Building on Zcash: Resources and initiatives

Zcash turns four years old in October, and there’s never been a better time to be part of the developer community. In this blog post, we outline new resources and showcase some existing initiatives that support people who want to build on Zcash.

Developer resources

Zcash is an open-source project, and Electric Coin Co. (ECC) is committed to making Zcash a friendly and accessible community for developers of all skill levels and backgrounds. As we look ahead to October 2020, and a new Major Grants fund for independent developers, ECC invites developers to get familiarized with the Zcash ecosystem.

We understand that sometimes the hardest part of joining a community is taking the first step. An easy way to get involved is simply to join the conversation. Visit the Zcash Discord channel or join the Zcash Gardening Club, a monthly community dev call, to meet other people passionate about building on Zcash.

We also suggest starting with the Zcash documentation page. There you’ll find basic information for setting up a node, Github workflows and network upgrades. We recently put together a suite of resources specifically for light-clients. Light-client support is particularly useful for mobile wallet teams. We hope to add more resources and documentation in the coming months. Let us know what you would like to see more of.

Build with us

This quarter, ECC is participating in Gitcoin’s Protect Privacy Hackathon. Developer teams are invited to compete for bounty prizes and build applications that leverage shielded Zcash.

More details are coming soon, but submissions can build off of existing libraries or use shielded transactions in a completely new way. You might build shielded support for your favorite wallet or come up with a messaging application using shielded memo fields. You could build a shielded merch store to buy and sell Zcash swag, or maybe you’ve got an original approach to integrating shielded Zcash to MetaMask. You might even have a fun idea for a game. Whatever your concept, we encourage you to have fun, get creative and ask plenty of questions along the way.

Healthy growth

ECC will be part of the Consensus: Distributed virtual conference and highlight the variety of ways people are building on Zcash. We’ll be announcing a new initiative at this event, focused on interoperability and cross-chain collaboration. Join us on Monday, May 11 at 2 pm EST for the following sessions:

  • Building on Zcash
    • Learn directly from developers in the space about what it’s like to build on Zcash. ECC’s senior PM, Brad Miller, will sit down with Holmes Wilson and Aditya Kulkarni to talk about their projects in the Zcash ecosystem.
  • Bridges to Interoperability
    • ECC’s CTO Nathan Wilcox, Zaki Manian from Iqlusion, and Matt Luongo from Thesis will discuss interoperability, privacy and a new collaborative initiative focused on Zcash.

ECC will lead two additional sessions at the Consensus: Distributed conference. Tune in for conversations related to Zcash, privacy and economic freedom.

  • Monday, May 11 at 10 am EST, Why Our New Virtual Lives Need Crypto Privacy
  • Wednesday, May 13 at 1 pm EST, Financial Exclusion: Does Crypto Fix This?

Register for Consensus: Distributed: https://next.brella.io/events/consensusdistributed

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