Introducing YecLite: A Lightweight Ycash Wallet for Shielded Transactions

Enjoy the power and privacy of shielded Ycash transactions on your personal computer, without needing to download the entire Ycash blockchain

Introduction

The Ycash Foundation is excited to announce the release of YecLite, a lightweight Ycash wallet that fully supports shielded Ycash transactions on computers running MacOS, Linux, or Windows. Download YecLite now:

https://github.com/ycashfoundation/yeclite/releases

Prior to YecLite, the only way to send or receive shielded Ycash transactions was to use ycashd or YecWallet, both of which require a full copy of the Ycash blockchain (currently over 22 GB in size). With the release of YecLite, it is now dramatically easier to get started with sending and receiving shielded Ycash transactions!

The Importance of a Lightweight Option for Shielded Transactions

To fully appreciate the importance of having a lightweight option for using shielded transactions on personal computers, the requirements for running a “full node” like ycashd or YecWallet should be considered. These requirements include:

Needing a copy of all the blocks that make up the Ycash blockchain (currently around 22 GB in size)

Indexing all the transactions in those blocks in order to build a database

Reindexing all those transactions to rebuild the database should it ever become corrupted

These requirements are not unique to Ycash. (For example, running a Bitcoin full node requires a fully indexed copy of the Bitcoin blockchain, which at the time of this writing is over 250 GB in size.)

In contrast, YecLite only needs to download about 530 kB of data to get started! And even as the Ycash blockchain continues to grow, YecLite’s data storage requirements remain small because YecLite only needs to store information about your own transactions, not everyone else’s.

Support for shielded transactions is a key differentiator between Ycash and Bitcoin. And with the release of YecLite, more Ycash users can now enjoy the power and privacy of shielded Ycash transactions.

The Story Behind YecLite

YecLite was developed by Ycash software developers funded by the Ycash Foundation. It is a port of Zecwallet Lite, which was developed by the ZecWallet team. The ZecWallet team has achieved several important milestones for the Zcash network, including the first cross-platform desktop GUI wallet (ZecWallet), the first shielded paper wallet (ZecPaperWallet), the first shielded desktop light wallet (Zecwallet Lite).

The Ycash Foundation continues to believe that it is strategically important for the future of Ycash to leverage the work of the ZecWallet team. We therefore prioritized porting Zecwallet Lite to Ycash, and are pleased to release YecLite v1.0.0 less three weeks after the release of ZecWallet Lite v1.0.

YecLite — which is itself open source — is built upon several important contributions to the world of open source software. In addition to the thanking the Ycash developers and the aforementioned ZecWallet team, the Ycash Foundation would also like to thank the Zcash Foundation for funding the development of Zecwallet Lite and the Electric Coin Company for funding and leading the development of librustzcash and lightwalletd.

Getting Started

To get started, download YecLite here:

https://github.com/ycashfoundation/yeclite/releases

and then check out our introductory article, “Gettting Started With YecLite”:

If you have questions, consider joining the Ycash Foundation Telegram Group or the Ycash Foundation Discord.

Thank you for your interest in YecLite and Ycash!