Zcash Shielded News is a community article format based on the weekly Zcash Ecosystem Digest Newsletter.
Providing insight on current events and informing the community about important news in the Zcash ecosystem.
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Fact of the Week 💡
Zcash Quantum Recoverability is designed to make future recovery of Orchard funds possible if Zcash ever needs to transition away from today’s shielded protocol because of quantum or discrete-log-breaking threats.
The current
V5_Qrwork is a wallet construction-time selector for QR Orchard change notes, while the transaction is still serialized, hashed, signed, and consensus-treated as regular V5.
📩 In today’s edition: 🎉 Zcash Foundation Welcomes a New Global Events and Operations Manager• Zcash Foundation welcomed Valerie Leisten as Global Events and Operations Manager, bringing experience in operations, events, stakeholder coordination, and international community-focused work. 🏛️ Zcash Foundation Assumes Stewardship of Core Zcash Community Assets• ZF officially assumed stewardship of the Zcash GitHub organization, the z.cash website and domain, and the @Zcash handle on X, aiming to improve coordination, accountability, and long-term maintenance. 🔓 Why now? ZODL update on Zcash• Josh shared why Zcash’s recent momentum did not happen by accident, pointing to major changes in governance, product focus, narrative, and organization that helped unlock the ecosystem. 🧑💻 ZF Engineering Update: April 20th – May 3rd, 2026• ZF released Zebra v4.4.1 and FROST v3.0.0, with Zebra focused on security fixes, RPC improvements, stronger validation, better benchmarking, and cleaner infrastructure. ⚛️ Zcash Quantum Recoverability PRs Are In Review• Zcash Quantum Recoverability PRs are now in review, adding support for QR Orchard note versions and a V5_Qr transaction selector for Orchard change notes behind the unstable feature.
Zcash Foundation Welcomes a New Global Events and Operations Manager
On May 6, ZF announced that Valerie Leisten had joined the team as its new Global Events & Operations Manager. 🎉
Valerie brings more than eight years of experience across operations, project management, event delivery, and stakeholder coordination. She has worked in international, multi-stakeholder environments, supporting senior leadership, coordinating programs, and serving as a trusted point of contact for communities, partners, and collaborators.
Her background is shaped by a strong commitment to social and climate justice, with experience spanning the UK and East Africa. She also brings a multilingual and culturally aware approach to her work, which will be especially valuable as the Zcash Foundation continues engaging with a global community.
What Valerie will focus on
In her new role, Valerie will help coordinate and support some of the Foundation’s most important events and initiatives, including:
Zcon
Zcash Dev Summits
Regional meetups
Operational support for the leadership team
Community and ecosystem engagement
Support for the Shielded Aid Initiative
Valerie will serve as a key logistical lead for ZF events, helping ensure that gatherings, programs, and community-facing initiatives run smoothly and feel welcoming, organized, and impactful.
Welcome, Valerie! ✨
Zcash Foundation Assumes Stewardship of Core Zcash Community Assets
Still on the topic of recent Zcash Foundation news, ZF announced that it has officially taken stewardship of three important Zcash community assets: the Zcash GitHub organization, the z.cash website and domain, and the @Zcash handle on X.
With this transition, ZF is bringing the coordination of these resources closer to the infrastructure it already maintains, including Zebra and other core protocol components. The goal is to make governance clearer, support long-term maintenance, and ensure these assets remain open, accessible, and well cared for.
The Zcash GitHub organization will remain open to contributors, with existing access preserved, current licenses maintained, and ongoing collaboration between ZODL, Shielded Labs, ZF, other organizations, and independent contributors.
For the day-to-day management of z.cash and @Zcash, ZF is working with ZecHub through a multi-year grant. The z.cash site will redirect to zechub.wiki, bringing key community resources together into a more updated and well-maintained hub.
In short, ZF will hold administrative responsibility, while Zcash’s public and community voice continues to stay in the hands of the community.
Big step!
Why now? ZODL update on Zcash
In this week’s update, Josh reinforced that Zcash’s recent strength didn’t happen by accident. The growth we’re seeing now is the result of three years of important changes across governance, product, narrative, and organization.
Zcash moved out of a more stuck period, marked by internal disputes, low adoption, and uncertainty about the future, into a more open and community-driven phase.
Changes like ending direct funding, breaking down more centralized governance structures, and growing the shielded pool helped give more power back to users and the broader ecosystem.
There was also a clear shift toward product. Instead of relying only on strong cryptography, the ecosystem started building tools that are actually useful and easier to use, like the Zodl wallet, making privacy more accessible in practice.
Zcash was unlocked. After years of hard decisions, the project now looks stronger, more aligned with its community, and better positioned to grow as private, open, censorship-resistant money.
ZODL
Zodl 3.3.1 shipped on iOS
Hotfix released to fix a Swap/Pay crash.
This closes the 3.3 cycle on iOS.
Zodl 3.4.0 is in final QA
Coming soon for both iOS and Android.
