Hello friends! Another month, another rundown of Zcash Foundation activities. Spoiler: The most exciting announcements are at the end.

5/9

Coda and Dekrypt Capital announced the SNARK Challenge, sponsored by the Zcash Foundation and a few other organizations: https://coinlist.co/build/coda

“A global competition to speed up the SNARK prover,” with more than $100k in the prize pool.

Coda CTO Izaak Meckler made a video about the SNARK Challenge: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81uR9W5PZ5M

5/9

The second installment of the Human Rights Foundation’s series on privacy and cryptocurrency was published: https://medium.com/human-rights-foundation-hrf/privacy-and-cryptocurrency-part-ii-bitcoin-wallets-2f68099b055f

We funded this initiative, which is being written by HRF Privacy Technology Fellow Eric Wall. Background info: https://www.zfnd.org/blog/human-rights-foundation-privacy-research/

The next installment is going to be about privacy-preserving cryptocurrencies like Zcash and Monero!

5/10

The Open Money Initiative, sponsored by the Zcash Foundation among other organizations, debuted the results of their research on cryptocurrency usage in Venezuela. OMI’s blog post: https://medium.com/@openmoneyinitiative/announcing-the-open-money-initiative-61422b58ad06

CoinDesk article: https://www.coindesk.com/whats-holding-back-bitcoin-in-venezuela-this-group-is-investigating

5/14

Alongside Paige Peterson from the Electric Coin Company, Josh Cincinnati (the Foundation’s Executive Director) spoke at Consensus 2019. You can see the video here: https://www.coindesk.com/events/consensus-2019/videos (scroll down to the video labeled “Electric Coin Company and Zcash Foundation” in the “Construct” section)

5/14

Also on the Construct stage at Consensus, Zcash Foundation board member Peter Van Valkenburgh said, “As a director of the Zcash Foundation I don’t want Zcash developers to build a system that maximizes the value of Zcash. I want them to build the best damn privacy coin they can. That’s the problem with a fiduciary duty of loyalty.”

Quote via Lane Rettig on Twitter: https://twitter.com/lrettig/status/1128691797495025664

5/21

“We are delighted to announce that Deirdre Connolly has joined the Zcash Foundation as a Core Engineer. […] At the Zcash Foundation, Deirdre will be taking ownership of the all-Rust implementation of Zcash and turning it into a production-quality project.”

More details: https://www.zfnd.org/blog/welcome-deirdre/

5/21

The second Zcash Protocol Hangout happened, and the video has been published: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FnwW6VvSho

The group primarily discussed Blossom and NU3 ZIPs. Paige from the ECC (mentioned earlier) took notes: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1qik04RpQr_rmPuEOo9FejIlCFK1Pv0LSTjA4qGao-EI/edit

The next one is likely to be planned for August.

5/23

We joined the social network Cent, and got a great response from the community: https://beta.cent.co/+tesygi

5/25

Bola-Ige Alabi-Efeshodiamhe repped Zcash at the Blockchain, AI & Digital Assets Summit in Nigeria: https://twitter.com/bolaigeaefe/status/1132307394254528512

5/29

New wallet!

“The Zcash Foundation is delighted to announce Zepio Wallet, a shielded-first, cross-platform Zcash wallet that includes a full zcashd node. […] Zepio is currently available for macOS, Windows, and Linux.” https://www.zfnd.org/blog/zepio-wallet/

Technical choices and development process: https://medium.com/@andreneves/announcing-zepio-zcash-wallet-bfd836f6609c

5/30

“ZF Grants now supports the Zcash mainnet! […] You can transact with real $ZEC on the platform.” https://www.zfnd.org/blog/zf-grants-is-ready/

People have already submitted proposals: https://grants.zfnd.org/proposals

On the Zcash Community Forum, a discussion of grant ideas: FAQ around grant ideas

That’s all for now!

You can receive these updates directly in your inbox (along with progress reports from grant winners) by signing up for the Zcash Foundation general mailing list: https://lists.zfnd.org/mailman/listinfo/general