Zecnero

Zecnero wallet 0.2.1: no node of your own

By Zecnero ·

Wallet 0.2.1 works without a node of your own. New wallets connect to the public node at node.zecnero.org, and syncing is much faster.

Wallet 0.2.1 lets you use the Zecnero wallet without running zecnerod. New wallets connect to a public node by default. The release also changes how the wallet syncs, which makes it much faster, and it fixes a desktop wallet window that could freeze after Settings. It is still a testnet beta.

No node needed

The wallet still has no light server. It downloads whole blocks and finds your coins itself, on your computer. What changed is where the blocks come from: a new wallet reaches the testnet through node.zecnero.org, a public node run by the Zecnero project behind Cloudflare, over an encrypted connection.

Your keys and recovery phrase never leave your computer. The scan for your coins happens there, and so does signing.

A node you don’t run can still see some things. The public node sees:

  • your IP address;
  • each transaction you send, and when you send it;
  • your transparent addresses with their balances and history, because the wallet looks up their coins by address, so the node can tell those addresses belong together;
  • which blocks the wallet downloads, which shows roughly when the wallet was created.

It can’t see your keys or recovery phrase. It can’t tell which shielded addresses and notes are yours, and it can’t see your shielded balance. The amounts and memos of shielded transactions stay encrypted. Cloudflare sits in front of the public node and can see the same things it does. For full privacy, run your own node.

Your own node, or another one

The desktop wallet has three choices under Node settings. The command-line wallet takes the same choice with --node.

  • Public node (easiest): the default for a new wallet.
  • My own node: zecnerod on this computer at 127.0.0.1, with its cookie file. This is the most private option.
  • Custom node URL: a node you trust elsewhere, over https:// only. Plain http:// is allowed only for 127.0.0.1.

The choice is saved in the wallet file. Wallets made before 0.2.1 keep using your own node, so nothing changes for them unless you switch. On the command line:

./zecnero-wallet-linux-x86_64 --node own balance
./zecnero-wallet-linux-x86_64 --cookie ~/zecnero/data/node/.cookie balance

The second line is for a node set up by the one-command installer from the mining guide. Passing --rpc-url or --cookie also selects your own node.

Faster sync

The wallet now fetches blocks in batches, in the background, and works out each block’s hash from its header instead of asking the node for it. On Windows with zecnerod running in WSL, each request used to take 46 to 50 milliseconds, and 0.2.0 made two requests per block. Restoring a wallet from block 1 of the testnet took 208 seconds on 0.2.0. On 0.2.1 it takes 0.84 seconds, measured on Windows with the node in WSL.

Through the public node, a restore from block 1 took 138 seconds for 2,238 blocks, measured with the Windows command-line wallet. The public node limits how often one computer may ask, and that limit sets the pace.

Scanning no longer holds the wallet while it waits for the network. Your addresses and QR codes show straight away, and the history page shows what the wallet already knows while the scan catches up.

Fixes

  • The desktop wallet could go blank and stop responding after you went back from Settings while it was syncing. Syncing now runs in the background, and no command can block the window.
  • The status line could say “Node syncing” and “100.0%” at the same time. It now shows one state at a time: Synced · block N, Scanning your wallet · block X of N, Syncing, Waiting for peers, Node offline, Public node unreachable or Public node busy. The wallet no longer uses the node’s time-based progress estimate to decide whether it is synced.
  • Sending waits until the wallet has scanned up to the node’s tip.
  • A node that is far behind the wallet no longer makes the wallet act as if the chain had been reorganised. The wallet treats that node as lagging and leaves your balance as it was.
  • The desktop wallet opens as a normal desktop window, 1280 by 800 and resizable, and keeps that size after you unlock it. Sign-in and settings appear as a card in the middle of the window.
  • Errors from a send, including a shield or a sweep, now stay on screen. Before, the next refresh could wipe them.
  • When the WebView2 runtime is missing, the desktop wallet says so. When the runtime is installed but fails to start, it says that instead. The desktop wallet also keeps a log at %APPDATA%\zecnero-wallet\logs\gui.log. The log holds no keys or seed words, and no memos.
  • Double-clicking the command-line wallet in Explorer used to open a console that closed at once. It now explains what it is and waits for Enter.

What it still doesn’t do

  • Orchard and unified addresses. The node verifies Orchard proofs only under the corrected circuit from Zcash NU6.2, and the library wallets use would still prove Orchard spends under the older one, so the wallet refuses them with a clear error until that is fixed.
  • Mainnet, which has not launched. The wallet runs on the testnet only.

Testnet coins have no value.

Download and check

The files are in the wallet-v0.2.1 folder of the file host, with a signed checksum list:

Check the signature first, then the files, in the folder you downloaded them to:

curl -O https://zecnero.org/zecnero.asc
gpg --import zecnero.asc
gpg --fingerprint 653209A344E75767
gpg --verify SHA256SUMS.asc SHA256SUMS
sha256sum -c --ignore-missing SHA256SUMS

The fingerprint must read FFFC 8AC0 2BF7 B4B4 50B4 3B1F 6532 09A3 44E7 5767, the same release key as the node. Keep all the files from the desktop wallet’s zip together in one folder when you unzip it. The desktop wallet has no code signature yet, so Windows SmartScreen warns the first time you start it. The wallets page has the check on Windows, and the 0.2 post covers what the wallet does beyond this release.

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