Newsletter — May 2022

No more trusted setup. NU5, the first major upgrade since November 2020, includes the launch of the Orchard shielded payment protocol, utilizing the Halo proving system to remove reliance on complex setup ceremonies. The efficiencies built into this upgrade make possible — for the first time ever — private, trustless digital cash payments on mobile phones. Halo also paves the way for increased interoperability by providing a system that could unlock private cross-chain proofs at scale.

The Cypherpunk Zero NFT whitelist period closed with over 1750 unique submissions! The 14-day minting period will run from June 3-17. At current participation levels, each whitelisted Ethereum address can mint four unique NFTs. Please ensure you have enough Ether in your whitelisted wallet for the upcoming mint. Follow us on Twitter to stay up to date.

Stay up to date here

A recent blog post by our Chief Research Officer Nathan Wilcox describes the major areas of research and open questions we are investigating with regard to moving Zcash from proof of work to proof of stake. In a subsequent post, we’ll dive deeper into the ongoing technical research and our preferences.

More details here

ECC co-hosted a second PGP (“Pretty Good Policy”) for Crypto Breakfast in DC with the Blockchain Association and Georgetown University’s Cyber SMART research center.  The event saw over 50 attendees and is quickly becoming the go-to meet up for crypto advocates, think tank scholars, academic researchers, and non-profit advocates. We’re excited to see it fulfill its purpose of building a stronger crypto policy community.

For those that might not be familiar with the Bootstrap Open Source License (BOSL), ECC created this license with the goal of making open source more resistant to capture and more sustainable. So, we’re happy to report we have merged the full exception text into the Orchard Github repository and updated the COPYING file with the relevant text

Learn more here

Throughout last summer and into the fall, we worked with the Computational Experimental Economics Lab (CEELab) at George Mason University (GMU), under the direction of Professor Kevin McCabe, to study and evaluate potential mechanisms. The final report will be published at a later date, but we’re pleased to present a draft copy.

Read the study here

Please join us in happily welcoming Tatyana Vinogradova to ECC as our new Head of Product Marketing for the Growth team.

Tatyana will be working with ZEC holders and users across the globe to ensure that ECC’s north star is in alignment with the community. She will also work closely with our engineering team to ensure that ECC’s products provide the most value to ZEC holders.

We’re currently looking for a Developer Relations Lead, Android Developer, and a DeFi Alchemist. Join us, and help empower economic freedom all over the world.

See open positions