💡 Fact of the Week
Zcash viewing keys can provide visibility into shielded transactions without giving someone the ability to spend the funds. This makes selective disclosure possible while keeping control of the ZEC with the wallet owner.
📩 In today’s edition
💪 Lifting Iron: 10 Weeks of Zcash Development in Numbers
• More than 330,000 lines of code were added across core Zcash repositories and Zodl apps during the 10 weeks between the Orchard disclosure and Ironwood activation.
📱 Zodl 3.9.0 Brings Private Ironwood Migration and Faster Syncing
• Zodl 3.9.0 introduces guided privacy-preserving Ironwood migration, Tor protection, Keystone support, and the new Slipstream sync engine.
🛡️ Frank Braun Joins Shielded Labs Board
• Longtime cypherpunk, privacy advocate, and zSTASH founder Frank Braun joined Shielded Labs as an independent board member.
📊 Zcash Foundation Q2 2026 Report
• ZF’s Q2 report highlights progress across Zebra security, FROST, Zallet, ecosystem infrastructure, governance, and preparations for future Zcash development.
🗳️ ZCG Reviews New Round of Grant Proposals
• ZCG reviewed a new round of proposals, with three remaining under review, five introduced but not yet voted on, and seven declined.
Zodl 3.9.0 Brings Private Ironwood Migration and Faster Syncing
Zodl has released version 3.9.0 on Android and version 3.9.1 on iOS, introducing new tools to help users migrate their ZEC from Orchard to the Ironwood shielded pool. With both updates now available, guided Ironwood migration is live across Zodl’s supported platforms.
The update introduces a guided migration flow with two options. Users can move their funds gradually through smaller transfers over time, which helps reduce the amount of balance information revealed through the migration turnstile, or choose an immediate single transfer. Zodl recommends the gradual option for better privacy.
Migration also includes Tor protection, Keystone support, progress notifications, and a home screen tracker. On Android, gradual migration can continue automatically in the background, while iOS users will receive notifications when they need to reopen the app and continue the process.
The updates also introduce ZODL Slipstream v0.6.4, Zodl’s new open-source sync engine. Built from the ground up to improve wallet performance, Slipstream significantly reduces synchronization times during wallet restoration, Ironwood migration, and everyday use.
Zodl 3.9.0 is available on Android via Google Play, GitHub, and F-Droid, while Zodl 3.9.1 is now available on iOS through the App Store.
Lifting Iron: 10 Weeks of Zcash Development in Numbers
Following Ironwood’s activation, Josh shared a retrospective on the development effort that took place across the Zcash ecosystem during the 10 weeks between the Orchard disclosure and the network upgrade.
The numbers highlight the scale and pace of that work:
330,000+ lines of code added and more than 130,000 removed across core Zcash repositories and Zodl apps.
1,364 pull requests merged across 12 core repositories in 2026 through August 7, compared with a 2024–25 average of 93 per month.
565 PRs merged in July alone, reflecting the acceleration leading up to Ironwood.
2,700 machine-checked theorems were included in the Lean formal verification work supporting Ironwood’s balance integrity.
1,000+ commits were made across Zodl’s iOS, Android, and wallet SDK development this year.
Nearly 2 million ZEC had already migrated to the Ironwood pool when the update was published.
Ironwood was a collective effort across the ecosystem, bringing together contributors from Zodl, the Zcash Foundation, Valar Group, Tachyon, as well as reviewers, auditors, wallet developers, miners, testers, and infrastructure operators.
After an unusually intense development period, the focus is now shifting from shipping Ironwood toward hardening, optimization, and the next phase of Zcash development.
Frank Braun Joins Shielded Labs Board
On August 6, Jason McGee announced that Frank Braun has joined Shielded Labs as an independent board member, where he will provide oversight and help ensure the organization remains aligned with its mission of building secure and resilient private money.
Braun is a longtime cypherpunk, privacy advocate, and active member of the Zcash community. He is also the founder of zSTASH, a Zcash-focused desktop wallet, and has spent more than a decade building and advocating for privacy-preserving technologies. His involvement in the space dates back to Bitcoin’s early years, including a presentation at London’s first Bitcoin conference in 2012 on the role of Bitcoin in the counter-economy.
More recently, Braun has become an outspoken advocate for Zcash and financial privacy, arguing that private money is essential for commerce and individual freedom in an increasingly surveilled financial system.
As an independent board member, he is expected to represent a strong community and coinholder perspective, while helping hold Shielded Labs accountable to its mission and long-term priorities.
Zcash Foundation Q2 2026 Report
The Zcash Foundation published its Q2 2026 report, covering a quarter heavily focused on Zebra security, network resilience, governance, and preparations for the next stages of Zcash development.
Some of the quarter’s highlights include:
Seven Zebra releases shipped, addressing multiple responsibly disclosed security issues and supporting the emergency response to the Orchard circuit bug. A long-standing sync stall was also fixed, bringing genesis-to-tip synchronization down to roughly 14 hours without stalls.
Zebra’s release infrastructure was strengthened with security-advisory and supply-chain scanning on every PR, automated checkpoint updates, reviewed releases, and reproducible signed binaries and Docker images.
FROST v3.0.0 was released, adding automatic zeroization of signing keys from memory, while PCZT support was later added to the
zcash-signtool.Development continued across Zallet and the Z3 stack, alongside work on NU7 consensus rules and the early stages of Ironwood development.
ZF formally assumed stewardship of the Zcash GitHub organization, z.cash domain, and @Zcash account on X, with ZecHub managing the @Zcash account day-to-day under a multi-year grant.
The second Zcash Dev Summit brought together around 50 technical contributors in Rome, with attendees giving the event an average rating of 4.9/5.
Preparations for Zcon7 in Cancún progressed, with registration reaching roughly 75% capacity during Q2 and scholarships awarded to 17 participants from eight countries.
ZF reported approximately $48.7 million in net liquid assets at the end of June, with 64.6% of assets held in ZEC. Q2 expenses totaled about $963,000, with Protocol/Zebra representing the largest resource allocation at 53.3%.
The report reflects a quarter where much of ZF’s work centered on strengthening the infrastructure around Zcash, from Zebra security and release processes to developer coordination, governance, and preparations for future protocol upgrades.
ZCG Reviews New Round of Grant Proposals
The ZCG committee reviewed a new round of grant proposals during its August 3 meeting. No new grants were approved this week, while three remain under review and several newly introduced proposals have yet to reach the voting stage.
Under Review
Introduced / Too Early to Vote
Declined
Seven proposals were declined, covering FROST custody, Zebra mempool resilience, developer education, regional community development, ZIP-229 testing, Ironwood monitoring, and research into Zcash and Islamic digital finance.
Common concerns raised during the discussions included uncertain adoption, insufficient coordination with core teams, unclear ecosystem demand, maintenance risks, and the need for stronger technical validation.