Zcash Shielded News is a communit 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
The “Sprout”, “Sapling”, “Orchard”, and upcoming “Ironwood” names all follow a botanical theme, reflecting the evolution of Zcash’s shielded protocols over time.
📩 In today’s edition:
🌸 Zakura 1.0.2 Brings Stability and Performance Improvements
• Improves zcashd compatibility, performance, and reliability ahead of Ironwood.
🇨🇿 ZODL Summit Brings Together the Zcash Ecosystem in Prague
• More than 50 contributors from 18 Zcash projects gathered to collaborate on the ecosystem’s future.
⚙️ Zebra 6.1.0 Release & Engineering Updates
• Introduces security fixes, engineering improvements, and new features ahead of Ironwood.
🦓 zcashd Reaches End of Life
• After nearly ten years, zcashd officially reaches end of support as the ecosystem completes its transition to Rust-based nodes.
💳 Flexa Expands to Europe, Strengthening ZEC Payments
• The infrastructure supporting ZEC payments through ZODL expands across 37 European countries and territories.
🌸 Zakura 1.0.0 Introduces a New High-Performance Zcash Node
Last week, Project Tachyon and Valar Group introduced Zakura, a new open-source, consensus-compatible Zcash full node built for scale. Forked from Zebra, Zakura is designed to deliver faster synchronization, native pruning, downloadable snapshots, support for the upcoming Ironwood (NU6.3) network upgrade, and a compatibility mode for software that still relies on the legacy zcashd RPC interface.
The devs have now released Zakura 1.0.2, bringing a series of improvements focused on stability, performance, and node reliability. The update significantly enhances zcashd compatibility mode, making it more dependable for wallets and applications by resolving issues related to block announcements, process management, and synchronization.
Version 1.0.2 also strengthens mempool protections against spam and denial-of-service attacks, improves peer networking and synchronization, speeds up block template generation and transparent signature verification, and automatically repairs a bug affecting databases created with the node’s experimental fast-sync feature.
With full support for the upcoming Ironwood network upgrade, they recommend that all Zakura node operators update to version 1.0.2.
🤝 ZODL Summit Brings Together the Zcash Ecosystem in Prague
More than 50 contributors representing 18 Zcash projects gathered in Prague for the 2026 Summer ZODL Summit, a week of collaboration focused on adoption, protocol development, and the future of the Zcash ecosystem.
Sessions covered topics ranging from Zodl Wallet and developer tools to adoption initiatives and ecosystem growth, alongside discussions on building a more accessible self-custodial financial system.
The protocol sessions focused on Ironwood, the retirement of zcashd, Project Tachyon, private information retrieval (PIR), and the long-term path toward a post-quantum Zcash. Participants also shared a broad consensus that delivering Tachyon remains the ecosystem’s next major protocol priority.
Beyond the presentations, the summit included collaborative workshops on Tachyon, user experience, and ecosystem growth. With Ironwood approaching activation, engineers from multiple organizations also used the event to coordinate development and prepare for the network upgrade.
According to Josh, one of the biggest outcomes of the summit was bringing contributors together in person, strengthening collaboration and alignment across the Zcash ecosystem.
Zebra 6.1.0 Release & Engineering Updates
The Zcash Foundation released Zebra 6.1.0, introducing a new getstandardfee RPC that allows wallets and applications to query the current ZIP-317 standard transaction fee directly from the node.
The release also fixes four security issues affecting block verification, node availability, and mining. According to the Zcash Foundation, none of the issues affected consensus, and all node operators are encouraged to upgrade.
Beyond Zebra itself, the engineering team continued improving its development infrastructure by strengthening automated pull request checks, including validation for changelog entries and breaking changes. The FROST client coordinator was also redesigned so it can be used as a reusable Rust library by other applications instead of only as a command-line tool.
zcashd Reaches End of Life
On July 18, at block height 3,417,100, zcashd reached its planned End-of-Support halt, marking the end of the software that launched the Zcash network in 2016 and powered every network upgrade over the past decade.
The network continues uninterrupted on Zebra and Zakura, with Zallet replacing the legacy zcashd wallet. As the ecosystem prepares for the upcoming Ironwood upgrade, the transition completes Zcash’s migration from its original Bitcoin-derived node software to a new generation of Rust-based infrastructure.
After ten years of continuous service, zcashd leaves behind the foundation that introduced zero-knowledge privacy to a public blockchain and helped shape the Zcash network as it exists today.
Thank you for 10 years of service, zcashd. 💛
Flexa Expands to Europe, Strengthening ZEC Payments
A few days ago, Flexa announced the expansion of its regulated payment platform across 37 SEPA countries and territories, extending the infrastructure that supports digital asset payments throughout Europe.
For the Zcash ecosystem, this is a meaningful development. The announcement builds on the November 2024 integration between ZODL (fkaZashi) and Flexa, which enabled users to spend ZEC at thousands of participating merchants. While the European expansion does not specifically mention ZEC, it broadens the payment infrastructure behind those transactions and represents another step toward making Zcash easier to use for everyday purchases across Europe.
If you’re in Europe, why not give it a try? 👌