From the Bootstrap Board of Administrators:
Zcash is at an inflection level. With a extra decentralized Zcash contributor mannequin taking form and a brand new improvement fund hanging within the stability, with crypto and privateness on the lips of coverage makers, regulators, candidates for public workplace, fanatics, and on a regular basis residents, the way forward for Zcash — and maybe financial freedom on the entire — could also be gained or misplaced by the actions we, as a group, take now.
That’s why we have been excited when Zooko Wilcox informed us he’s able to pour his power into a brand new position inside the Zcash universe. (Juicy announcement coming quickly!)
On this transition, Zooko will go away his place as Government Director of Bootstrap, and his seat on the board. That is bittersweet information for us, on condition that Zooko shaped and led the crew that constructed Zcash and is basically answerable for inspiring an energetic tradition and group round Zcash and the larger crypto universe.
However Bootstrap’s loss is the Zcash group’s achieve. Whereas we’ll miss his management at Bootstrap, we’re thrilled that he’s refocusing his work on Zcash elsewhere, persevering with to contribute his one-of-a-kind expertise and power to constructing momentum in a brand new venture, additional decentralizing improvement, and fortifying Zcash resilience.
Zooko is an authentic cypherpunk, impressed by and galvanizing to cryptographers, laptop scientists, and privateness advocates — like Hal Finney, Phil Zimmerman, and Satoshi Nakamoto, to call a couple of, who from the early and mid-90s have been engaged on new techniques and applied sciences for social change.
Zooko has contributed to an array of initiatives since then, together with Fairly Good Privateness, DigiCash, Mojo Nation, ZRTP, Tahoe-LAFS, BLAKE2, BLAKE3, and SPHINCS. He’s finest generally known as CEO and founding father of Electrical Coin Co., the crew of scientists and engineers that launched the Zcash cryptocurrency. (In case you are studying this weblog, you nearly definitely find out about Zcash, a digital forex that retains all of your monetary data non-public and in your management.)
Zcash and zero-knowledge proofs
At ECC, Zooko and crew delivered in Zcash the primary sensible, real-world implementation of zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs). Whereas the thought of ZKPs has been round because the Nineteen Eighties, ECC delivered the first-ever profitable implementation, making a watershed second for a groundbreaking thought.
The preliminary launch, in 2016, used ZKPs that required 40 seconds and GBs of PC RAM to course of. However inside two years, ECC optimized the code to carry the processing necessities down considerably — low sufficient to permit for the primary ever non-public zero-knowledge transactions on cellular units.
In 2019, ECC’s Sean Bowe found one other game-changing zero-knowledge innovation: Halo, a novel approach for creating sensible, scalable, and trustless cryptographic proving techniques. This discovery ended an nearly decade-long pursuit by the cryptography group. The Halo proving system eliminates protocol reliance on so-called “trusted setups” and offers a catalyst for Zcash consumer confidence and scalability whereas making the protocol extra enticing, quicker, and cheaper for others to construct on.
The significance of ECC’s work on ZKPs, beneath Zooko’s management, can’t be overstated. These instruments have revolutionized knowledge privateness and safety and at the moment are pervasive within the crypto world and past — primed to be used in vital industries that contact everybody’s lives, reminiscent of finance, well being care, voting techniques, community safety and authentication, and extra.
At a look
Zooko’s work has helped develop Zcash right into a broadly adopted digital forex, supported by high-quality monetary establishments and crypto corporations world wide, together with closely regulated US-based exchanges reminiscent of Gemini and Coinbase. Largely because of Zooko, Zcash is now some of the battle-tested and trusted cryptocurrencies in existence. Zcash tech can be the cornerstone of progressive use circumstances like privateness preserving good contacts and ZK rollups, which can turn into foundational instruments for particular person energy and company in tomorrow’s world.
At ECC and Bootstrap, Zooko:
Led ECC by way of greater than 70 separate Zcash releases
Oversaw 6 main Zcash community upgrades
Contributed to the greater than 10,000 commits to the Zcash codebase
Noticed ~3,000 points in Zcash fastened
Noticed Zcash forked greater than 2,000 occasions
Had the Zcash codebase audited dozens of occasions, by world-class groups together with Qedit, Least Authority, NCC Group, Path of Bits, and Coinspect
Watched the Zcash shielded swimming pools develop to carry 1,500,000 ZEC
Helped Zcash get added to each main crypto change on the earth
Helped remediate vital vulnerabilities in Zcash just like the Faerie Gold assault (pre-launch), the most important counterfeiting bug in 2019, and the reminiscence exhaustion bug in 2023
With different Zcash founders, donated 273,000 ZEC (which included 33 p.c of his allotted share of the Founders Reward) to ascertain the non-profit Zcash Basis
Delivered core improvements in Zcash, which have been carried out by innumerable initiatives
The trusted setup, then the trustless setup
The Dev Fund
Decentralized encrypted transactions
Encrypted memo subject
Unified addresses
Viewing keys
Spoke at numerous occasions, on panels, podcasts, and workshops
Made vital sustaining investments on behalf of ECC in initiatives like Agoric and Starkware
Consumed a whole bunch of kilos of steak 🥩
Blocked, unblocked, after which re-blocked a couple of X/Twitter profiles 😆
Zooko’s impression on Zcash, the ecosystem, and the group is with out parallel, and we’re excited to see his work proceed. Godspeed, Zooko. We’re indebted to you, and we’re relying on you.
