Right now’s launch represents one other child step towards our objective of creating Zashi an easy-to-use, all-in-one person interface for securely storing, spending, and sending ZEC.
We’re excited to ship foreign money conversion and TEX tackle assist in Zashi iOS 1.1.5. (We’re ending work on Zashi Android 1.1.6 with these updates and can launch it quickly.) These options are for Zcashers who need usability enhancements that don’t compromise their privateness and safety. Listed here are the small print.
Forex conversion
Forex conversion is a normal characteristic in most crypto wallets, so if you end up asking, “What took so lengthy to implement it in Zashi?” we get it. And right here’s the reply: In different wallets, querying an alternate or a number of exchanges for the worth of a coin will reveal the person’s IP tackle, and their curiosity in Zcash, to these exchanges. This info can then be tied to different promoting metadata, and it turns into one other knowledge level in your basic profile that’s getting used to surveil you on the web.
This privacy-for-convenience tradeoff is okay for lots of customers, however we all know Zcashers anticipate extra — and we do, too. So our engineers applied a mechanism in Zashi to fetch foreign money alternate charges from a number of verified sources over the Tor community in order to not leak the person’s IP tackle to these exchanges. No shortcuts in the case of defending Zashi customers. To our information, Zashi is the one pockets that can shield your IP tackle throughout foreign money conversion, however we’re trying ahead to different Zcash pockets builders adopting this innovation. 🙂
Proper now, Zashi’s foreign money conversion solely works for ZEC-USD. Different currencies shall be added sooner or later.
The way it works: Alternate charges are displayed on the Account, Ship, and Balances screens. Zashi all the time triggers a refresh when a person navigates to the Ship display or relaunches the app, and the person can manually refresh the speed on the Account and Balances screens as soon as each two minutes by tapping on the $ charge button. Zashi by no means shows an alternate charge older than quarter-hour.
Clear historical past
Zashi now helps recovering absolutely clear pockets historical past. Which means that should you imported your seed phrase from a pockets that allowed you to create absolutely clear transactions previously, these transactions will now seem in your Zashi pockets historical past.
TEX addresses
Does Zcash want one other tackle format? Prefer it or not, the reply is sure. Customers in several elements of the world have entry to totally different exchanges, and plenty of exchanges have distinctive guidelines and necessities. TEX addresses remedy accessibility and value points for a whole bunch of tens of millions of potential Zcashers.
TEX addresses are completely for exchanges (Zashi customers received’t have a TEX tackle of their very own), they usually make it attainable for Zashi and different wallets to ship shielded funds to an alternate like Binance, which requires clear deposits.
First, some backstory. The hassle to construct TEXes began early in January when Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency alternate, began requiring that every one deposit transactions be absolutely clear, i.e., the supply tackle is required to be seen to the alternate. This provides Binance the data it must return funds to the depositor if the alternate decides it doesn’t need to settle for the deposit.
A second motivator for this new characteristic is that there are a lot of exchanges that deal with Zcash as Bitcoin with solely slight changes to the code. However because of this transactions with shielded elements are sometimes not supported (they aren’t parsed accurately) by these exchanges. In lots of circumstances, these exchanges can’t even detect transactions despatched from the shielded pool.
So when a person sends shielded ZEC, some exchanges can not see the funds that have been despatched — both as a result of the alternate isn’t set as much as acknowledge the transaction or as a result of, in Binance’s case, it chooses to not. In these circumstances, these funds can seem like misplaced. (The alternate tackle controls the funds however can’t see them.)
TEX addresses remedy these points by introducing logic that primarily creates an adapter, an ephemeral clear tackle, that shielded ZEC passes by way of earlier than arriving on the TEX tackle. So, to the alternate, the transaction has all the data it must be recognizable, however the sender’s info resembling shielded tackle, historical past, and transaction info stays non-public.
With TEXes, Binance is completely satisfied as a result of the transaction wherein they obtain the funds has a clear supply tackle, and the Zashi customers are completely satisfied as a result of they’re not revealing their supply of funds. Equally, within the case of the transactions which can be being mis-parsed, these exchanges will solely see a clear tackle and so there received’t be any issues.
The way it works: When sending to a TEX tackle from Zashi, shielded funds go by way of a clear tackle earlier than arriving on the alternate. A brand new, never-seen-before and never-to-be-seen-again clear tackle is used for this intermediate step. Your Zashi pockets tackle and different particulars stay “disconnected” and subsequently not seen to the alternate or anybody else.
Notice: If Binance or any TEX tackle holder chooses to say no a deposit, there isn’t an computerized strategy to re-shield the returned funds, regardless that they’re nonetheless managed by the Zashi pockets. ECC is engaged on an answer.
What’s subsequent for Zashi
Speedy ECC priorities are launching the Coinbase Onramp and Flexa integration for fast Zcash funds. These two releases, like at the moment’s launch, tackle real-world use circumstances and are prioritized in our roadmap as a result of Zashi customers have informed us they need them. Every little thing we ship in Zashi is with one goal in thoughts: to make it the best and greatest method to make use of Zcash.
