CipherScan 2026 - Privacy Intelligence for Zcash

Community Grants
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CipherScan - Milestone 3 Progress Report

Milestone 3 Deliverables — All Complete

Deliverable Status
Feature parity audit Done
Tor Hidden Service (.onion access) Done
Shielded Supply History API (365 days) Done
Query performance optimizations Done
Privacy Index weekly publication Done
Documentation improvements Done

What Was Built

Feature Parity Audit

Formal written comparison of CipherScan vs the legacy Nighthawk explorer (zcashblockexplorer.com). CipherScan implements all 10 baseline features (9 fully matching, 1 different approach — client-side memo decryption instead of payment disclosure protocol). On top of parity, CipherScan adds 30+ exclusive features including pool analytics, turnstile tracking, fork watch, cross-chain swap tracking, and a 43-endpoint public API.

Full document: FEATURE_PARITY_AUDIT.md

Tor Hidden Service

CipherScan is now fully accessible as a Tor hidden service. Users can browse the entire explorer, including the API, without revealing their IP address.

  • Frontend: 2v3d5dlxm7kaobrjup6357db7xxjgktmdkyk6cksxox5ts7ucid2dyad.onion

  • API: wc6fzsvvx7wuyy2zd66ofbte6ptyb33k5qtsichesbkl5ldfdzgtsjad.onion

Both serve the same data as the clearnet site. No analytics, no IP logging, no third-party resources loaded.

Shielded Supply History - 365 Days

The pool history API now returns a full year of daily data with exact per-pool values (Sprout, Sapling, Orchard).


GET https://api.mainnet.cipherscan.app/api/network/pool-history?period=1y

Visible on the frontend at cipherscan.app/pools with 7d/30d/90d/1y period selectors.

Pool Supply
Pool Supply2534×1070 192 KB

Query Performance Optimizations

  • Materialized views for expensive aggregation queries (flow_daily, crosschain summary, supply stats)

  • Redis caching with TTL-based invalidation (2–5 min for time-series, 60s for real-time)

  • Cursor-based pagination for large result sets (no OFFSET scans on 287M-row tables)

  • Client-side streaming CSV/JSON exports (no server memory pressure)

  • Incremental turnstile refresh (4x daily, recomputes only affected dates)

Privacy Index Weekly Publication

12 weekly issues published at cipherscan.app/newsletter. Available via RSS at /newsletter/rss. Each issue covers pool composition changes, shielded transaction trends, notable on-chain events, and the weekly privacy score.

Cipherscan Newsletter
Cipherscan Newsletter2518×1584 358 KB

Documentation

  • API docs: 43 endpoints documented at cipherscan.app/docs with curl examples

  • Operational guide: DEPLOYMENT.md covering full-stack deployment, backup, and monitoring

Happy to answer any questions.

Kenbak

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