When ECC announced the release of zcashd 5.0.0, we indicated our intent to add two general exceptions to the BOSL license so that our partners and friendly forks could use the Orchard technology deploying in NU5 in a manner consistent with their current licensing choice.

Over the last 10 months, ECC published a series of blog posts on our work exploring Zcash Shielded Assets (ZSAs), including our plans to perform an economic analysis of various fee mechanisms that could be employed alongside ZSAs. 

We had many successes in 2021 across all of our engineering-related teams including Core, Mobile, and DevSecOps, a team comprising what was previously the separate DevInfra and Security teams. These successes included the regular cadence of releases as well as breakthrough cryptographic research, developments to move the shielded wallet ecosystem forward, operational enhancements and advancements, and a continued demonstration of our commitment to security best practices, ensuring safe and secure releases and network upgrades. 

And we’re planning for a big January release of the Halo Arc product suite, including the NU5-compatible Zcashd, an updated ECC Reference Wallet, updated mobile wallet SDKs, and features that will enable Zcash to be Shielded by Default.

Zcash Improvement Proposals (ZIPs) for Network Upgrade 5 (NU5), projected to be August 2021. ECC's proposals for inclusion of the ZIPs outlined here are subject to the outcome of security audits, the results of which will be published as soon as they’ve been completed and reviewed.

Our goal in creating the NUP was to introduce synchronization points for Zcash protocol developers outside of ECC, ensure that future network upgrades continued to meet our historic standards for safety and quality, and allow plenty of time for ecosystem partner testing and integration.

We’re fortunate to have some of the most talented engineers and cryptographers in the world on our team, and while 2020 was a challenging year on many fronts, we continued to make tremendous progress in both R&D and engineering, which we feel will benefit Zcash for years to come.

As part of the Zcash Improvement Proposal and Network Upgrade Pipeline, Electric Coin Co. (ECC) is publishing our commitment of […]

In our 2019 Q4 livestream, we mapped out our Engineering flight plan aimed at advancing the future of Zcash across […]