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!
📅 Subscribe to the Zcash Event Calendar!
Fact of the Week 💡
Zcash’s original Shielded Pool was called “Sprout” (2016) - it was the first in prodection deployment of zk-SNARKs. It later got upgraded to Sapling (2018) and then Orchard (newest shielded pool), which improved speed/efficiency and security.
📩 In today’s edition: 📝 ZF Q4 2025 Report• Zebra improvements, infrastructure upgrades, zcashd deprecation/Z3 progress, plus performance and stability work. 🔐 Encrypt the Money | ZODL Updates• Latest updates from the ZODL team 💻 Engineering Update (Feb 8–22) — @ZcashFoundation• Zebra, FROST & DevOps update. 📱 ZODL Is Live (iOS) + Android• ZODL (formerly Zashi) is live on the App Store & Android 🛡️ Zcash Engineering Office Hours #4• In this Office Hours session, Kris Nuttycombe (@nuttycom) will explain what Memo Bundles are, why they matter, and what they enable for wallets and application developers. 
Recently, ZF shared its transparency report. Check out the highlights! :)
**
Engineering Updates**
In Q4 2025, the Zcash Foundation engineering team focused on improving Zebra, upgrading infrastructure/DevOps, advancing zcashd deprecation and the Z3 stack, and boosting performance and stability.
Zebra shipped key releases supporting NU6.1, added validation and mempool anti-spam improvements, fixed performance/RPC issues, and introduced ARM64 Docker support. Infrastructure work streamlined deploy and CI workflows, added health checks and observability (Grafana/Prometheus), and cut costs significantly using Spot VMs and high availability.
The team also delivered various bug fixes and external support, and used a December “Hackmas” period to kick off new projects.
2026 Events
ZF is planning three major 2026 events to boost community engagement, technical collaboration, and ecosystem growth in support of privacy-preserving financial infrastructure.
Zcomm (March 24, 2026 — virtual): a one-day event for community builders, featuring workshops, discussions, and peer-learning on how to organize, grow, and sustain local and online Zcash communities.
Zcash Dev Summit (May 8, 2026 — Rome, Italy): a one-day, in-person developer summit for protocol contributors and researchers, timed alongside major zero-knowledge research conferences to encourage cross-disciplinary exchange and technical progress.
Zcon7 (October 27–29, 2026 — Cancún, Mexico): ZF’s flagship ecosystem conference, themed ¡Vamos!, bringing together developers, educators, advocates, and community members to celebrate progress, share ideas, and help shape the next phase of privacy-focused innovation.
ZCAP’s First Election Utilizing SIV Marks Step Forward for Governance
In December 2025, the Zcash Community Advisory Panel (ZCAP) elected three new members to the Zcash Community Grants (ZCG) Committee. For the first time, ZF used the Secure Internet Voting (SIV) platform instead of Helios.
SIV is an open-source, secure, verifiable, and privacy-preserving online voting system that lets voters cast ballots in a browser and verify inclusion in the final tally without revealing vote choices, aligning with Zcash’s privacy and accountability values.
The election used approval voting (members could support multiple candidates). Participant feedback was positive, SIV support was responsive, and ZF plans to keep improving the process and explore SIV for future ZCAP votes and additional features.
ZF Use of Funds
During Q4 2025, ZF's monthly operating expenses averaged approximately $273,739 USD. The breakdown of resource allocation is as follows:
Q4 Financial Snapshot
This week, Josh highlighted an important theme:
AI tends to concentrate power and enable surveillance and control, especially through financial data and digital profiles. To preserve freedom and our “humanity,” the piece argues for two complementary responses, expanding privacy through encryption (especially for money) and strengthening real human life through purpose and relationships, rather than passively accepting a future of asymmetric control. If you’d like to read the full text, here’s the link:
Zodl (formerly Zashi) 📲
Zodl wallet launched on the iOS App Store & Android Google Play store; Android release is coming soon across F-Droid, and Solana dapp stores.
UX improvements to the Swap to ZEC flow were finalized, with implementation in progress.
Zcash Core 🛡️
Merged block-height truncation (needed for upcoming Zodl ↔ Keystone follow-up work).
Added full transparent coin tracking (P2PKH/P2SH).
Updated ZIP-231 Memo Bundles spec after audit feedback.
Completed implementation of z_getbalances.
Zcash R&D 🧑💻
Office Hours featured Orchard Quantum Recoverability (recorded; transcription/translation planned).
Ongoing discussions on trade-offs for the next network upgrade following NU7 sentiment polling.
Reviewed Dev’s shielded voting protocol and suggested simplifications.
Continued work on ZIP-248 treestate reliability and indistinguishability for ZSA/non-ZSA transactions.
Removed zcashd alert handling, reducing centralization.
Reviewed Poseidon2 cryptanalysis; no impact to Orchard’s Poseidon 1.1 usage.
Other 🌐
Shared an early draft of an internal Regulatory Risk Dashboard (3P framework proof-of-concept).
Expanded the X Monitor in the Zodl Dashboard with grounded RAG mode for AI-assisted post analysis and drafting.
Last week, ZF shared the latest engineering team update covering February 8 through 22. Check it out!
Zebra 🦓
Expanded the RPC layer with gettxout (check whether a specific output is spent + return details).
Added rpc.discover to publish an OpenRPC document listing all RPC methods/params for easier wallet/tool integration.
Removed the old OpenAPI spec and its dependencies, resolving several long-standing build issues.
Updated parts of zcash_script: aligned to_asm() with zcashd output and added as_str() and req_sigs() to ScriptKind.
Added AnyChainBlock in the state layer so block lookups can find blocks on any chain (including non-finalized side chains), not just the best chain.
Continued consensus-rule coverage: added Founders Reward addresses and implemented checks/calculations for pre-Canopy block subsidies, moving toward full historical validation.
FROST ❄️
- Migrated the FROST documentation book to GitHub Pages, making it easier to maintain and publicly host without separate infrastructure.
DevOps | Z3 ⚙️
Fixed a recurring integration test race condition where two tests tried to open the same Zebra state DB (“Database likely already open”) by ensuring processes fully terminate before restart and using read-only state access where possible.
Implemented a full monitoring/observability stack for the z3 repo (Zebra + Zaino + Zallet): Prometheus, Grafana (14 prebuilt dashboards), Jaeger tracing, and AlertManager, shipped as an optional Docker Compose profile that can be started alongside a Zebra node with one command.
Last week, we saw the update that brought Zashi’s rebrand to ZODL. In practice, not much changes day to day, the tools and overall design are largely the same, with subtle updates like the new logo and small visual refinements.
And there’s more good news: ZODL is now available on iOS via the App Store, and Android is coming soon, landing on Google Play, plus GitHub, F-Droid, and the Solana dApp stores. When it drops on your preferred channel, it’s worth downloading, giving it a try, and sharing it with someone who uses Zcash.
🍎 | Apple Store
📱 | Google Play
🐈 | GitHub
🤖 | F-Droid
Memo Bundles (ZIP-231) propose a way to make Zcash memos more expressive and scalable, reducing the amount of required on-chain storage while also supporting richer application workflows and preserving core privacy properties.
In this Office Hours session, Kris Nuttycombe (@nuttycom) will explain what Memo Bundles are, why they matter, and what they enable for wallets and application developers.
The session will also broaden to the economics of on-chain storage: which data belongs on-chain, how long it should remain there, how (and when) history can be pruned, and how pricing for block space might work in both the short and long term.
Save the date
🗓️ | Date: Tuesday, March 10
⏰ | Time: 1:00 PM - 2:00 PM GMT-3
🔗 | Link: luma.com/pcbfu2ui