Zcash Z3 updates (formerly Zcashd Deprecation)

Ecosystem Updates
101

August 8th

Hello! Another week, another Zcash Z3 update!

Outreach

Status: resumed
We concluded the outreach for Zcashd 6.3.0 with a high degree of responses. In the following days we will probably hear from those who didn’t update in time and we will troubleshoot their issues if needed. We also started scoping and discussing Z3’s alpha which we call mostly Zallet’s alpha because we mainly aim those entities that make use of the Zcashd wallet.

Zebra

Project Roadmap board
Priority board
The ZF engineering released Zebra 2.5.0 which includes NU 6.1 for testnet in concordance with Zcashd 6.3.0. There is a lot of work and coordination behind this that ZF and ECC have carried out while also attending everything else. Kudos to both teams.

Zebra is also receiving some improvements in their CI infrastructure code and also Regtest support is being enhanced in cooperation with ZingoLabs which are their main users at the moment.

Zaino (ZingoLabs)

  • Status: in progress

Project Board
ZingoLabs is wrapping up Zaino Respec work which enhances support of finalized and non finalized state views of the Zcash blockchain. Lightwalletd replacement milestone has been delayed a bit because of an unfortunate hardware failure in Zaino’s lead dev but we are just a few days to reach code completion of it. The Light Client Working Group discussed on their last call (#101) a new addition to the light client protocol and it was planned to be a Zaino-only update. That’s how close we are! Wohooo!

According to ZingoLabs estimations, Zaino’s Block Explorer support will be wrapped up a few days after lightwalled replacement is complete.

In-Memory backend wrap up

- status: pending review :warning:

PR: https://github.com/zcash/librustzcash/pull/1634
We have exciting news that can’t be shared yet but this is taking more relevance at the moment so Kris and Pacu will start to figure out what’s the path of this PR to librustzcash’s main branch and try to push it forward with higher priority.

Zallet full node wallet

  • Status: in progress

tracking work on this repository.

Now that ECC core developers have wrapped up Zcashd 6.3.0 release and all that it entailed, the team is focused on Zallet Alpha which is starting soon. As you see on this cropped version of the Zcashd deprecation dag, just a handful of green little remains Also some of them are actually in review!

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Call for testers and Developers is still open! Check the previous updates to know what’s that about.

Block Explorer Support

  • Status: Testing

It is possible that Zcash block explorer will switch to Zebra with the patched version nighthawks ZBE soon. Although this is just the beginning of it. As we mentioned in the Zaino section above, Block Explorer support APIs are close to land into Zaino and then the Block Explorer will be “unpatched” to use the right APIs that are far more efficient.

Pending reviews:

Thanks for reading!

7 Likes
Zcash Developer Relations Engineer
102

August 15th

We are all jumping through moving trains.

This is a thought exercise. You can skip it and continue to the updates. I swear that I wrote it before this ZK AV Club post. But the coincidence gives me a lot more to reflect and think.

Imagine that there are three parallel rails where three passenger trains go side by side.
These trains go to one destination where one of them will stop forever there and the other two will continue perpetually circling earth. There’s an even MORE unusual railroad setup. All three trains have to reach that destination at the same time so they can stop and let passengers go off one of them and let the other two continue forward. How far they get, depends on the overall collective distance of all trains from the destination regardless which one of the trains is ahead or behind.

The trains are not adversarial, they’ll cooperate to their best ability. They can’t stop their march until their destination. Also, if this wasn’t twisted enough, two of the trains must exactly coincide on certain points or one of them will yield away. Things can get worse because, due to weird rails conditions, the trains need to balance the passenger count depending on the structural state of the railways. These railway conditions are uneven across the path in all three of these parallel rails. Railroad experts have determined that it’s not possible to run one of the trains forward to the finish line and wait for the others, because the load balancing needs won’t allow it. Given that these trains can’t stop, people will have to jump from one train to the other and account for slight train speed variability while the trains go unevenly marching together towards their destination. These trains also need repair, and even one of them is being built on the go! Oh… and there’s one more thing! there aren’t any redundant train engineers for some critical tasks.

All train jumpers have been given this vignette so they can jump to their best ability. (Credits: ChatGPT)

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How should people jumping from one train to the other should evaluate their jump to be sure they will land it?
What if the train slows down or accelerates in between someone’s jump?

There are a myriad of things that could go wrong. Still, trains are steady going towards their destination (although slower than we would have thought).

