Steven Smith 🛡⚪️
@reldev
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Head of Protocol and Applied Research @tfh_technology/@worldcoin. Formerly Head of Engineering at @ElectricCoinCo/@zcash. @Salesforce and @Cisco alum.
Joined January 2016
Zcash Shielded Assets (ZSAs - aka UDAs) are an interesting concept and have several potential applications in Zcash. A key for us is to align with the community in the best interest of the mission and coin holders. This thread is meant to provide a bit more background.
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Since mid-June, the size of the Zcash blockchain has grown from approximately 30GB to approximately 116GB representing an almost quadrupling in chain size. During that time, we’ve added on average .78GB per day to the chain.
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ECC published a couple of blog posts recently on proof of stake (PoS) and Zcash. Both are excellent reads! Based on some of the questions in our AMA today, I think there are a few things that might have been missed and are worth clarifying.
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This is going to be an incredible event. Be sure to register soon!.
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Earlier today, the @worldcoinfnd announced a cryptographically secure replacement for the legacy uniqueness check service. The implementation of this novel Secure Multiparty Computation (SMPC) protocol is a huge step forward for @worldcoin and the industry at large.
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An incredible amount of work by the ECC core team! Congratulations and well done! . @ebfull @str4d @feministPLT @nuttycom @therealyingtong @LarryRuane.
Release 4.7.0 marks a major milestone on the path to NU5. It enables full support for the Orchard shielded protocol and Unified Addresses on testnet. It will also reactivate NU5 on testnet to pick up the latest consensus changes.
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Great work @LabosNomades!. "In our opinion the Zcash project and in particular the Sapling protocol developed by the Electric Coin Company represents the state of the art to enable privacy-preserving transactions that’s available, in production, today.".
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We were the first team to productionize zero-knowledge proofs in software since zero-knowledge cryptography was conceived in the 1980s and we view this as just another type of challenge that requires careful thought and a methodical approach to get right.
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The goal is to allow the chain to scale at max capacity and still provide the basis for an excellent experience for ZEC users. We’ll be publishing more on this as we nail down some of the specifics.
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Agreed!! 🙂.
The importance of @worldcoin integrating ENS cannot be overstated. @ensdomains should reciprocate by integrating worldcoin's proof-of-personhood as an optional-yet-available-by-default verifiable record. ENS can become an identity leader in this new AI-centric world.
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We will release zcashd 5.3.0 next week which will have continued performance and scalability improvements primarily in the area of concurrent memory utilization.
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The group includes @vitalikbuterin, @gojomo, @zmanian, @ArthurB, and Mary Maller. More details can be found here:
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A new version of zcashd is now available. Version 4.5.0 sets the testnet activation height of the next Zcash network upgrade, NU5.
New Zcashd Release: Code preparations for the Network Upgrade 5 consensus rules are finished and included. $ZEC #Zcash.
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The first production deployment of Halo and the elimination of trusted setup for the new Orchard shielded pool! Plus future-proofing Unified Addresses! Incredible engineering @ebfull @feministPLT @str4d @nuttycom @therealyingtong @LarryRuane! . Thanks for all the hard work!.
Release 5.0.0 supports NU5 activation on mainnet.
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Excellent thread!. Happy New Year!! 🎉.
🎉🎉🎉. I hope you're ready! 2022 is shaping up to be the biggest year ever for Zcash $ZEC. Below is a thread of all of the up and coming features and developments scheduled for 2022.
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We’re confident we’ll get there with everyone’s help: the community, the team at GMU, and our Scientific Advisory Group. 🙂.
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Great first week at @ElectricCoinCo! Incredible team working to move @ZCash forward. Special thanks to @ljxie who posted months back about the Engineering Director role that was open there! 😀 It's where I first heard of the opportunity.
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We don’t see proof of stake as inherently less secure. The case can actually be made that you get more security for the same cost when comparing proof of work to proof of stake. See @VitalikButerin’s excellent post here:
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Interesting research we've been doing in support of the roadmap. Can't wait to share it with the community!.
ECC 3 year roadmap in support of $ZEC will be out tomorrow. We brought zero knowledge cryptography to life, and then built the cornerstone of Web 3 privacy and financial freedom with Zcash. Next phase is reach. 🔥🔥🔥.
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Our top priority at ECC remains an improved sync experience for our mobile SDKs. The NightHawk, Unstoppable, and Edge wallets are built on this SDK and have experienced extreme sync times since this load started, to the point of being unusable in some cases.
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Release 5.1.0 provided faster block validation for Sapling and Orchard transactions reducing worst-case block validation times for observed historic blocks by around 80%. We also made performance improvements to the getblocktemplate RPC to reduce block propagation times.
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We're very excited by the feedback we've received so far on proof of stake and are looking forward to continuing our research. Zcash has a great community and we're proud to be part of it!.
