YDF Announces Inaugural Recipients of the YDF Core Dev Award

The award honors two volunteer Ycash developers for their important contributions

5 min readNov 1, 2021

The Winged Victory of Samothrace (2nd century BC). Louvre Museum, Paris, France. Photo by Thomas Ulrich. Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

October 31, 2021

Announcement

The YDF is announcing today the inaugural recipients of the YDF Core Dev Award. In alphabetical order, the recipients are Hanh Huynh Huu and Miodrag Popović.

The importance of these two recipients to the future of Ycash cannot be overstated. It is easy to forget that the success of Bitcoin is due in large part to the contributions of volunteer developers. Because of these two recipients, Ycash finally has volunteer developers working on core Ycash infrastructure, including the Ycash full node, mobile wallets, and exciting new technologies (like shielded multisig).

About the award

To be eligible for the award, a candidate must meet the following requirements:

The candidate must have made a significant contribution to Ycash development in an area of strategic importance, on a volunteer basis.
The candidate must demonstrate a strong commitment to continuing to make such contributions to Ycash in the future.

As part of the award, the recipients have each received a one-time grant of $10,000, paid in Ycash (YEC) at a valuation of $0.50 USD (20,000 YEC to each recipient).

In an extraordinary show of generosity by Ycash users, a full 50% of the grants were funded by donations from Ycash users. If you donated to the Ycash Foundation anytime since the launch of Ycash, you are now part of history as a contributor to these inaugural grants.

The remaining 50% of the grants were funded from the YDF (Ycash Development Fund), marking the first time that YDF funds have ever been spent since the inception of the YDF in July 2019. The fact that this is the first time YDF funds have ever been spent speaks to the strategic importance of these two grants.

The grants are open-ended by design, both in terms of scope and duration. Both recipients will remain completely independent of the Ycash Foundation and YDF, so they are free to continue to make volunteer contributions as they see fit.

Hanh Huynh Huu

Warp Sync and Ywallet

Several multi-asset mobile wallets have supported Ycash since the Ycash launch in July 2019, but none of them support shielded Ycash transactions. In June 2020, the Ysimple project brought shielded Ycash transactions to Android, but the project was never released on iOS and was ultimately abandoned due to lack of developer resources and concerns about scalability. As a result, in the summer of 2021 — a full two years after the Ycash launch — Ycash still lacked a cross-platform mobile wallet that supported shielded Ycash transactions. Until Hanh showed up.

A prodigious software developer who has made contributions to both Bitcoin and Zcash, Hanh recently invented Warp Sync, a groundbreaking new syncing algorithm for shielded light clients. Warp Sync proved to be the fastest syncing algorithm for shielded light clients ever developed.

Armed with Warp Sync, Hanh released YWallet, the most advanced and performant shielded wallet ever developed. Not only is Ywallet the first production deployment of Warp Sync, it has advanced features like Snap addresses (diversified addresses), cold storage integration, and optional on-chain storage of contact addresses. Simply put, YWallet sets a new standard for performance and ease of use for shielded mobile wallets.

Hanh continues to make groundbreaking contributions to Ycash, including recently broadcasting the first ever multisig transaction on the Ycash blockchain.

You can follow Hanh’s work on GitHub and YouTube.

Award Citation

The award citation for Hanh reads:

For developing a novel syncing algorithm entitled Warp Sync that significantly advanced the state of the art for shielded light clients, for choosing Ycash as the first platform for deploying Warp Sync, for developing the first cross-platform mobile shielded wallet for Ycash, for continuing groundbreaking technical work on the Ycash platform (notably shielded multisig), for educating Ycash users about complex technologies, and for demonstrating a strong commitment to the future of Ycash, Hanh Huynh Huu is hereby awarded the YDF Core Dev Award.

Miodrag Popović

Reviving Full Node Progress

At the heart of every native blockchain is the full node software that is run by each node in the peer-to-peer network. The Ycash full node is called ycashd. Without ycashd, there is no Ycash.

From April 2019 until February 2020, development work on Ycash was funded by loans obtained by the Ycash Foundation. When that source of funding ran dry, Ycash proudly transitioned to a completely volunteer-developed project. For the remainder of 2020 and the first half 2021, dedicated volunteers kept the lights on and made progress on Ycash-related software outside of ycashd, but there was no one with the required expertise to maintain ycashd itself. The full node software at the core of Ycash was like a ship adrift at sea, with no one at the helm. Until Miodrag came along.

In June 2021, Miodrag volunteered to revive ycashd development. He began the work of incorporating the over 18 month backlog of upstream changes that had piled up. This work culminated in the recent release of ycashd v4.4.1, the first major update to ycashd since February 2020.

In ycashd v4.4.1, Miodrag also addressed long-standing scalability issues experienced by mining pool operators for shielded coins. Such operators have long suffered from bloated wallet files that grow to several hundred megabytes in size and eventually cease to function properly. These issues have now been addressed, much to the delight of pool operators.

Miodrag also revived development of YecWallet, the graphical user interface for ycashd. The recently released YecWallet v4.4.1 added support for full viewing keys (while maintaining parallel support for incoming viewing keys) and market price information.

Because of Miodrag’s contributions, Ycash is now poised to activate three upstream network upgrades in the first few months of 2022: Blossom, Heartwood, and (parts of) Canopy.

You can follow Miodrag’s work on GitHub.

Award Citation

The award citation for Miodrag reads:

For assuming the helm as the lead maintainer of the Ycash full node software that powers the Ycash blockchain, for addressing critical scalability issues experienced by Ycash infrastructure providers, for reviving development of graphical user interfaces for Ycash full nodes, for laying the foundation for Ycash to activate numerous upstream network upgrades, and for demonstrating a strong commitment to the future of Ycash, Miodrag Popović is hereby awarded the YDF Core Dev Award.

Verify

You can verify the grants on the Ycash blockchain.

The $10,000 contribution from the YDF was made through address s1Nmb78cKUYuCeapvwm2JyM263C4s4BJhBY. The transaction was confirmed in block 1044890.

The $10,000 contribution from Ycash users (via donations to the Ycash Foundation) was made through address s1gQMBijpbQhwyahzBMJivVrTssw5HiVoyr. The transaction was confirmed in block 1044890.

Ycash users who donated to the Ycash Foundation’s s-address donation address can verify that 100% of their donation went towards the grants.

Notable Donations From Ycash Users

No donation is ever too small. Even if you donated just a fraction of a YEC, you are now part of history as a contributor to these inaugural grants. With that said, in conclusion, the YDF would like to recognize the ten largest donations from Ycash users: