Zashi Swaps: Decentralized On-Ramp is Live

Zcash Apps Zashi
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Ready to easily swap crypto for Zcash (ZEC) without centralized exchanges? Zashi 2.4 is here, bringing decentralized swaps powered by Near Intents. Convert assets like USDC, Bitcoin, or Solana into ZEC with just a few clicks, then shield it for private storage, all within the Zashi wallet.

Why This Matters

Shielded ZEC ensures your transactions stay private. But obtaining ZEC often means using centralized exchanges, which aren’t available to everyone and undesirable for many. Zashi 2.4 changes that using a simple in-wallet swap. With decentralized swaps, you can exchange any NEAR Intents-supported cryptocurrency for ZEC directly, without intermediaries.

This is a piece of a larger puzzle, of a vision first outlined by Josh Swihart in early 2024 after taking the Electric Coin Co reins: a privacy-preserving financial system that exists outside the old financial system; adjacent to it, but independent of it. With each Zashi release, that vision becomes more real.

How It Works

Here’s how to swap crypto for ZEC in Zashi 2.4:

  1. Open Zashi and tap More → Swap.

  2. Choose your source crypto (e.g., BTC, USDC) and enter the amount.

  3. Provide a refund address (the wallet address where funds return if the swap fails).

  4. Review the quote and confirm.

  5. Scan the QR code with your external wallet holding the source crypto.

  6. Complete the transaction in your external wallet.

  7. Once the transparent ZEC arrives, follow the in-app prompt to shield it for privacy.

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Also in This Release:

Mempool Detection

Zashi 2.4 now shows incoming ZEC transactions instantly when they hit the mempool (the network’s transaction queue awaiting confirmation). No more waiting over a minute for mined transactions to appear.

What it means: See funds as soon as they’re broadcast.

Note: Transactions still need mining to finalize, and there’s a small chance they may drop from the mempool (e.g., due to network issues), but you’ll know they’re on the way.

Zashi-Coinbase Integration Disabled

We’re temporarily disabling the Coinbase on-ramp. The exchange has introduced a new session token authentication requirement that raises privacy concerns and isn’t compatible with Zashi’s architecture.

This makes our new decentralized on-ramp all the more timely, reminding us why it’s crucial to be able to fund Zashi without relying on centralized exchanges.

This release removes another dependency on the old system, strengthening the groundwork for a new one without gatekeepers. Unstoppable private money needs independent rails, and Zashi keeps building them.

Stay shielded.

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24 Likes
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Great work!!!

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These backgrounds are so pretty, man

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Does this again use the same one T-address as for CrossPay? We urgently need to either fix this or at least make it clear to the users that when they receive funds via this On-Ramp and use it for CrossPay that there currently is zero privacy.

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Awesome stuff!

To test this new feature I wanted to swap some ETH to ZEC. I get the message “Quote unavailable”. I tried to adjust slippage but that did not help. What could be the reason for this?

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Congrats! Love the progress

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Ephemeral addresses are a priority.

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I had the same problem with CrossPay in USDC (Solana). But I guess that’s a liquidy limitation of NEAR Intents right now, not so much of Zashi?

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Yeah, I want to know that as well. If its a liquidity issue, it should be stated in the error message. I wanted to swap a small amount though (just to test it out), so I would be surprised if liquidity is the problem.

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NEAR is looking into it

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11

Congratulations! this is a huge milestone!

“Time is money” and these integrations save Zcashers’ time and lower the stress of having to use different CEX aggregators and “no-KYC-unless-we-want-to” providers with horrible ZEC prices. Enormous value delivery. Thanks!

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So in practice, if I’m out at dinner, we split the check and my friend wants to pay me in BTC. They could send me their BTC receive address to input and the amount to pay, then Zashi would create a QR code (and hopefully an address if not in person? is this true?) that I could give to my friend, who then could complete the transaction in their wallet app of choice.

This seems like a cool new feature.

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Excellent update guys. Any chance we can have an option to reduce the number of confirmations before we are allowed to send $zec? 10 seems arbitrarily long

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Bitcoin beware, here we go, heading for the Moon.whhoooowwww…

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Is there a forum thread specifically for giving Zashi feedback? I will have loads to give you over time.

One thing I’m finding tedious and annoying right now is that you can only add one keystone account on zashi. And if I want to change the account there’s no way of removing the account and adding another account either. I seem to have to reset Zashi entirely. Which means that my Zashi hotwallet account has to be set up again too. If there was a way to even just remove the keystone wallet so I could add another one that would be much better. Maybe you can do that already though and I’m missing something, but i think you need to do an entire Zashi reset.

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It’s in roadmap… try the official discord, developers are all there.

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