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.
Check out the best Highlights below!
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Fact of the Week 💡
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📩 In today’s edition: 🦓 Zcash Foundation Q1 2026 Report | ZF• ZF released its Q1 2026 report, highlighting network resilience during ecosystem changes, regulatory clarity from the SEC, major Zebra releases, progress on NU7 and the Z3 stack, and continued community momentum. 🏛️ FPF Q1 2026 Report: Supporting the Zcash Ecosystem• FPF reported a record quarter for Zcash Community Grants, with 14 grants approved, 68 submissions received, faster milestone payouts, and continued operational support for community projects like ZecHub and ZK AV Club. 🇨🇿 ZODL Summit | Prague, July 8–10• The next ZODL Summit will bring Zcash contributors, builders, and ecosystem partners together in Prague for an in-person working session focused on roadmaps, priorities, and the future of private money adoption. 🛡️ Closing the ZCG Vulnerability Bounty Program• ZCG closed its Vulnerability Bounty Program as AI-generated reports increased the triage burden, while keeping responsible disclosure open and shifting focus toward more structured, proactive security review. 🔥 Thriving in Chaos. ZODL update• Josh’s weekly update focused on discipline, fewer distractions, and narrow focus, connecting those lessons back to how Zcash builders can keep moving forward through chaotic environments + ZODL progress.
Zcash Foundation Q1 2026 Report | ZF
Q1 2026 was one of the most important quarters in the Zcash Foundation’s history.
During major ecosystem change, the Zcash network kept operating smoothly: blocks were produced, transactions settled, and users’ funds and privacy remained secure.
ZF also reached a major regulatory milestone after the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission concluded its investigation without recommending enforcement action, removing a significant uncertainty and giving the Foundation more clarity to move forward.
Highlights
🟡 Network resilience and infrastructure
- After ECC’s DNS seeders stopped responding, ZF quickly deployed new seeders in the United States and Europe to maintain peer discovery. Work also advanced on a native Rust DNS seeder with stronger performance, security protections, and Prometheus monitoring.
🟡 Zebra development
- The engineering team shipped multiple Zebra releases focused on observability, monitoring, developer experience, and security. Zebra 4.3.0 fixed two responsibly disclosed vulnerabilities, strengthened test coverage, and expanded consensus rule validation across Zcash’s chain history.
🟡 Z3 stack progress
- Development continued on the Z3 stack, combining Zebra, Zaino, and Zallet as part of the transition away from zcashd. Updates included redesigned Docker Compose setup, regtest support, Zaino integration, JSON-RPC and gRPC endpoints, and an optional observability stack.
🟡 FROST improvements
- FROST v3.0.0 released with stronger defensive checks, networking fixes, multi-party signing improvements, and continued work toward FROST v3 and ZIP-312.
🟡 Infrastructure improvements
- Infrastructure updates included a reusable GitHub Action for build setup, automated documentation checks that cleaned up more than 80 files, CI lint configuration moved into
Cargo.toml, and AI-assisted contribution guidelines for Zebra.
🟡 AI-assisted development
- ZF shared its approach to AI-assisted contributions in Zebra. These tools helped speed up development, support contributors newer to Rust or Zcash, and increase engineering velocity while keeping human accountability central for privacy-critical code.
🟡 NU7 governance
- NU7 sentiment polling gathered input from ZCAP members, coinholders, the Engineering Caucus, and community groups across five countries. Project Tachyon, Orchard Quantum Recoverability, and Explicit Fees saw strong support, while proposals like Zcash Shielded Assets, issuance smoothing, and Consensus Accounts showed more divided feedback.
🟡 Community momentum
- They hosted Zcomm 2026, a full-day virtual event with privacy-focused workshops and speakers from across the ecosystem. The event built momentum for upcoming gatherings, including the Zcash Dev Summit in Rome and Zcon7 in Cancún.
🟡 New board member
- ZF welcomed Scott Onder to its Board of Directors, bringing experience in impact investing, frontier-market fintech, Web3, and financial inclusion.