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We just wrapped up an incredible Twitter space on Zero-Knowledge Machine Learning (ZKML)! Thanks to @DCbuild3r from @worldcoin, @realDanielShorr and @nayr_oac from @ModulusLabs, and @jasonmorton from @zkonduit for joining the conversation today!.
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Excellent writeup from @least_nathan on the Zcash Slow Start!.
Time for a #Zcash Slow Start Thread. 🧵. If you look at price charts, Zcash is striking in the astronomical prices around launch. I've seen a lot of claims around this that seem pretty confused, so here's my attempt to clarify some key details.
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One of our primary goals at ECC is to ensure that future network upgrades continue to meet our historic standards for safety and quality. In every Zcash network upgrade, we’ve always done security assessments, and scientific review in the case of new cryptography.
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It's been an interesting journey so far at @ElectricCoinCo. I've been fortunate to be at ground zero for arguably the most successful decentralized governance process yet. Here's wishing all involved in moving $ZEC forward the best!.
We're thrilled to accept this role as offered by the #Zcash community. #ZcashDevFund $ZEC.
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At ECC, we’ve been tracking the impact of the increased shielded transaction load since it started and have been taking steps to mitigate its impact ever since.
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Our first priority was to ensure the stability of network operations and restore node performance to near historic levels, even under this increased load. We released multiple zcashd releases (5.1.0 and 5.2.0) for that purpose.
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Our next priority after the SDK updates is to define a medium term roadmap focused on performance and scalability.
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@zooko @__padpad @decryptmedia @ElectricCoinCo Excellent question! We're already researching it, but regardless of the staking threshold for validators, ZEC holders of any size will be able to delegate and earn yield. And with staking derivatives you'll be able to not only stake your ZEC, but also put it to work in Defi. 🙂.
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We’re excited to be working with Dr. McCabe and CeeLab to assist with this study which runs from June through August of this year. We plan to come up with an economic design that is consistent with the sustainability of Zcash and that has a positive impact on current economics.
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@gogetitman28 @zardigrade @nuttycom @BeerdHead @Martian_Han @ElectricCoinCo @zooko We're incredibly excited about NU5 and Halo Arc and the breakthroughs they'll bring to Zcash holders present and future!.
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Zcash is a digital currency with strong privacy features. Fees in Zcash are currently minimal and a non-factor for the most part from a mining reward perspective.
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A move to proof of stake would have to be supported by the Zcash community. In general, for any potential change to the protocol, all we can do is research options and make recommendations as to why we feel a certain way about a potential change.
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We have also spent significant time analyzing potential fee changes, like those proposed in ZIP 317 to make chain usage more equitable among all users. We are almost complete with our analysis and will have a recommendation potentially as early as this coming week.
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We see proof of stake as a way to expand the Zcash ecosystem and economy by allowing even small ZEC holders, regardless of domicile or access to inexpensive power options, to participate actively in network security and validation.
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Some incredible things coming from @zcashmedia!.
Hello #Zcash 🛡️ fam! .We're getting ready to start showcasing the work of Zcash Media to the world! Our multi-platform educational hub is launching this month, but first a quick intro to who we are and our mission. .
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We’ll roll out SDKs updates in a couple of phases, with the first phase offering incremental sync improvements, and targeted for release in the next couple of weeks.
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If there’s any potential change to Zcash economics, we feel strongly that an economic analysis should be done as well, prior to deployment. This is the primary reason we’ve engaged the team at GMU. To conduct a study of decentralized markets on the Zcash blockchain.
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The maximum block size is currently set at 2MB and the protocol is designed to allow those blocks to be filled. We are monitoring to see if there are any other impacts on the Zcash ecosystem due to this or other factors.
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Ditto for Zcash.
@buchmanster One big thing I want to keep pushing for is for ethereum to avoid having too much of a US center of gravity. Globalism is one of crypto's greatest strengths and we should be celebrating and building on it much more. (eg. see this NFT art from Ethiopia: ).
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We view ZEC as the engine of sustainable growth that we need to accomplish our mission. That’s why we’re vetting potential economic mechanisms for ZSAs and why we’d do the same for proof of stake. Relatedly, we see no reason for the current issuance rate to have to change.
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There’s a lot to consider, but we feel an economic mechanism specific to the Zcash value proposition and consistent with the costs ZEC holders pay for core support services could provide an economically positive benefit to the ecosystem.
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Today we published a great article on Humanness in the Age of AI which provides an in-depth look at proof of personhood (PoP), potential mechanisms to establish PoP, and its importance in a world increasingly shaped by AI.
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A full move to proof of stake would likely take years and would be done over the course of multiple network upgrades. We’d ensure these network upgrades met our historic standards for safety and quality with plenty of time for audits, economic analysis, and partner adoption.
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If you are a Zcash user and are having issues, please reach out to us.
