Today, we deployed the first beta release of the Zcash reference implementation, v1.0.0-beta1, to the testnet. This release, Beta 1, is the first release of the Zcash Beta Series and represents a new phase of development.
Note: the official Zcash currency is non-existent until our October 28th launch. Only testnet coins exist and they carry no value.
Zcash Beta Series
The Beta series is the final phase of development prior to the launch of Zcash 1.0.0, which begins the Sprout Series. The Beta Series is notably different from our earlier alpha releases in several ways:
- We’re using a new versioning scheme, the first beta release is v1.0.0-beta1, the next v1.0.0-beta2 and so on.
- Starting with v1.0.0-beta1 the new high level RPC interface is in place. The early RPC interface is deprecated and will be removed.
- Only high priority changes will be merged, including: important security mitigations, fixing bugs which inhibit basic operation, improving build, packaging, and documentation, and changes for production infrastructure.
As we approach our target 1.0 Sprout launch date of October 28th, 2016, we’ll release several Beta versions. During this time we’ll be working with partners and community members to integrate Zcash into more tools, products, and services.
The Zcash Beta Series is a good time for integration work for third party services and products interested in deploying Zcash support.
As the Beta Series matures, we’ll enter a pre-release phase during which we’ll publish several essential items:
- security audit reports
- proof-of-work analysis
- source code and security proof of our secure parameter setup
- securely generated parameters
Stay tuned for those publications.
About Beta 1 release
Today we’ve released Zcash Beta 1, aka v1.0.0-beta1. Building on the previous alpha release which finalized consensus changes (unless we discover critical flaws) this release adds the new high level RPC interface. The v1.0.0-beta1 release includes these major changes:
- Wallet support for the high-level interface, including detecting received notes, selecting notes for transfers, listing transactions, getting balances, and calculating block subsidies. See RPC interface. [#1355, #1323, #1315, #1233]
- We rolled back a “stable txid” feature intended to fix malleability issues, see our post about the rollback. [#1316]
- We tweaked the difficulty adjustment algorithm. [#1338]
- Several other security and other bug fixes and cleanups, full details on the Beta 1 github milestone.
Caution: In the interest of getting user feedback we’re releasing v1.0.0-beta1 today even though it lacks the same level of automated test coverage as our core consensus code. Future releases in the Beta series will focus on improving test coverage as well as discovering and fixing bugs.
Additionally, every release moving forward will contain a document with security warnings. For this release, see security-warnings.md. Important: Please also regularly check out website for security issues discovered after a release is deployed to users.
Stay Involved
Try out the Beta series releases by following the Beta Guide.
To follow our progress, watch the github project and join the forum. To get an email announcement when Zcash Sprout Series is ready, put your email address in here. We tweet @ZcashCo.