Zcash Observatory

Mitchell Krawiec-Thayer and Pranav Thirunavukkarasu

Contact: Mitchell@InsightFellows.com

Full writeup at https://fellows.link/ZcashObservatory

Motivation:

As Zcash adoption expands and the network scales, consumers, researchers, and businesses will all require high-quality data quantifying network health and security. Users need data and visibility related to both performance (latency, load, etc) and security (reorganizations, double spend attacks, etc). Our observatory nodes and network will detect and alert for a variety of these phenomena. In addition to monitoring and reporting network security, quantified understanding of network characteristics will inform protocol design decisions related to Zcash scaling and privacy. A comprehensive observatory NetSec system will increase Zcash’s attractiveness for commercial adoption and infrastructure integration.

Key deliverables & features:

• Archive and analyze alternative/orphaned blocks and transactions
• Detect and alert on potential double spend attacks
• Detect and alert on probable selfish/stubborn mining
• Quantify global network topology and latency
• Block/transaction propagation time
• Miner-timestamp spoofing
• Peerlist homogeneity, network connectivity, network centralization
• Open-source public front-end/dashboard to visualize Zcash network health & security
• Research database for Zcash analysis (nearest is BigQuery, lacking NetSec data)
• All products will be released as free open-source software thanks to Zcash Foundation support

Status

• Advanced logging
• NetSec alerts
• Research pipelines
• Global network
• Dashboard / front-end

Donate to continue Observatory development

We'd like to thank the Zcash Foundation for generous financial support that enabled us to develop the observatory tooling.

We are developing a public research database, open-source alerting system, and public dashboard. The Observatory Project is seeking patrons to fund the continued creation and operation of these public utilities. Individuals or entities may opt to remain anonymous, or be recognized publicly as a sponsor of key tooling for the Zcash ecosystem.

Shielded donations:

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Transparent donations:

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Fiat donations are welcome: contact Mitchell@InsightFellows.com