Looking Ahead
In Q2, ZF’s priorities include continued NU7 implementation, Z3 stack development, and Zebra performance benchmarking. Q1 showed that Zcash’s decentralization is working in real time: through change, pressure, and continued community progress.
Note: This report also shows the team’s expenses, blog posts, during this semester. For more details, check out the full report here.
FPF Q1 2026 Report: Supporting the Zcash Ecosystem
Following the reports news, last week the Financial Privacy Foundation (FPF) released its Q1 2026 report, highlighting a strong quarter of growth for Zcash Community Grants (ZCG) and expanded operational support for community projects.
FPF serves as the administrative backbone for decentralized initiatives in the Zcash ecosystem, handling legal, financial, and operational processes so teams and contributors can stay focused on building.
Highlights
⚪ A Record Quarter for ZCG
- ZCG approved 14 grants and independent contractor agreements, the highest number ever recorded in a single quarter.
⚪ Growing Builder Interest
- The program received 68 submissions, a 258% increase compared to Q1 2025.
⚪ Faster Operations
- During the quarter, 62 milestones were paid, with an average committee decision time of 11.3 days per submission.
⚪ Financial Numbers
- FPF approved $649,855 in new grants, ending the quarter with around $2.2 million in total grant liabilities.
⚪ Community Project Support
- FPF continued supporting initiatives such as ZecHub & ZK AV Club. ZecHub distributed 52.41 ZEC across 129 payments to 33 people, while ZK AV Club launched a new gig payment program and distributed 10.83 ZEC in March.
⚪ ZCG Independence Review
- FPF reviewed whether ZCG should become its own independent legal entity. The conclusion was that it is possible, but would likely increase administrative costs by around 50–70%. For now, FPF recommends keeping the current model and reassessing closer to the 2028 halving.
⚪ Positive ZCG Feedback
- In an internal survey, 4 out of 5 ZCG members rated FPF’s support as “Very Effective,” highlighting the time saved on administrative work.
For more details, check out the full report.
ZODL Summit | Prague 12-15
The next ZODL Summit will happen on July 8–10 in Prague, Czech Republic, bringing together Zcash contributors, builders, and ecosystem partners for a focused in-person working session.
Previously known as the Z|ECC Summit, the event is not a regular conference. It is designed for contributors to discuss roadmaps, align on priorities, and work through what needs to happen next for Zcash and private money adoption.
The focus is on building a world where financial privacy is the default, people can transact freely, and access to markets is treated as a basic right. Conversations are expected to be practical, candid, and centered on the future of the ecosystem.
The community program runs from Wednesday through Friday morning, making this edition slightly longer than previous summits. The event is not recorded and follows the Chatham House Rule, allowing participants to share what was discussed without attributing comments to specific people.
Participation is limited and focused mainly on active Zcash contributors and builders. Past participants have included people from Zcash Foundation, Shielded Labs, Qedit, Tachyon, ZecHub, ZCG, zkAVClub, ZingoLabs, Flexa, Maya, NEAR, NYM, Edge, red·bridge, and others.
Applications for the ZODL Summit closed yesterday. Selected applicants will receive the location and hotel details directly. There is no fee to attend the summit itself, though travel and accommodation are generally covered by attendees, with possible support available through discounted hotel rates or scholarships.
Last year, we recorded some interviews with the participants. In case you’re interested, here’s the playlist.
Closing the ZCG Vulnerability Bounty Program
This week, ZCG is closing its Vulnerability Bounty Program as security work enters a new phase shaped by AI.
AI tools are making it easier to find real issues in large codebases. They can compare logic, trace security checks, spot outdated assumptions, and surface bugs that may have been hidden by complexity for years. But they have also made it easier to generate large numbers of speculative or duplicated vulnerability reports.
Even low-quality reports still require careful review, which takes time away from audits, fixes, releases, and other work that directly protects users. This is not unique to Zcash: the announcement points to the curl project as an example of a similar shift caused by AI-generated security reports.
