Zel Technologies announced last Tuesday the availability of ZECmate, a new full node wallet for ZCash (ZEC). With it, users have another platform to conduct private transactions with z addresses, in addition to the official ZCash wallet. ZECmate is an adaptation of the full HoriZEN Swing node wallet.
In a Zel Tecnologies publication on Tuesday, the company said it received funding from the ZCash Foundation to develop a ZCash wallet for Windows operating system users from the HoriZEN Swing wallet. As a result of this work, says Zel Technologies, they are announcing the availability of ZECmate for Windows, MacOS and Linux operating systems.
ZECmate is open source and its repository is in GitHub. However, the developers cautioned that this wallet is intended for users who “understand the implications of running an entire Zcash node on the local machine. Downloading a complete node implies that a complete copy of a chain of blocks is maintained on a local machine. This allows the maintenance and backup of the file of the nodes in the block chain. The average user usually downloads a simple node when choosing a wallet of crypto coins.
The ZCash Swing GUI, the official cryptocurreny wallet, originally had support for Linux and the MacOS and Windows versions had recently been released. With the ZECmate, users of the three main desktop operating systems will have the opportunity to conduct private transactions with ZCash, which had been previously unused. According to researchers at University College London, only 31% of all ZCash private transactions made in the first half of 2018 used Z addresses.
However, using this new wallet has some risks. As it is still in an experimental phase, it presents problems of instability. For this reason, the developers made a problem-solving guide available to the public.
Despite the warnings and precautions advised to users of the new ZCash wallet, it appears to have overcome the vulnerabilities of the existing ZCash Swing GUI wallet, such as the fact that user funds could be lost if installed on a malware-infected computer, according to this GitHub repository. Another problem with the ZCash Swing GUI is that its binary version for MacOs and Windows must be updated every two months, as the modules are considered obsolete after 18 weeks.
Finally, the new ZECmate portfolio will have support for the Sapling protocol, which seeks to make the ZCash network much more secure and transparent. According to its roadmap, new features will be integrated into its interface in 2019. This update will reach block 419.200 on October 28th. Currently the network goes through block 417.300, approximately.
