Immediately’s launch represents one other child step towards our purpose of creating Zashi an easy-to-use, all-in-one consumer interface for securely storing, spending, and sending ZEC.
We’re excited to ship foreign money conversion and TEX handle 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 below are the main points.
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 trade or a number of exchanges for the value of a coin will reveal the consumer’s IP handle, 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 count on extra — and we do, too. So our engineers carried out a mechanism in Zashi to fetch foreign money trade charges from a number of verified sources over the Tor community in order to not leak the consumer’s IP handle to these exchanges. No shortcuts in terms of defending Zashi customers. To our information, Zashi is the one pockets that can defend your IP handle 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 can 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 consumer navigates to the Ship display screen or relaunches the app, and the consumer can manually refresh the speed on the Account and Balances screens as soon as each two minutes by tapping on the $ fee button. Zashi by no means shows an trade fee older than quarter-hour.
Clear historical past
Zashi now helps recovering totally clear pockets historical past. Because of this should you imported your seed phrase from a pockets that allowed you to create totally clear transactions previously, these transactions will now seem in your Zashi pockets historical past.
TEX addresses
Does Zcash want one other handle format? Prefer it or not, the reply is sure. Customers in numerous components of the world have entry to totally different exchanges, and plenty of exchanges have distinctive guidelines and necessities. TEX addresses resolve accessibility and value points for a whole bunch of thousands and thousands of potential Zcashers.
TEX addresses are solely for exchanges (Zashi customers gained’t have a TEX handle of their very own), they usually make it doable for Zashi and different wallets to ship shielded funds to an trade 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 trade, began requiring that every one deposit transactions be totally clear, i.e., the supply handle is required to be seen to the trade. This offers Binance the data it must return funds to the depositor if the trade decides it doesn’t need to settle for the deposit.
A second motivator for this new characteristic is that there are lots of exchanges that deal with Zcash as Bitcoin with solely slight changes to the code. However because of this transactions with shielded parts 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 consumer sends shielded ZEC, some exchanges can’t see the funds that have been despatched — both as a result of the trade 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 look like misplaced. (The trade handle controls the funds however can’t see them.)
TEX addresses resolve these points by introducing logic that basically creates an adapter, an ephemeral clear handle, that shielded ZEC passes by way of earlier than arriving on the TEX handle. So, to the trade, the transaction has all the data it must be recognizable, however the sender’s info corresponding to shielded handle, historical past, and transaction info stays non-public.
With TEXes, Binance is glad as a result of the transaction through which they obtain the funds has a clear supply handle, and the Zashi customers are glad as a result of they’re not revealing their supply of funds. Equally, within the case of the transactions which might be being mis-parsed, these exchanges will solely see a clear handle and so there gained’t be any issues.
The way it works: When sending to a TEX handle from Zashi, shielded funds move by way of a clear handle earlier than arriving on the trade. A brand new, never-seen-before and never-to-be-seen-again clear handle is used for this intermediate step. Your Zashi pockets handle and different particulars stay “disconnected” and due to this fact not seen to the trade or anybody else.
Be aware: If Binance or any TEX handle holder chooses to say no a deposit, there isn’t an automated solution 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
Rapid ECC priorities are launching the Coinbase Onramp and Flexa integration for fast Zcash funds. These two releases, like right now’s launch, handle real-world use circumstances and are prioritized in our roadmap as a result of Zashi customers have instructed us they need them. Every little thing we ship in Zashi is with one goal in thoughts: to make it the best and finest approach to make use of Zcash.