For Zcash, the bounty program helped surface and resolve important issues, and the ecosystem benefited from high-quality researchers. But under current conditions, the model is also attracting too much noise.
Because of that, the ZCG Security & Vulnerability Disclosure Initiative and the ZCG Vulnerability Bounty Program are now closed.
Responsible disclosure remains open. Researchers can still submit valid, reproducible vulnerabilities through the proper private channels, and reports submitted before the announcement will be reviewed under the previous rules.
Security work will continue through more structured efforts. Least Authority remains the Zcash Ecosystem Security Lead, supporting audits, vulnerability coordination, and expert consultation. ZCG is also working with Zellic on access to V12, an AI-assisted auditing platform that combines LLM analysis with traditional static analysis.
Thriving in Chaos. ZODL update
Josh’s weekly update centers on a simple idea: staying sharp in chaos requires discipline, fewer distractions, and a clear focus on what matters most.
He shared the story of a former special operations veteran who moved through extreme challenges by relying on strong habits, health, and mental clarity. The lesson connects directly to Zcash: progress comes from focusing on one hard thing at a time, instead of getting pulled in every direction.
Simple disciplines. Narrow focus. Less noise.
Zodl (Product)
Zodl shipped iOS 3.4.1 and Android 3.4.1, both focused on bug fixes and stability improvements.
Work also continued on Coinholder Polling 3.5.0 in collaboration with the Valar Group team, including UI updates, business-logic fixes, and testing ahead of the upcoming NU7 sentiment poll.
On the mobile side, Harry joined as Senior Mobile QA, strengthening the team’s testing capacity. Multi-server transaction broadcast on Android and the automatic/manual server-selection redesign on iOS also moved into review.
Next priorities include finalizing Coinholder Polling, scoping the Sapling to Orchard migration UX, and continuing work on server switching, multi-server transaction submission, and multi-currency conversion.
Metrics
🍎 | iOS: reached 42.9k (+0.6k) unique installs, 50.9k (+0.7k) downloads, and a 4.9★ rating.
🤖 | Android: reached 15.8k (+0.2k) install base, 50.7k total installs (+0.7k), and a 4.24★ rating.
NU7 Sentiment Polling and Coinholder Voting via Zodl
The feedback window for the NU7 sentiment poll closes on Monday, May 25, marking the final days for community review before registration opens.
The poll covers six key topics: NSM issuance smoothing, NSM fee reissuance timing, Sprout deprecation for v4 transactions, memo bundles for Orchard, faster block times with per-pool action limits, and the NU7 ship-vs-wait schedule with a July 15 readiness clause.
The target timeline, subject to final software testing, is: feedback closes May 25, registration closes June 1, polling opens June 10, polling closes June 24, and results are expected June 29.
Zcash Core (includes R&D)
Core work advanced across ZIP 2005, Zallet migration, wallet support, and shielding fixes.
ZIP 2005: Orchard Quantum Recoverability moved to Proposed status, and security triage policy improvements made progress to reduce the growing review burden around vulnerability reports.
Keystone developers also merged support for SLIP 39 secret-sharing of Zcash seed phrases, expected in a future firmware update. A shielding bug affecting users with many small UTXOs was fixed, and Zallet’s zcashd migration fixes and integration tests are now in review.
Next, the team is focused on the remaining Zallet alpha.4 work, finishing z_shieldcoinbase, merging the zcashd migration bug batch, continuing the zcash_client_backend sync-engine refactor, and adding support for arbitrary transparent-to-transparent transactions.
Other / Company
ZODL welcomed new team members this week: Giulia started as Marketing Associate, Harry joined as Senior Mobile QA, and Danny Willems will join on May 27 as Principal Cryptographic Engineer.
On marketing, the Zodl × Slope brand work continued, including early conversations around Summit branding.
ZODL is also hiring, with open roles available at jobs.ashbyhq.com/zodl.
Pacu joins ZODL as Developer Relations and Integrations Engineer
Market and Ecosystem
Zcash featured on the Bankless podcast.
ZEC is now available to trade on Bitstamp.