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 growth 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 received or misplaced by the actions we, as a group, take now.
That’s why we had been excited when Zooko Wilcox advised us he’s able to pour his vitality into a brand new function throughout the Zcash universe. (Juicy announcement coming quickly!)
On this transition, Zooko will depart his place as Government Director of Bootstrap, and his seat on the board. That is bittersweet information for us, provided that Zooko fashioned and led the staff that constructed Zcash and is basically chargeable for inspiring an lively tradition and group round Zcash and the better crypto universe.
However Bootstrap’s loss is the Zcash group’s achieve. Whereas we are going to 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 vitality to constructing momentum in a brand new undertaking, additional decentralizing growth, and fortifying Zcash resilience.
Zooko is an unique cypherpunk, impressed by and galvanizing to cryptographers, pc scientists, and privateness advocates — like Hal Finney, Phil Zimmerman, and Satoshi Nakamoto, to call a couple of, who from the early and mid-90s had been engaged on new programs and applied sciences for social change.
Zooko has contributed to an array of tasks 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 staff of scientists and engineers that launched the Zcash cryptocurrency. (If you’re studying this weblog, you nearly actually learn about Zcash, a digital forex that retains all of your monetary info personal and in your management.)
Zcash and zero-knowledge proofs
At ECC, Zooko and staff delivered in Zcash the primary sensible, real-world implementation of zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs). Whereas the concept of ZKPs has been round because the Nineteen Eighties, ECC delivered the first-ever profitable implementation, making a watershed second for a groundbreaking concept.
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 deliver the processing necessities down considerably — low sufficient to permit for the primary ever personal zero-knowledge transactions on cell 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 programs. 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 person confidence and scalability whereas making the protocol extra enticing, sooner, and cheaper for others to construct on.
The significance of ECC’s work on ZKPs, underneath Zooko’s management, can’t be overstated. These instruments have revolutionized information privateness and safety and at the moment are pervasive within the crypto world and past — primed to be used in essential industries that contact everybody’s lives, akin to finance, well being care, voting programs, 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 firms world wide, together with closely regulated US-based exchanges akin to Gemini and Coinbase. Largely due to Zooko, Zcash is now some of the battle-tested and trusted cryptocurrencies in existence. Zcash tech can be the cornerstone of modern use circumstances like privateness preserving sensible contacts and ZK rollups, which can change into foundational instruments for particular person energy and company in tomorrow’s world.
At ECC and Bootstrap, Zooko:
Led ECC via 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 alternate on this planet
Helped remediate essential vulnerabilities in Zcash just like the Faerie Gold assault (pre-launch), the foremost 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 determine the non-profit Zcash Basis
Delivered core improvements in Zcash, which have been applied by innumerable tasks
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 essential sustaining investments on behalf of ECC in tasks like Agoric and Starkware
Consumed a whole lot of kilos of steak 🥩
Blocked, unblocked, after which re-blocked a couple of X/Twitter profiles 😆
Zooko’s influence 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.
