Zano Bi-weekly Report (23rd August 2021)

There’s a lot happening in the world of Zano, so let’s get straight to it.

Wrapped Zano (wZANO)

We mentioned in the last biweekly that testing on wZano had already begun. It helped us uncover some additional ways in which we could optimize the system and our setup, so part of the last two weeks were spent making the necessary changes and hardening overall system security. The platform’s been designed to work over long periods with minimal intervention, so as not to pull the devs away from other work unnecessarily. One significant issue we had was with the Etherscan API, which would occasionally stop responding for 5–10 mins at a time. Not helpful for testing and definitely not reliable enough for when the wrapping service goes live. Pavel came up with a different approach which, we’re happy to report, is functioning much more reliably.

So the system itself is done, the unwrap webpage is finished (as you can see) and wZano has now been officially deployed on the Ethereum main net (Etherscan link). Work on the UI for mobile/desktop has already started, so we’re very close to the final testing round, the wrapped token’s launch and Zano’s entrance into the electrifying world of Decentralized Finance.

Logo/branding explorations

Last time we revealed that we’ve been exploring branding ideas. More accurately, we’ve been working closely with a design company for some time through various stages of design→feedback→revision in search of the perfect logo for Zano. We just received the designers’ latest presentation and we’re really pleased with what we’ve seen. No timelines yet, but we’re certain that most of you guys will be just as impressed with the results as we have been.

PoS with Hidden Amounts Scheme

There’s been quite a bit of excitement around Val’s research paper since its release — there was a very active discussion on the Monero subreddit, though, frustratingly, a lot of the comments didn’t pertain to Val’s scheme directly, but only to the old Proof of Work vs Proof of Stake holy war (which is even less relevant to Zano given our hybrid PoW/PoS scheme). The comments that did address the scheme itself were almost universally positive.

We’ve also been lucky enough to get the opinions of two very highly respected cryptographers/researchers, which led to some clarifications and additions to the paper. Both have concluded, after provisional inspection, that the scheme indeed appears to be sound. We’re now making arrangements for the paper to be properly peer reviewed.

We can’t overstate the importance of this work. Proof of Stake with hidden amounts was generally believed to be impossible up until now. Not only does it allow Zano to achieve a much higher default level of privacy, it does the same for all CryptoNote-based proof of stake coins. There’s a good chance that many projects outside of our own are going to benefit greatly from this work over time.

zNFTs

You’re all no doubt aware of the NFT (Non-fungible Token) craze — the most popular NFT marketplace has already reached $1b in volume for this month alone. So it might come as a surprise to you that Zano has had a form of NFT built-in since it launched. Maybe you’ve already guessed what they are: Aliases (not all NFTs are art-related […or without utility]). You can think of them as Non-fungible Identity Tokens.

With that in mind, we’d like to ask you all for your ideas and feedback. The larger NFT ecosystem is probably something that many of you guys have a lot more experience with than the team does. Though we already have NFT support in a limited sense, adding support for more generalized NFTs would still take a significant amount of time and work. Before committing resources to it, we’d have to be sure it’s worthwhile.

Do you think there is something we’d bring to the table that’d be a unique selling point for NFTs on Zano? Perhaps a new form of NFT or new application that makes use of Zano’s privacy features?

If you have any original ideas we’d love to hear them. Leave us a comment, or write to us on discord/telegram/reddit.

After wZano?

After discussions, the team has decided that as soon as wZano goes live, they will set to work on giving Zano a significant privacy upgrade (made possible by Val’s new PoS scheme). Both Andre and Val will tackle this as a priority. The upgrade will bring RingCT (Ring Confidential Transactions) and Bulletproofs+ to Zano: RingCT keeps transaction amounts hidden and Bulletproofs+ help ensure the precise integrity of funds by serving as highly-efficient range proofs.

As we’ve said before, this will give us a level of privacy that is equal to, or beyond, that of any other CryptoNote-derived coin (so we can finally unleash those privacy-coin comparison charts!).

“Wen Marketing?”

Since the last update, we’ve also dipped our toe into the murky waters of online advertising, with a short series of Twitter ad campaigns. Being our first time using the platform for ads, there was some trial and error involved, but after some refinements we achieved promising results. Our opinion so far is that it might be a good strategy to have a constantly running small-scale, highly targeted campaign to bring in new followers while using short-term large-scale campaigns to improve reach when we make major announcements. We’ll continue to experiment and let you know our findings.

Community Rock Stars

This is a new section in which we give a shout out to Zano community members who’ve gone beyond the call of duty and made especially great contributions. If it’s ever empty, you’ll know that the community’s characteristic passivity has reached problematic levels. ;)

This week we’d like to acknowledge the contributions of one Mr_Kwibs.

Mr_Kwibs has shown us continuous public support, with positive and informative tweets about the project and by including Zano in some of his own promotional campaigns. In private, he’s always quick to offer us a little advice or share an opportunity with us and as a popular and respected member of the crypto privacy community he’s been doing great work to unify and galvanize its various factions. So thanks for all you do Mr_Kwibs!!

Aaaand that’s all folks. Thank you for your support and remember, the Zano vaccine is 100% effective against financial surveillance. Now roll up your sleeve!