At the moment’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 deal with 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 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 consumer’s IP deal with, 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 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 change charges from a number of verified sources over the Tor community in order to not leak the consumer’s IP deal with to these exchanges. No shortcuts relating to defending Zashi customers. To our information, Zashi is the one pockets that may shield your IP deal with 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 will probably be added sooner or later.
The way it works: Alternate 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 change price older than quarter-hour.
Clear historical past
Zashi now helps recovering absolutely clear pockets historical past. Which means should you imported your seed phrase from a pockets that allowed you to create absolutely clear transactions up to now, these transactions will now seem in your Zashi pockets historical past.
TEX addresses
Does Zcash want one other deal with format? Prefer it or not, the reply is sure. Customers in numerous elements of the world have entry to completely different exchanges, and plenty of exchanges have distinctive guidelines and necessities. TEX addresses remedy accessibility and usefulness points for lots of of tens of millions of potential Zcashers.
TEX addresses are solely for exchanges (Zashi customers received’t have a TEX deal with of their very own), and so they make it doable for Zashi and different wallets to ship shielded funds to an change 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 change, began requiring that each one deposit transactions be absolutely clear, i.e., the supply deal with is required to be seen to the change. This offers Binance the data it must return funds to the depositor if the change decides it doesn’t wish 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 which means that transactions with shielded elements are sometimes not supported (they aren’t parsed accurately) 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 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 instances, these funds can seem like misplaced. (The change deal with controls the funds however can’t see them.)
TEX addresses remedy these points by introducing logic that basically creates an adapter, an ephemeral clear deal with, that shielded ZEC passes via earlier than arriving on the TEX deal with. So, to the change, the transaction has all the data it must be recognizable, however the sender’s info similar to shielded deal with, historical past, and transaction info stays personal.
With TEXes, Binance is comfortable as a result of the transaction during which they obtain the funds has a clear supply deal with, 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 might be being mis-parsed, these exchanges will solely see a clear deal with and so there received’t be any issues.
The way it works: When sending to a TEX deal with from Zashi, shielded funds cross via a clear deal with earlier than arriving on the change. A brand new, never-seen-before and never-to-be-seen-again clear deal with is used for this intermediate step. Your Zashi pockets deal with and different particulars stay “disconnected” and due to this fact not seen to the change or anybody else.
Be aware: If Binance or any TEX deal with holder chooses to say no a deposit, there isn’t an automated approach to re-shield the returned funds, although 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 right now’s launch, deal with real-world use instances and are prioritized in our roadmap as a result of Zashi customers have instructed us they need them. Every part we ship in Zashi is with one goal in thoughts: to make it the only and finest method to make use of Zcash.
