Zcash Shielded News | Vol.30

The more people use shielded transactions, the stronger Zcash’s collective privacy becomes. Increased shielded activity expands the anonymity set, making it more difficult to distinguish one user’s activity from another’s

📩 In today’s edition

The Zebra ecosystem continues to mature with the release of a new Zallet 0.1.0-beta.1 test build. Community members are encouraged to download the latest version, explore its features, and help identify bugs ahead of the first stable release.

For those unfamiliar with the project, Zallet is a Rust-based full-node wallet built for the Zebra ecosystem. Unlike light wallets that rely on remote servers, Zallet is designed to operate alongside a full Zebra node, providing wallet functionality for advanced users, developers, and infrastructure operators as the ecosystem continues its transition away from zcashd.

This beta focuses on improving stability, security, migration support, and developer experience, while significantly expanding the project’s documentation.

Key updates include:

• Improved wallet synchronization and error handling.

• Expanded support for migrating wallets from zcashd.

• New RPC support for importing and exporting Sapling viewing keys.

• Additional security checks for wallet databases and key management.

• Comprehensive new documentation covering installation, configuration, backups, troubleshooting, Docker deployment, and migration guides.

• Updated backend components, dependency upgrades, and numerous stability improvements across the wallet.

Batuhan shared a new progress update highlighting the continued growth of ZecMap and announcing the early development of Zec Market, a new marketplace built around Zcash.

ZecMap now features 400+ registered users, 212 iOS downloads, and 9,768 merchants through its Flexa integration. While the Android version is still awaiting Google Play approval, the team hopes to make it available soon.

The platform also expanded its merchant network with new partners, including TEKCE Real Estate, Alternative Airlines, and PikaSim, creating more opportunities to use ZEC for real estate, flights, and digital services.

Looking ahead, Batuhan revealed that the team has already contacted more than 3,700 businesses and expects the directory to surpass 10,000 merchants after Flexa expands into Europe and shares its merchant data.

Alongside these efforts, development has also begun on Zec Market, a peer-to-peer marketplace where users will be able to buy and sell goods and services directly with ZEC. The first version is planned to include user profiles, reputation scores, reviews, verification badges, and a community reporting system.

Together, these initiatives continue to expand Zcash’s real-world payment ecosystem and make it easier for users to discover places to spend ZEC.

Members of the red·bridge team attended the recent Boston Zcash Meetup, hosted by Zodl and Cypherpunk, to celebrate the successful activation of the Ironwood network upgrade.

The event brought together several prominent members of the Zcash community, including Zooko Wilcox, Eran Tromer, and Madars Virza, who reflected on Zcash’s origins, its evolution over the years, and their vision for the future of the protocol.

Community meetups like these continue to bring together developers, researchers, and users while fostering discussions around the future of privacy-preserving technologies.

This Tuesday, the Ironwood shielded pool surpassed a major milestone, reaching more than 1 million ZEC just over a week after the network upgrade activated.

The rapid migration reflects strong ecosystem adoption as wallets, infrastructure providers, and node operators continue supporting the transition. While Orchard remains available as an exit-only pool during the migration period, users are steadily moving funds into the new shielded pool as compatible wallets and services roll out migration support.

Ironwood was introduced to restore independently verifiable supply while preserving Zcash’s shielded transaction privacy. Rather than requiring users to wait for a complete ecosystem-wide migration, the upgrade enables full nodes to verify the network’s circulating supply immediately after activation through the new shielded pool architecture.

To support users during the migration, Nym is currently offering a free one-month NymVPN subscriptio to eligible Zcash users. The initiative provides an additional layer of network privacy by helping reduce exposure to network metadata while wallets communicate with the Zcash network during the migration process.

With migration continuing across the ecosystem, the amount of ZEC held in the Ironwood pool is expected to keep growing as more users complete the transition.

After seven weeks of development, the 3rd ZecHub Hackathon has officially concluded, with 36 projects submitted across five challenge tracks: Infrastructure, Games, FROST, Zcash Login, and Accounting.

This year’s hackathon showcased a wide range of working prototypes exploring privacy-preserving identity, collaborative custody, financial tools, infrastructure, and interactive applications built on Zcash. Following a two-stage community vote by the ZecHub DAO, five projects were selected as the overall winners:

• 🥇 ZEC-OS (Infrastructure)

• 🥈 Authentication with ZcashMe (Zcash Login)

• 🥉 zk.poker (Games)

• 🏅 CYZE (FROST)

• 🏅 Pendrake Watch (Accounting)

Beyond the winners, the hackathon highlighted the growing diversity of the Zcash developer ecosystem, with many other submissions introducing innovative ideas that could continue evolving beyond the competition.

Thank you to everyone who participated! 🙂

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