This is our fortnightly engineering update which happens after the conclusion of each 2-week engineering sprint. You can check out last week’s update for recent news on community and communications.
Zcashd Team 3
This team focuses on development of the zcashd client and Zcash protocol. Follow along with team discussions in the Community Chat #zcashd-team channel.
“We have started the code implementation of the Sprout to Sapling migration tool and finished a draft of the the specification for an automatic counterfeiting action plan. We also created a branch of the Sapling spec to add Blossom spec changes to it and get an audit of the spec in March.”
Development Infrastructure Team
The Development Infrastructure team ensures developers have the tools and infrastructure they need. Join this team in the #dev-infrastructure chat channel.
“We are working on automation and documentation improvements to the zcashd regular release process. We are also fixing the benchmark uploads to speed.z.cash 1. We are continuing to work on getting the Windows build integrated with our CI system (buildbot).”
Ecosystem Team 1
This team is intended to work on projects that interface with external parties not including the zcashd core client and handles business development in the phases after initial contact by providing technical insight and support.
“We are making progress to merge Insight-specific code into zcashd so we can retire the separate Insight fork and everyone can use the standard zcashd node for the block explorer.”
Documentation Team 1
This team drives the curation and assists in the creation of documentation. Follow along in the #documentation chat channel. Check out the official Zcash documentation.
“We relocated documentation into readthedocs that previously resided in the /doc directory in zcashd source. These pages include:
For next sprint, we’re planning to write new documentation to clarify the different pools in Zcash (Sprout, Sapling and Transparent) and how they relate to the associated addresses.”
Reference Wallet Team
This teams current charter is to build a Zcash reference wallet. Deliverables will be a series of MVPs where Android is the first target platform.
“We’ve been ensuring that the code written is getting reviewed and merged into officially supported status, iterating on the server to be more resilient to gaps in blocks and unexpected inputs, dogfooding the reference wallet and iterating from internal feedback to iterate on the Android application, and writing documentation.”
Miscellaneous
Zcon1 applications are open! Zcon1: June 22 – 24 in Split, Croatia
I (Paige) will be at MIT Bitcoin expo next weekend to give a quick talk on counterfeiting detection and the automatic anti-counterfeiting action plan (aka prohibiting negative shielded value pool). The Zcash Foundation’s Josh Cincinnati will also be there talking about Zcash governance.
