guests from Blockchain Association. Be sure to submit any regulatory questions you have ahead of the call.
- Thurs, 2/25 from 3 pm UTC, @pacu is giving a tutorial at Hello Decentralization Conference 2
- Tues, 3/2: Gardening Club 1 w/ guests Brian Hoffman (from OpenBazaar) and Gemini
- Thurs, 2/25: the next Arborist Call will continue the discussion of the NU5 timeline and Halo on Zcash, also known as Orchard and ZIP 224.
Community Shout Outs – Shoutout to the Buterin Sisters 3 for their cool Bruges stamp 5. “A #NFT re the city of Bruges in the 15th century. The disorder of the city actually protected it from attacks or attempts of control from the outside. Illegibility has always been a factor of political autonomy. Indeed the city laid out according to a simple, repetitive logic will be easiest to administer and to police. That’s why we need #ZKSnarks.”
Core
- ZIPs 244 5 and 245 4 are merged!
- Implemented the initial Sinsemilla and Poseidon Gadgets
- Merged Groth16 batch verification for Bellman
ECC Proposed Features for NU5 (shared in the Arborist call this week)
- ZIP 216 – Require Canonical Point Encodings 4
- ZIP 224 – Orchard Shielded Protocol 8
- ZIP 225 – Version 5 Transaction Format 1
- ZIP 244 – Transaction ID Non-Malleability 5
- ZIP 245 – Transaction Signature Validation for Transparent Zcash Extensions 4
- ZIP 252 – Deployment of the NU5 Network Upgrade 3
Security
- Started project Ouraboros to attack Halo
- Engaging with security assessment vendors for NU5 assessments
Wallet
- “misplaced funds” issue surfaced and is being remedied, short term fix in place for zecwallet users.
- Testnet compatibility in Android ECC wallets
- Wallet plans presented at this week’s Gardening Club 9
Interesting articles from around the web: Just in time for Valentine’s Day, Mozilla reviewed a bunch of dating apps and other products 2 to see which ones protect your privacy. Most are terrible but Lex, a dating app targeted at lesbian, non-binary, and trans women ranked exceptionally well in terms of respecting users privacy.
Twitter defends free speech in India. California’s AG gives a shoutout to GPC, global privacy control. Learn how to read Apple’s new privacy labels.
That’s it for this week. Enjoy a dumpling-filled weekend.