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None of these items directly address the rate of growth of the blockchain. The fact is, if block space is fully utilized in every block added to the chain, we would be adding about 2GB on a daily basis.
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We are in the very early stages of research on a potential move to proof of stake. Our current focus at the moment is almost exclusively on NU5 and ensuring a successful network upgrade. ICYMI, this upgrade includes Halo on Zcash (Orchard) as well as Unified Addresses!.
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Ethereum provides a programmable blockchain with state stored using distributed ledger technology. Fees in Ethereum pay for the core value proposition of the blockchain through use of gas.
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WoT has its uses, but not for the scale of network or utility Worldcoin is building. For that you need a hardened sybil signal. It's not just a matter of authenticating based on trust, but on being able to prove a persona is uniquely human. Happy to hop on a call and discuss!.
@nosilverv World coin is the wrong approach IMO. Need something closer to a trust graph.
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ZEC-holders make Zcash more resistant to capture by paying for core support functions (mining, engineering, security, innovation, marketing, regulatory and government relations, customer support, business development, education, etc.). They pay for those functions with issuance.
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To address these concerns, one train of thought is that fees “work pretty well” for Ethereum and should work for us so don’t worry about it, but fundamentally, Zcash and Ethereum are two different blockchains and have vastly different value propositions.
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Supporting further increases in the levels of usage of Zcash will require more than a quick fix to scale properly.
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Thank you! We have a great team that’s poured a lot in to the upcoming network upgrade. Very excited to see Halo deployed to production.
This is some of the most impressive work in the industry. It's a roll up of lots of state of the art ideas and the result of years of effort
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We’re also working with our Scientific Advisory Group to help with this effort. Their collective experience spans multiple blockchains and they bring a wealth of experience and benefit to the Zcash project.
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Given the cap, and since more ZEC will be in circulation each year, the inflation rate naturally decreases. For example, for the next three years inflation will be 11.1%, 10.0%, and 9.1%, and in 2025, it will be 4.2% after the next halvening.
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Essentially where game theoretical economics meets game theory. 🙂 What type problems do we have to think about then, when adding additional assets to the Zcash blockchain? Primarily two things: the Free Rider problem and the Top Heavy problem.
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In the case of ZSAs, while they have been referred to as ZRC-20s, they are not programmable assets, meaning there is no use within the Zcash blockchain other that the use cases afforded to the native ZEC token, namely store-of-value (SOV) and medium-of-exchange (MOE).
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Release 5.2.0 provided a number of updates to node and zcashd wallet performance including various caching improvements, parallelizing and batching trial decryption of Sapling outputs, and improvements to witness handling.
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Earlier today we held a twitter space on zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs) and the Semaphore protocol. A huge thank you to @recmo @DCbuild3r @BenarrochDaniel and @ViviPlasenciaC for joining us!. If you happened to miss it, the recording can be found here:.
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Here's ECC's proposed feature set for NU5 focusing on the first phase of Halo deployment on Zcash and the enablement of cross-chain apps and level 2 solutions!.
NU5: Halo creates fertile ground for new #Zcash-inclusive solutions, with the potential to surpass the importance of ECC's previous work w/ zero-knowledge proofs. Proposals are subject to community approval and the outcome of security audits.
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We began ‘21 with ~ 10.5M ZEC in issuance. During the year, 1.3M ZEC will be issued representing an approximate 10.5% inflation rate. As Zcash is on the same emission curve as Bitcoin, this issuance will continue until a total supply of 21M ZEC is reached.
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We don’t see proof of stake as a “rich get richer” mechanism, especially with in-protocol delegated staking (non-custodial) which provides a safe staking option for ZEC holders of all sizes. Regardless of the amount of ZEC staked, a staker receives a proportional reward.
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The Free Rider problem is where the foreign asset reaps all the benefits of a network but doesn’t contribute to its core support functions. In the case of Zcash, this would be an asset that gets the same benefits as ZEC holders but doesn’t incur the same inflation rate.
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The World Chain developer preview is another major milestone on the path to mainnet launch. Super excited for this and to be working with @OPLabsPBC, @Optimism, @gakonst and the @paradigm team during this phase. Check out the full blog post here:.
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The birth of Halo. An incredible read!.
The story for how Halo came about resulted from months and months of failed attempts and perseverance, but the discovery was more nuanced than this and involved @feministPLT and @str4d too! I've tried to use my experience as a lesson for how to discover stuff. A thread. 1/n.
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@thedefiedge This bear market is driven largely by world and macro-economics events outside of crypto, along with the high-profile implosion of several large orgs in the space. The 2018 market seemed more like a general course correction, similar to the dotcom crash in the early 2000's.
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Today @worldcoin announced a major milestone on the path to World Chain mainnet launch. @AlchemyPlatform has been selected as the chain's rollup infrastructure provider and as important, announced the integration of their full developer platform into the chain prior to launch.
