Guys, please someone tell me, how is it still possible that the full client for Windows still does not support encryption of the wallet.dat file?! IMHO this should be there in version 0.0.0.1 alpha. Am I misunderstanding something obvious here? I have been waiting for this very trivial feature provided by all other cryptos that I know, but still, on GitHub there is still the same security warning: no encryption! Please, tell me there is a good reason for this, even though I cannot imagine yet what that could possibly be.
This is certanly not an trivial thing!The issue comes from the original Zcash code where due to "stability problems", wallet encryption was disabled.
https://github.com/zcash/zcash/issues/2011Vaklinov (Dev) commented on 18 Nov 2017
The ZEN private keys are stored in the wallet.dat file by the ZEN core node and it does not yet support encryption at file level. For that matter ZCash does not support encryption yet either... Encryption will surely be supported in the future.
One ZEN wallet that already supports encryption is Arizen:
https://github.com/ZencashOfficial/arizen So that issue, you are referring to was posted first in January 2017! And ever since wallet encryption couldn't be solved? It was supposed to be disabled temporarily, right? Then when will it be fixed? In 2020? I am not working on the field but encrypting a bunch of strings with a password does not seem to be a very sophisticated thing to do. especially that it is already implemented in so many applications nowadays, you even password protect your HBO subscription, and exactly this privacy oriented wallet client that supposed to safeguard your savings cannot be password protected. I find it very starnge.
Btw, if someone wants to make use the privacy features of the Z addresses, the full wallet is better suited for this, than Arizen. Arizen is not a replacement for the full wallet, it is only an alternative with advantages and downsides to it.