Pacu, What kind of LSD trip is this? :joy:

As crazy and far-fetched this sounds, this is the magnitude of the problem the Zcash ecosystem is dealing with right now with Zcashd deprecation, Z3 development and future NU7 deployment.

Because these all are very good trains, with excellent crew members, we sometimes forget how complex it is, and we take for granted that things will go well no matter what.

Plan every jump, protect every jumper, maintain every train. That’s the key to our success.

Now, let’s see how the trains are doing!

Outreach

Status: paused

So far we haven’t gotten any reports of reached organizations with Zcashd 6.3.0 roll out. Once we have definitions on Zallet’s Alpha readiness we will resume this effort.

Zebra

Project Roadmap board

Priority board

The ZF engineering team is working on a lot of things, for this particular goal, Zebra is getting performance improvements like adoption of BatchVerifiers and the team is performing chores that are needed to keep Zebre lean and fast.

Zaino (ZingoLabs)

  • Status: in progress

Project Board

Zaino continues their Restructure and continuation grants. A lot of tests are being added. Block explorer support and Lightwalletd feature replacement being wrapped up. Along those lines @nuttycom walked by the Zaino stables and left a neat contribution to link the canonical light client protofiles. ATH in collaboration continues!

In-Memory backend wrap up

  • status: pending review :warning:

PR: https://github.com/zcash/librustzcash/pull/1634

No changes from last update

Zallet full node wallet

  • Status: in progress

tracking work on this repository.

Zallet keeps progressing towards its alpha readiness. Z3 developers are working on configuration schemes for the Z3 Stack to be distributed to Alpha testing candidate organizations whose list is being defined.

The PR review bottleneck is striking us hard but fortunately @OxArbitrage is helping Zallet devs out with this. If you have good rust skills and time, please care to share your review!

Call for testers and Developers is still open! Check the previous updates to know what’s that about.

Block Explorer Support

  • Status: Testing

@cacho is maintaining the current ZBE and helping out with some bugs that are causing shielded coinbase transactions not being displayed properly. We were reported an outage on API that supports CoinMarketCap’s APIs which Cacho fixed overnight. Thanks!

Pending reviews:

Thanks for reading!

10 Likes
Zcash Developer Relations Engineer
103

Great metaphor, but very true.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this, Pacu!

1 Like
104

August 22nd

Hello! There are a lot of updates this week. Let’s get to it!

Outreach

Status: Resumed
We’ve concluded Zcashd 6.3.0 roll out. We are still monitoring the situation (thanks @edicksonga for some reports). We are now starting a Zcash Network Upgrade Friction Survey to get some insight on pain points generated by transaction changes in the ecosystem. @nuttycom proposed this in Light Client Working Group and we kicked it off right away.

Zebra

Project Roadmap board
Priority board

ZF folks released Zebra 2.5.0 which enables NU 6.1 in testnet. Zebra now does Orchard batch validation and also has a few more enhancements to existing RPCs to be more compatible with Block Explorers and Zcashd clients. Also the team keeps housekeeping continuous integration (CI) infrastructure and contributing to the Z3 distribution pipeline.

Zaino (ZingoLabs)

  • Status: in progress

Project Board

Zingo folks continue to progress on their Zaino chain index API, Respec grant and block explorer support code completion.

In-Memory backend wrap up

- status: pending review :warning:

PR: https://github.com/zcash/librustzcash/pull/1634
@nuttycom has been working on this so that we can merge this PR into the main development branch so that WebZ.js and the Metamask snap gets the needed updates for NU 6.1.

Zallet full node wallet

  • Status: in progress

tracking work on this repository.

We are getting closer to Alpha Phase code requirements to be complete.

  • Kris has sent PRs to Zebra and Zaino to keep Z3 dependencies up-to-date
  • Str4d has worked on PCZT support for P2SH
  • Zallet support of zero-conf-shielding as Zcashd has

Also, Did you know there is a Zallet Book?

Call for testers and Developers is still open! Check the previous updates to know what’s that about.

Block Explorer Support

  • Status: Testing

RPCs are in development on Zaino’s repo and we are progressing on this front.

Pending reviews:

Thanks for reading!

7 Likes
Zcash Developer Relations Engineer
105

August 29th

Hello! There are a lot of updates this week. Let’s get to it!

Outreach

Status: Resumed :white_check_mark:
We started some interesting conversations with different ecosystem actors about the Network Upgrade Friction survey. We still have a good way to go to get a full picture of the impact of transaction changes in the ecosystem. Once we have more data we will process it and share it with the different teams.

