At this time’s launch represents one other child step towards our aim 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 help 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 main points.
Forex conversion
Forex conversion is a typical 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 change or a number of exchanges for the value of a coin will reveal the person’s IP tackle, and their curiosity in Zcash, to these exchanges. This data can then be tied to different promoting metadata, and it turns into one other information level in your basic profile that’s getting used to surveil you on the web.
This privacy-for-convenience tradeoff is ok 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 change 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 relating to defending Zashi customers. To our information, Zashi is the one pockets that may 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: Trade charges are displayed on the Account, Ship, and Balances screens. Zashi at all times 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 change charge older than quarter-hour.
Clear historical past
Zashi now helps recovering totally clear pockets historical past. Which means 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 tackle format? Prefer it or not, the reply is sure. Customers in numerous elements of the world have entry to completely different exchanges, and lots of exchanges have distinctive guidelines and necessities. TEX addresses resolve accessibility and usefulness 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 tackle of their very own), they usually make it attainable for Zashi and different wallets to ship shielded funds to an change like Binance, which requires clear deposits.
First, some backstory. The trouble to construct TEXes began early in January when Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency change, began requiring that each one deposit transactions be totally clear, i.e., the supply tackle is required to be seen to the change. This provides Binance the data it must return funds to the depositor if the change 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 appropriately) 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 change 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 change tackle controls the funds however can’t see them.)
TEX addresses resolve these points by introducing logic that primarily creates an adapter, an ephemeral clear tackle, that shielded ZEC passes via earlier than arriving on the TEX tackle. So, to the change, the transaction has all the data it must be recognizable, however the sender’s data reminiscent of shielded tackle, historical past, and transaction data stays non-public.
With TEXes, Binance is pleased as a result of the transaction wherein they obtain the funds has a clear supply tackle, and the Zashi customers are pleased 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 gained’t be any issues.
The way it works: When sending to a TEX tackle from Zashi, shielded funds cross via a clear tackle earlier than arriving on the change. 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 change or anybody else.
Word: If Binance or any TEX tackle holder chooses to say no a deposit, there isn’t an automated solution to re-shield the returned funds, despite the fact that they’re nonetheless managed by the Zashi pockets. ECC is engaged on an answer.
What’s subsequent for Zashi
Fast ECC priorities are launching the Coinbase Onramp and Flexa integration for fast Zcash funds. These two releases, like right this moment’s launch, tackle real-world use circumstances and are prioritized in our roadmap as a result of Zashi customers have instructed us they need them. All the pieces we ship in Zashi is with one goal in thoughts: to make it the best and greatest method to make use of Zcash.
