Zcash Development Update

Hello Zcashers,

It’s the first update of 2022! Happy New Year to everyone in the Zcash community!

Zcash updates

• ECC’s Transparency Report covering Q2 2021 is now available.
• New release 4.6.0-1  is available.
• During the holiday season, ECC partnered with the Prison Mathematics Project, a nonprofit aimed at reducing recidivism through mathematics education. Daira spoke on the Prison Math Podcast.
• Apply 2 to work at ECC!
• ZEC is now available  on Okcoin.
• Zcon3, slated for late June 2022, is accepting speaker applications.

DevSecOps

• Consolidated VMs on Google Cloud to achieve better utilization of services and cost optimizations
• Software updates across older infrastructure to patch vulnerabilities
• Released zcashd v4.6.0 and v4.6.0-1
• Published version added for Debian 10 (buster)
• Onboarding our newest team member, Yasser (Senior DevSecOps Engineer)

Core

• Released zcashd versions 4.6.0 and 4.6.0-1
  • Special shoutout to Nick  and the team at Luxor  for helping test a pre-release version of 4.6.0-1!
• Merged the proposed Orchard mainnet circuit 
  • Change the Action circuit in response to auditor comments, and make some Orchard gadgets reusable
• Merged release 0.3.0 of the pasta_curves crate
  • Primarily in support of Trezor development
• TONs of Unified Address and wallet support work
  • Add unified addresses to the zcashd wallet – zcash#5395 
  • Make address serialization and Unified container parsing respect Typecode order – zcash#5450, librustzcash#474
  • ZIPs 32 and 316: Refine how IVK components are derived, and other cleanups – zips#564
  • Make transparent signatures commit to all input amounts and scripts – librustzcash#472
  • ZIP 244: Changes to transparent component of signature digest – zips#577
  • Add test vectors for ZIPs 143, 243, 244, and 316 – zcash-test-vectors#68
  • Update test vectors for ZIP 244 changes – zcash-test-vectors#61
  • Use the transaction builder to implement z_sendmany – zcash#5458 

Wallet

• SDK:
  • Rust-less build for iOS – (in progress)
    • We had contractor downtime so this didn’t move much
• Secant iOS Wallet
  • Recovery Phrase Display + Validation
    • integration w/ mock phrase
    • Accessibility Fixes
    • [FB9826116] Found bug in SwiftUI, created reproducing PoC, sent it to Apple :’-)
  • Welcome Screen
• MnemonicSwift Library
  • Licensing fixes (Kudos: Daira and Str4d)
  • Bitrise CI integration For Swift Package Manager (Lower build time!)
• Secant Android Scaffolding
  • Home
  • Profile
  • Wallet Details
• Github Actions (in-progress)
• Deployment Credentials
  • SDK Releases
  • App Builds Testing
  • (and doing so securely)

In the news, FTX has launched a $2 billion venture fund. The U.S. Congress will hold a hearing to explore the environmental impacts of crypto mining. Could the Solana blockchain become the Visa of the digital asset ecosystem?