Zebra

Project Roadmap board
Priority board

Zebra infrastructure is being revamped. This will benefit everyone not only Zcashd deprecation. Meanwhile the RPCs keep being completed with the missing information that was once “lower priority” :slightly_smiling_face: and now we have progressed enough that it’s time to get to it.

Zaino (ZingoLabs)

  • Status: in progress

Project Board

Zallet integration has brought up some improvement points that the Zaino team is working on, plus the re-architechting of Zaino is progressing towards completion next week as well as Lightwalletd functionality code completion. Zaino is also undergoing some major changes in the configuration front. It’s important that anyone interested in opens issues on the Zaino repo about it!

In-Memory backend wrap up

- status: Done :white_check_mark:

PR: https://github.com/zcash/librustzcash/pull/1634

We have merged the In-memory backend PR https://github.com/zcash/librustzcash/pull/1923#event-19388967919 into Librustzcash :tada:

Thanks @nuttycom @str4d and @daira for all the rebasing, merging, reviewing and patching involved :heart:

Zallet full node wallet

  • Status: in progress

tracking work on this repository.

Important announcement: now it’s the perfect time to hand your documentation feedback to the Zallet team. Act now! Spin up Zallet and leave your feedback in form of github issue. So that we can enhance Zallet’s documentation. In the following week we are very interested to know what are the friction points when setting up a new wallet in Zallet.

In terms of progress, Kris and Str4d keep advancing towards Zallet alpha at full speed. .

Block Explorer Support

  • Status: Testing

No changes from last week here. RPCs are in development on Zaino’s repo and we are progressing on this front.

Pending reviews:

Thanks for reading!

9 Likes
Zcash Developer Relations Engineer
106

September 5th

Hello! There are a lot of updates this week. Let’s get to it!

Outreach

Status: Resumed :white_check_mark:
We are still collecting responses for the NU friction survey. We’ll post results as soon as we have concluding answers. Zallet Alpha is paused until the Z3 dev teams give a green light for it to start.

Zebra

Project Roadmap board
Priority board

Zebra is going through continuous optimizations. Redundant code is being deleted thanks to further integration to librustzcash’s crates. Configuration is being overhauled as well as CI infrastructure. ZF folks are wrapping up Zebra work on their plate and prepare to have room on their backlog to contribute to Zallet or Zaino if needed.

ATH in collaboration continues!

Zaino (ZingoLabs)

  • Status: in progress

Project Board

Zaino is getting integrated into Zallet and we are seeing the expected issues of systems integration. We triage the problems as they come and Zaino folks are working with Zallet folks to fix those problems.

In-Memory backend wrap up

- status: Completed! :white_check_mark:

@nuttycom and myself completed this and we have left TODO items for ChainSafe to work on. Their maintenance grant is just starting so @gguy and I are making sure that they have a full backlog with these pending items for NU 6.1, bugs reported by users and the homework Kris and Str4d have left in the zcash_memory_crate when it merged. This no longer will be part of this update. Another checkbox checked. Kudos!

Zallet full node wallet

  • Status: in progress

tracking work on this repository.

Zallet is integrating Zaino and preparing for the Closed Alpha Phase. Things aren’t a bed of roses but nothing that wasn’t unexpected when it comes to integrating two systems that are in active development. Next Thursday Z3 devs will do an interactive testing session among themselves to document any issues in the “new wallet” workflow

Block Explorer Support

  • Status: Testing

Zingo folks continue to work on RPC support. Given that integration issues take precedence over this work it’s going a bit slower than expected

Pending reviews:

Thanks for reading!

9 Likes
Zcash Developer Relations Engineer
107

September 19th

Hello! You might have noticed there was no update last week. Not because there weren’t things to tell but because there was no writer appointed! I took some time off to fully disconnect from work and studies. But here I am! Back at it!

Outreach

Status: Resumed :white_check_mark:
We are still collecting responses for the NU friction survey. @aquietinvestor shared some preliminary insights on this NU acceleration post. Zallet Alpha outreach will start whenever ECC folks signal it.

Zebra

If you missed the last Arborist Call Alfredo filled us in on the many things the Zebra team is doing. RPC method tweak and development is progressing and also receiving very welcomed external contributions! The RPC Test framework keeps progressing thanks to Alfredo and Gustavo is continuing to refactor CI.