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"Can't be evil" vs. "Don't be evil". Wish I had thought of that phrasing. Great article @fabric_vc.
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I'm very much looking forward to working with the SAG to tackle some of the most interesting strategic opportunities we have in Zcash-land.
Thrilled to announce the ECC Scientific Advisory Group including, @ArthurB, @VitalikButerin, Mary Maller, @zmanian and @gojomo. They'll help guide the scientific evolution of the #Zcash protocol and support the ECC mission.
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We've got several amazing opportunities at ECC on the technical side: Security Engineers, DevOps Engineers, and we're also looking for an Engineering Manager. Come join us!. See all our open positions here:
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Yesterday, I had the absolute privilege of hosting a Twitter space on the design and development of the @worldcoin Orb. It was a great conversation with @sandroherbig & @MeyerhofferDsgn from @tfh_technology.
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This was an incredible space today. It was great talking to @liamihorne @recmo @tiagosada and @Fwiz about World Chain and the Superchain. If you missed it be sure to catch the recording!.
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Looking at current Zcash economics, they’re pretty straightforward and inherited largely from Bitcoin, but it’s good to review the basics when considering making any sort of change that could have a potential impact.
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Hey @RunOnFlux! Any chance we could get you to change the client id to something other than MagicBean in an upcoming release? It's causing confusion over the node count for Zcash. Thanks!.
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Halvenings would have no more of an economic impact on proof of stake than it would on proof of work especially when maintaining the same emission schedule. This issuance rate would cut in half in both cases. That affects block rewards going to miners or validators equally.
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Humbled to be along for the ride. 🙂. What an incredible team!.
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Today Face Auth was rolled out in select locations around the World. Face Auth in short, is meant to ensure the person using a World ID is the same person that was standing in front of the Orb when it was verified.
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A major step forward on many levels!.
(1/4) The Halo Arc product suite will help usher in a new era for #Zcash / $ZEC. It includes updates to Zcashd, the ECC Reference Wallet apps and the ECC wallet SDKs to coincide with NU5.
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The Top Heavy problem is where the foreign asset becomes more valuable or is more valuable than the native asset. Think Mastercoin / Omni and Tether and while conceptually different, Colored Coins from the earlier Bitcoin days had similar economic concerns.
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Congrats to the ECC wallet team and everyone else at the company involved in making the launch and release a reality!.
Today, ECC released the source code for prototype wallet applications built on our SDKs. These are reference implementations for fully-functional, shielded-only, Android- and iOS-native applications. Direct links and more info in this thread. 👇👇👇 (1/6). #z2z #Zcash $ZEC
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@zooko posted his thoughts on why Zcash should switch to proof of stake in “Should Zcash switch from Proof of Work to Proof of Stake?” and @least_nathan posted an overview of what a technical migration might look like in “What would a Zcash proof of stake transition look like?”.
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Congrats @Scroll_ZKP on a great launch!. Always great to see Halo 2 being used across the ecosystem. cc: @zooko @ebfull @feministPLT @str4d @therealyingtong.
While there's a lot more to do, today we get to celebrate the mathematical and engineering brilliance of the Scroll team as well as the entire ZK community whose work made this possible (incl the brilliant teams and individuals that’ve been contributing to Halo2 in recent years).
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Sums it up well. 🙂.
@ThorTorrens Zcash, for multiple reasons. 1. Private digital money using the best technology (Zero Knowledge Proofs, soon Halo 2).2. The Blockchain funds development.3. One of the best technical teams out there, breakthrough after breakthrough.4. Community, nice interesting people. Much more.
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@gogetitman28 @zardigrade @nuttycom @BeerdHead @Martian_Han @ElectricCoinCo @zooko We won’t compromise on the safety and quality of an upgrade or the health of our employees to hit a date when it’s clear doing so would be inconsistent with the historic standards that have yielded several successful upgrades in the past.
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Hi @secparam and @socrates1024. Thanks for questions and interest!. I was largely AFK for a couple of days but wanted to answer a few of your questions. Happy to hop on a call if you’d like at some point and discuss further.
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Incredibly excited to be working with these great companies to move Zcash forward.
The mission of Zcash is to empower everyone with economic freedom. Today six companies made up of skilled builders are leaning in to make that a reality and to help determine the future of Zcash itself. Announcing the Zcash Developer Alliance:
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Nice work!!.
NU5 compatible V5 transaction support on Test-net! 👁️🛡️👁️
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Nice writeup and nice work @yezhang1998!. "Goldilocks and FRI are now supported in Halo2". cc: @zooko @therealyingtong.
zkEVM has arguably become the gold standard technology for scaling Ethereum. In this article, I want to share some of the lessons we have learned while building the zkEVM, and how we’ve been thinking of different trade-offs along the way.
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