💡 Fact of the Week
Did you know? Zcash has supported encrypted memos since its launch in 2016.
Shielded transactions can include an encrypted memo of up to 512 bytes, allowing users to attach information to a payment that only authorized recipients can read.
📩 In today’s edition
🦓 NU7 Reaches Code-Complete Milestone and Activates on Testnet
• NU7 is now code-complete in Zebra and has activated on the public Zcash Testnet.
🛡️ Shielded Labs Introduces Epoch to Prepare Zcash for Future Threats
• Shielded Labs introduced Epoch to develop formally verified, post-quantum cryptography for Zcash.
🌳 More Than 4 Million ZEC Now Held in the Ironwood Shielded Pool
• More than 4 million ZEC are now held in Zcash’s newest shielded pool, Ironwood.
⚡ Native ZEC Swaps Go Live on THORChain
• THORChain now supports permissionless cross-chain swaps with native ZEC.
💰 Zcash Coinholders Approve 17 Q3 Retroactive Grants
• Coinholders approved 17 Q3 retroactive grants totaling approximately $8.39 million.
⚙️ Tachyon Begins Integration With Zakura Common
• Tachyon has begun integrating its cryptography with Zakura Common to advance scalable shielded payments.
🏛️ ZCG | Meeting Minutes 9/28/2026
• ZCG approved five grant proposals covering infrastructure, research, education, and regional initiatives.
📱 Zodl Recaps September Wallet and Protocol Development
• ZODL shipped five releases while advancing Coinholder Polling, wallet performance, and protocol development.
🦓 NU7 Reaches Code-Complete Milestone and Activates on Testnet
NU7 has reached a major development milestone, with its implementation now code-complete in Zebra and the first release candidate, Zebra 7.0.0-rc.0, released on October 2. The upgrade subsequently activated on the public Zcash Testnet at block 4,465,026 on October 4, allowing its new consensus rules to run under live network conditions.
NU7 introduces 25-second blocks, reducing the target block interval from 75 seconds while keeping ZEC issuance over time aligned with the existing emission schedule. It also introduces the Network Sustainability Mechanism (NSM), which places 60% of transaction fees into a reserve for future block rewards, along with new per-block shielded limits designed to increase capacity while reducing worst-case sync load on light wallets.
The release candidate is intended for Testnet testing and is not yet a stable Mainnet release. Mainnet operators do not need to upgrade to Zebra 7.0.0-rc.0 at this stage, as the NU7 Mainnet activation height has not yet been set.
⚡ZEC Pool Goes Live on THORChain
Zcash is now live on THORChain, enabling permissionless cross-chain swaps involving native ZEC without relying on wrapped assets or centralized exchanges. The integration brings Zcash directly into THORChain’s cross-chain liquidity network, including a route between Bitcoin and native ZEC.
The launch follows months of integration work that added Zcash-specific UTXO handling, RPC support, and native ZEC price tracking to THORChain. Users can now move between supported assets and ZEC through decentralized swaps while keeping custody of their assets throughout the process.
🛡️ Shielded Labs Introduces Epoch to Prepare Zcash for Future Threats
Shielded Labs introduced Epoch, a new research and engineering project focused on strengthening Zcash against long-term threats including quantum computing and increasingly capable adversaries. The project aims to develop production-ready post-quantum cryptography backed by formal verification.
The first phase will evaluate existing research and cryptographic designs to determine what can meet Zcash’s security and performance requirements. Epoch will coordinate with Project Tachyon and other ongoing work across the ecosystem, with a production-ready cryptographic implementation targeted for the end of 2027.
💰 Zcash Coinholders Approve 17 Q3 Retroactive Grants
Zcash coinholders approved 17 of 37 proposals in the Q3 Coinholder-Directed Retroactive Grants round, representing approximately $8.39 million in funding for completed work across protocol development, security, infrastructure, wallets, and ecosystem integrations.
Around 2.18 million ZEC participated in the vote, significantly higher than the roughly 501,000 ZEC recorded in Q1.
Approved proposals:
🌳 More Than 4 Million ZEC Now Held in the Ironwood Shielded Pool
More than 4 million ZEC are now held in Ironwood, marking a major milestone for Zcash’s newest shielded pool following its activation with NU6.3 in July. Ironwood preserves shielded transaction privacy while restoring the ability to independently verify the integrity of Zcash’s circulating supply.
The milestone also shows the rapid migration of shielded funds into Ironwood, which now holds the large majority of ZEC stored across Zcash’s shielded pools.
⚙️ Tachyon Begins Integration With Zakura Common
Project Tachyon has begun integrating its recursive proof system into Zakura Common, the shared cryptography stack used by Zakura and other projects across the Zcash ecosystem. The first step brings mature components from Tachyon’s Ragu codebase into Common, allowing them to benefit from its optimized cryptographic infrastructure
The integration will allow Tachyon and Ironwood to share more of their underlying cryptographic code and optimizations while reducing duplication. It also lays technical groundwork for Tachyon’s longer-term goal of scaling shielded Zcash payments through recursive proof aggregation.
📱 Zodl Recaps September Wallet and Protocol Development
ZODL shipped five Zodl releases during September, bringing expanded Swap and CrossPay support, unified viewing-key export, stronger recovery-phrase reminders, and improvements to wallet synchronization, transaction submission, and performance. One SDK optimization reduced certain operations on wallets with large transaction histories from around 25 seconds to milliseconds.
Beyond the wallet, ZODL engineers contributed upstream to the broader Zcash stack, including work on forward-compatible transactions, unified addresses, NU7 and ZIP 259, core cryptography libraries, PCZT, and Ironwood. Coinholder Polling was also expanded to support polls with up to 50 questions, alongside performance and reliability improvements.
ZCG | Meeting Minutes 9/28/2026
ZCG approved five proposals during its September 28 meeting:
✅ Approved
Other applications were declined or remain under consideration. Full details are available in the ZCG meeting minutes.