Immediately’s launch represents one other child step towards our purpose of constructing 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 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.
Foreign money conversion
Foreign money conversion is an ordinary function 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 worth 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 information level in your normal 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 count on extra — and we do, too. So our engineers applied 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 the case of defending Zashi customers. To our data, Zashi is the one pockets that may defend your IP handle throughout foreign money conversion, however we’re wanting 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: Trade charges are displayed on the Account, Ship, and Balances screens. Zashi at all times 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 $ price button. Zashi by no means shows an trade price older than quarter-hour.
Clear historical past
Zashi now helps recovering absolutely clear pockets historical past. Because of this in the event you imported your seed phrase from a pockets that allowed you to create absolutely clear transactions prior to now, 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 several components of the world have entry to totally different exchanges, and lots of exchanges have distinctive guidelines and necessities. TEX addresses resolve accessibility and value points for tons of 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), and so they make it attainable for Zashi and different wallets to ship shielded funds to an trade 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 trade, began requiring that each one deposit transactions be absolutely clear, i.e., the supply handle is required to be seen to the trade. This provides 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 function is that there are various exchanges that deal with Zcash as Bitcoin with solely slight changes to the code. However which means that transactions with shielded elements are sometimes not supported (they aren’t parsed appropriately) by these exchanges. In lots of instances, these exchanges can’t even detect transactions despatched from the shielded pool.
So when a consumer sends shielded ZEC, some exchanges can not 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 instances, 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 primarily creates an adapter, an ephemeral clear handle, that shielded ZEC passes via 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 similar to shielded handle, historical past, and transaction info stays non-public.
With TEXes, Binance is comfortable as a result of the transaction wherein they obtain the funds has a clear supply handle, and the Zashi customers are comfortable as a result of they’re not revealing their supply of funds. Equally, within the case of the transactions which are 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 via 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 subsequently 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 option 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
Rapid ECC priorities are launching the Coinbase Onramp and Flexa integration for immediate Zcash funds. These two releases, like as we speak’s launch, handle real-world use instances and are prioritized in our roadmap as a result of Zashi customers have advised us they need them. Every part we ship in Zashi is with one goal in thoughts: to make it the best and finest approach to make use of Zcash.
