Dear Zcash community,
Best wishes to all of you for 2024! We are happy to share with you an update on what we have been working on over the last few weeks. We have made some exciting progress on Zcash Shielded Assets as well as the Asset Swaps and Zebra node work, which we will be detailing below.
V6 Transaction structure for the Zebra node
We have implemented the initial V6 transaction format as specified in ZIP 230, thereby enabling support for Zcash Shielded Assets (ZSA) features such as burn and issuance.
The major changes involved in this include an extension to the ShieldedData struct and a Rust feature flag activation for all V6 transaction changes. More details can be found in PR#3 and PR#5 on our fork of the repository.
Zcash / Zebra Transaction Testing
Due to the move to Zebra and the fact that Zebra does not generate transactions but only verifies them, we are developing a test tool for transaction generation. While this tool will eventually be used for ZSA/TxV6 testing, it will also be helpful for testing the existing transaction structure. Therefore, we decided to add TxV5 support as well, and focus on this for the initial release. Later, when librustzcash is ready with full V6 transaction support, we will upgrade the tool to perform both V5 and V6 transaction testing.
Additionally, the Zcash Foundation has recently added an experimental test-only internal miner into the Zebra codebase, which allows us to mine native ZEC Assets more easily during our tests. This addition supports our testing effort since we can now focus on the Orchard pull and avoid dealing with unshielded transactions.
Zebra node test setup for forks
The Zebra node is currently being tested only against the main-net chain. We are therefore working on upgrading the existing test setup for the Zebra node to support different chains. This will allow us to test the node against modified chains that support different sets of consensus rules, such as the future ZSA-enabled chain.
Moving to the Bitcoin Schnorr scheme for the Issuance Authorization Signature
We had previously described our changes to the ZIPs in order to move to the BIP 340 Schnorr signature scheme for the issuance authorization signature. We have essentially completed the implementation of this scheme change in the Orchard-ZSA implementation and will merge it in the coming days after an internal review.
Extending Orchard-ZSA with backward compatibility for V5 transactions
We have been working on generalizing our additions to the Orchard crate so as to simultaneously support both V5 and V6 transactions, which is a necessary step for integration in NU6. We are excited to announce that we are in the final stages of this work, and that we will soon also be merging in these changes. We look forward to having a version of the implementation that handles both V5 and V6 Orchard bundles.
Atomic Swaps Design
We have made changes and improvements to the Atomic swap design as part of the initial review and the community feedback. We encourage everyone to have a look at the draft document!
Edits to the ZIPs
There aren’t significant changes in this area, our ZIPs have been largely stable for some time now. We received some comments from the ZIP Editors regarding rearrangements that would improve readability and clarify ambiguity, which we have incorporated. We look forward to having them merged and included on the zips.z.cash site soon!
As always, please feel free to play around with our work. Let us know if you have any questions, or just what you think!
Best,
The QEDIT Team.