Sovright

Networks like @Zcash are more resilient when decision-making is distributed. The Sovright Mining Pool is designed so pooled miners can choose which transactions go into their blocks, rather than leaving that decision to pool operators. This is made possible by Stratum V2: an open mining protocol built to reduce the centralization effects of pooled mining, originally built for and battle-tested in bitcoin.

The Sovright Mining Pool is essential because of two forces converging right now: Block production is consolidating; the top three pools now control 80% of hashrate. A privacy network whose operation depends heavily on a few centralized operators exists in an unstable environment. At the same time, @Zcash is gaining real momentum: active development, renewed attention, privacy going from niche to mainstream. Decentralization is more important than ever to secure the future of Zcash.

Our team recently completed a security audit of Argos for @sovright_. You can read the full report, including our findings, here: leastauthority.com/blog/audit-of-…

The miners providing @Zcash’s hashpower should determine the transactions that are included in each block. That makes sense, but most Zcash pools require miners to forfeit that choice in exchange for steady payouts. The Sovright Mining Pool doesn’t. Our mining pool lets miners choose transactions, pays rewards in shielded ZEC, and includes a verifiable attestation with each block. Decentralized. Censorship-resistent. The values Zcash was built on.

When a wallet is discontinued, the tokens it stored don't disappear - they just get harder to access. Argos is the fix for stranded ZEC that the community has been waiting for.

@CoinMarketCap We are committed to fixing problems like this. Try the tool at argos.sovright.com

LATEST: ⚡️ Zcash nonprofit Sovright has launched Argos, a wallet recovery tool to help early ZEC holders reclaim funds stuck after ZEC Wallet Lite was abandoned in 2022.

Since 2022, some @Zcash holders have been locked out of their own funds, as ZEC was left stranded in an early wallet client that went unmaintained. No one came back to fix it. Until now. Today we're announcing Argos: a free tool to recover ZEC stranded in old ZecWallet Lite clients. Enter your old seed phrase, generate a new address, and your funds are yours again. No waiting. No fees. No complexity. Your ZEC, now back!.

Thank you to @DanielGKuhn and @TheBlockCo for covering the launch of Argos. Anyone who lost access to their ZEC in an old ZecWallet Lite can reclaim it, starting today.

Demo below

Zcash's early wallet ecosystem was built by independent developers trying to make frontier cryptography more user friendly, often with limited resources. As some of those clients became unsupported, users were left without clear recovery paths. This effort helps close that gap.

If your ZEC has been stuck in an old ZecWallet Lite client, there's finally a way to recover it. Introducing Argos: a free community tool for recovering stranded ZEC: argos.sovright.com

This “stranded ZEC” problem has been unresolved since ~2022. We built the fix, had it audited by the OG’s at @LeastAuthority, and released it for free.

Giving control back to miners gets us closer to the original vision of decentralized, uncensorable currency. Congratulations to the team who made this happen for Bitcoin. We're excited to bring this to Zcash.

A little tldr on what @sovright_ is buidling with their Stratum protocol Currently Zcash mining is very concentrated. While writing this ViaBTC, Foundry, and F2Pool produced 791 of the last 1,000 reported Zcash blocks so roughly 79%. While this does not mean those pools own all that hardware, many individual miners point their machines at pools because solo mining is extremely unpredictable. A solo miner might wait a long time to find a block, but if you mine through a pool, you get paid more regularly based on how much work you contributed. The tradeoff is that miners often give up more than just payout handling. The pool builds the candidate block: it chooses which valid transactions are included, what order they appear in, and what policy the miner is working under. This is the problem Stratum V2 is trying to fix. Sovright documents two main modes: - Coinbase Only: In mining, “coinbase transaction” is the special transaction in every block that creates the block reward and pays it out. In this mode, miners can customize payout details, but the pool still chooses the transaction list. - Full Template: the miner runs their own Zebra node and builds the candidate block themselves. They choose which valid transactions to include, how to order them, and what fee/inclusion policy to use. The pool can still reject invalid work, but it no longer has to be the one deciding what goes into the block. Also I'm not not affiliated in anyway, just sharing something I found interesting.

The Sovright Mining Pool is live on testnet. Each block includes a signed attestation, and payouts are made in shielded ZEC - shifting choice from pool operators back to individual Zcash miners. Just as @Zcash was meant to be. Solutions that preserve privacy and decentralization are fundamental to preserving every human’s right to choose. Building those solutions is not easy, but it’s what we do at @sovright_

Today, 3 pools control 80% of Zcash blocks. This is a problem for @Zcash and for digital autonomy. Private currency built on a centralized infrastructure is unstable. We’ve built the Sovright Mining Pool to fix that. Miners decide what’s in each block, not pool operators. As it should be.

Roots of Trust: sovereign tech as the last bastion against AI totalitarianism A wide ranging discussion in Berlin on the tools and mindsets that prevent AI from turning you into its slave: - paranoia - verifiable silicon - supply chain hygiene - private internet money - surveillance with accountability - farming skillzzz Will post recording when it’s up @JphFritsche @zmanian @crossbar_inc @sovright_ @JoinBrewBerlin

Thank you to @TheEnergyMag for covering what we are building here at Sovright. Shielded payouts by default. No minimum hashrate. Miners choose their own block templates, or let the pool handle it. Same fee either way. The infrastructure for a more decentralized Zcash mining layer is live on testnet. Great write-up @WolfieZhao