Zcash Protocol Study #7: Sending, Receiving, and Scanning
Session 7 of the Zcash Protocol Study Series, a 13-session guided reading of the Zcash Protocol Specification, run as a sub-series of Zcash Engineering Office Hours.
Topic: §4.7 (Sending Notes), §4.8 (Dummy Notes), §4.19-4.20 (In-band Secret Distribution), and §4.21-4.22 (Block Chain Scanning).
Session 6 explained what a shielded transaction convinces the chain of without revealing anything. Session 7 is the wallet's-eye view of the same transaction. How does a note actually get built and sent? How does the recipient, whom nobody notified, ever find it?
Along the way: dummy notes (§4.8), the zero-value padding that gives every transaction a uniform shape, and why scanning is the reason light wallets are hard.
Live on the Zcash Global Discord stage. Recorded by Zcash Brazil with Portuguese translation.
PDF: https://zips.z.cash/protocol/protocol.pdf, we're reading §4.7-4.8 and §4.19-4.22.
Catch up on Session 6 (Proving Without Revealing: zk-SNARKs in Zcash): [FILL: Session 6 YouTube URL]
Full 13-session arc and canonical thread on the Zcash forum:
Hosted by Mark Henderson (@shieldedmark), Shielded Labs.