Main focus: better Keystone hardware wallet recovery, full transaction history discovery, and improved rewind/rescan progress.
Mobile infrastructure is improving
Rewind/rescan support landed on Swift and Android.
Multi-server transaction submission merged into the Swift SDK.
Automatic and manual server selection is in iOS review.
Multi-currency conversion is in review on both platforms.
More wallet features are being prepared
UIVK / UFVK export UI is complete.
Coinholder Polling is being connected end-to-end.
Multi-account support design is still being refined.
Metrics
🍎 | iOS: 41.4k unique installs (+0.8k), 49.2k total downloads (+1.1k), 4.9★ rating
🤖 | Android: 15.3k install base (no material change), 49.5k total installs including open beta (+0.7k), 4.26★ rating
Zcash Core
zcashd v6.12.3shipped as an emergency security hotfix.zcash_client_sqlite 0.20.0shipped with several wallet improvements.Zallet progress
Alpha.4 work is moving forward.
Key import/export, shielded coinbase support, PIR proof validation, and voting-related dependencies were reviewed and merged.
zcashd-to-Zallet migration work continues.
Protocol R&D
Work continues on Orchard quantum recoverability, NU7 transaction format, and ZIP updates.
A new Zcash AI-skills repo was opened to support AI-assisted Zcash development.
Events & Ecosystem
ZODL had a busy week at Consensus Miami 2026.
Sessions covered quantum-recoverable wallets, post-quantum timelines, scaling, and privacy positioning.
Meetings with miners, regulatory counsel, and ecosystem partners also moved forward.
Marketing & Hiring
Zodl x Slope brand work is underway.
A Marketing Assistant offer was extended.
ZODL is hiring, with open roles listed on its jobs page.
ZF Engineering Update: April 20th – May 3rd, 2026
Over the past two weeks, the Zcash Foundation released Zebra v4.4.1 and FROST v3.0.0, with the Zebra release focused mainly on security, stability, and reliability improvements.
Most of the work went into Zebra v4.4.1, which shipped a batch of important fixes. These included memory allocation fixes during block deserialization, improvements to script and sighash validation, and several RPC security updates. ZF also fixed issues around RPC cookie file permissions, request body limits, slow gRPC consumers, and getrawtransaction behavior.
ZF also improved Zebra’s developer infrastructure by adding a new benchmark suite using Criterion. This allows the team to test proof verification for Sprout, Sapling, and Orchard, as well as transaction serialization across supported formats. A new CI workflow now makes it easier to compare benchmark results across pull requests.
Beyond Zebra, ZF published FROST v3.0.0 and added an optional zcashd compose profile to the z3 repository, making it easier to run zcashd alongside other node configurations.
Overall, this update was mainly about making Zebra more secure, more stable, and easier to maintain, while also continuing progress across other Zcash Foundation infrastructure.
Zcash Quantum Recoverability PRs Are In Review
Zash Quantum Recoverability security proofs were agreed upon on Wednesday, and the related PRs are now in. The update adds support for Quantum Recoverable Orchard notes and introduces the first pieces needed for developers to test the new construction.
The first update adds Orchard note plaintext versions NoteVersion::V2 and NoteVersion::V3, exposes NoteVersion from the crate root, and supports parsing Orchard note plaintext lead bytes 0x02 and 0x03. Existing constructors and builders still default to NoteVersion::V2, while new version selectors allow developers to explicitly create versioned notes.
For V3 notes, note commitment randomness is derived using the ZIP 2005 preimage, including AssetBase = V^Orchard. The implementation also checks QR rcm / cmx behavior against generated Orchard key-component test vectors.
The second update adds TxVersion::V5_Qr, a builder-level selector for ZIP 2005 QR Orchard change notes. It also adds Builder::add_versioned_orchard_output, allowing callers to choose the Orchard note version per output. External Orchard outputs still use the existing path, while internal change can use NoteVersion::V3_Qr.
For now, this API is behind the unstable feature. Non-Keystone transactions can opt into QR Orchard change notes by enabling unstable and using TxVersion::V5_Qr. Keystone transactions should continue using regular TxVersion::V5 until firmware support is available.
One key detail: V5_Qr is still serialized, hashed, signed, and consensus-treated as V5. It is a wallet construction-time selector, and currently only affects Orchard change notes.
Protocol Study #3: Notes, Commitments, and Nullifiers
Protocol Sections:
§3.2 (Notes)
§3.8 (Note Commitments)
§3.9 (Nullifiers).
Session 2 unpacked the key tree: how a single spending authority decomposes into a tree of viewing keys. Session 3 is the lifecycle: how a note is born (commitment), recorded (Merkle path), and spent (nullifier).
They’ll read §3.2 carefully, then trace a note from creation through its eventual nullification.
Live on the Zcash Global Discord stage. Recorded by Zcash Brazil with Portuguese translation.
Protocol Spec available here: https://zips.z.cash/protocol/protocol.pdf
Save the Date
📅 | Date: Tuesday, May 19
⏰ | Time: 12:00 PM
🌐 | Link: Luma