Here are your weekly Zcash updates:
- The Sapling privacy set is about 3x larger than it was a year ago. Check out more Zcash stats on the ECC metrics page.
- NU5 activation timeline updated. Mainnet activation is now scheduled for October 1.
- NU5 is a big deal because it will mark the activation of Halo Orchard on the Zcash mainnet. This will do away with the ‘trusted setup’ and allow for the addition of new capabilities without complicated and risky ceremonies. Halo Orchard also paves the way for more scalable, programmable Zcash!
Mark your calendars –
- 4/27 and 5/25 – We have great speakers lined up for the next two Zeal calls: Ashkan Soltani, Robin Berjon will discuss Global Privacy Control in April and Julia Angwin will discuss journalism holding big tech accountable in May. Read more here.
Community Shoutouts – Shout out to plutoforever for submitting a good community PR. Shout out to Mandeep (Nighthawk) and Elio (independent) for PRs primarily to handle UI around memos between sending to t or sending to z in wallets, Mandeep fixed a security finding related to removal of logging while typing characters.
DevInfra
- Fixed bug for windows cross compile failure
- Massive build time reduction from rust docs bug fix
- Full test suite for Ubuntu working in Tekton
- Ubuntu 20.0.4 builder image updated
- Debian 10 builder image updated (with a few issues due to Debian 10 defaulting to an older version of minGW)
- Security collaboration for geographic redundancy of VM snapshots
Core
- Produced release 4.4.0-rc1
- Added a consensus-level feature flagging capability to Zcashd (C++ side)
- Pulled in a number of upstream locking fixes: 0.13, 0.14, 0.15
- zcashd can now be configured to export real time metrics to Prometheus
- Continued to refine Unified Addresses definition and UX
- Began drafting ZIP 316
- Halo scientific review in progress, spearheaded by Mary Maller member of the SAG
Security
- Reviewing Orchard spec, security proofs and unified addresses.
- Sinsemilla python implementation is done (thanks Daira for catching bugs)
- Redwood – analysis of cargo tools, adding json to rust-secure-code/cargo-supply-chain
Wallet
- Rescan api for error recovery implemented in both SDKs,
- Lightwalletd “getAddressUtxo” implemented and merged,
- Publishing of Android SDK moved to Maven Central
- Android moved to one SDK library (instead of two for testnet/mainnet)
What to watch, CodedBias is a documentary on biases and AI algorithms. The film features researchers and technologists including Joy Buolamwini, Cathy O’Neil, Meredith Broussard, Silkie Carlo, Virginia Eubanks, Dr. Zeynep Tufekci, Dr. Safiya Umoja Noble and others. Worth watching this weekend if you have nothing else in your Netflix queue.
In other news, are you FLoCed? If you’re using Google Chrome, you might be part of an experimental new tracking feature called federated learning cohorts.
