Last week we introduced a video series called Perspectives. These short interviews were conducted at Zcon0 on various topics relevant to the Zcash community.

Yesterday, the Zcash Company released the first Sapling-compatible Zcash node software and announced that Sapling activation is set at a block height of 419200, which is expected to occur on Zcash’s second birthday, Oct. 28, 2018.

Sapling is a major protocol upgrade. Due to recent cryptographic breakthroughs, shielded (or private) addresses and transactions will soon be supported by mobile and hardware wallets, exchanges and payment processors. This will greatly improve the adoption of privacy and bring us closer to our vision of empowering everyone with economic freedom and opportunity.

For this week’s Perspectives, we’re highlighting Sapling. Zcash engineers Sean Bowe and Ariel Gabizon provide an overview of some of the detail and expected benefits with this upgrade, including proof-construction improvements, new zk-SNARK parameters, and delegated proving.

All videos in the Perspectives series are available on the Zcash YouTube channel. If you missed it, last week’s Perspectives focused on privacy. Take a look at thoughts from Zcash CTO Nathan Wilcox and Ethereum Founder and Chief Scientist Vitalik Buterin.