Zaino (ZingoLabs)

  • Status: in progress

Project Board

Zingoistas are all hands on deck on their Zallet Release work which is described in detail on this post by @zancas. In a nutshell there’s a chunk of work needed to iron out the integration between Zallet and Zaino, as well as documentation and use cases to support light clients in order to sunset lightwalletd. Please check the project board linked above to appreciate the amount of effort ZingoLabs is putting into progress visibility

Zallet full node wallet

  • Status: Alpha Released :white_check_mark:

tracking work on this repository.

Zallet v0.1.0-alpha.1 released!! Congratulations to @str4d @nuttycom @schell @Yass and @daira for this huge milestone!

For anyone interested in diving into it, The Zallet Book is the go to reference.

Block Explorer Support

  • Status: Testing

Zingo folks continue to work on RPC support. Given that integration issues take precedence over this work it’s going a bit slower than expected.

Thanks for reading!

8 Likes
Zcash Developer Relations Engineer
108

September 26th

Another week, another Z3 development update. Heads up! We have created #z3 and #zaino channels in our Zcash R&D discord. Also important news for Zcashd RPC users from the Zebra team below.

Let’s go with the updates.

Outreach

Status: Resumed :white_check_mark:

We are still collecting responses for the NU friction survey and the past surveys. As for the Zallet alpha outreach, we have started contacting a handful of teams that we consider we have the closest relationship with which is important for this alpha phase where we expect things will break and teams will likely need to spend time reporting these issues and testing subsequent versions of the alpha releases.

Zebra

Attention those who are tightly coupled to Zcashd RPC error codes. ZF has decided to update the error codes in Zebra as needed and will close this story. Please open a github issue if you have a specific requirement.

Zebra folks continue to improve CI, tooling, APIs and reviewing numerous external contributions from ECC, Zingo and some Anons as well!

Zaino (ZingoLabs)

  • Status: in progress

Project Board

Zingoistas continue working on the Zaino The release and Zaino Continuation grants. These efforts were only interrupted by me because I wanted to make a small contribution and found that my setup had problems. I want to thanks @ala-mode from Zingo and @dismad from ZecHub for their help in reconciling my Zebra and Zaino horses that were not talking to each other anymore.

Although annoying or disruptive, these issues help us improve our tooling documentation which we will do next week when I clean all the troubleshooting and turn it into useful docs. As @zancas summarized in a conversation we had. “New levels of teamwork! Collaboration’s that will blossom into amazing things in future.”

Zallet full node wallet

  • Status: Alpha Released :white_check_mark:

tracking work on this repository.

ECC folks are heads down on code needed for NU 6.1. While they are at it, as I mentioned in the outreach section, I’ll be starting the conversations with the different teams out in the ecosystem so they start trying the Zallet Alpha.

For anyone interested in diving into it, The Zallet Book is the go to reference.

Block Explorer Support

  • Status: Testing

I started contributing a bit to this by implementing passthrough RPCs which are the low hanging fruit out there with support of Zingo devs when needed.

Thanks for reading!

8 Likes
109

October 3rd

All eyes on Zcash!

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Price up or down, we keep building.

Another week, another Z3 development update!

Let’s go with the updates.

Outreach

Status: Resumed :white_check_mark:

With Token 2049 taking the center of the stage, outreach efforts were highly impacted. On the bright side, this momentum will surely help boost our reach. Congratulations to all Zcashers spreading the word across the world. Next week we will start the NU 6.1 deployment outreach as soon as we have the Zebrad and Zcashd releases out.

Zebra

Zebra folks have published an exhaustive report of their recent work. If you haven’t read it yet, you will find it here. Zebra engineers have worked on the NU 6.1 update and wrapping up a new Zebra version for the occasion. A lot of CI improvements have landed along with RPC testing framework advancements and RPC method refinements that bring us closer to our goal.

Zaino (ZingoLabs)

  • Status: in progress

Project Board

Zaino folks are working on chain_index enhancements so that Zaino can keep track of the different non-finalized chains. Also configuration enhancements and clean up are making the project more convenient and ergonomic to work with. Block explorer RPCs are being worked in parallel as well.

Zallet full node wallet

  • Status: Alpha Released :white_check_mark:

tracking work on this repository.

ECC folks are wrapping up NU 6.1 preparation work with the respective Zcashd and Librustzcash crates releases and getting back to focus on Zallet code. Meanwhile Yasser is working on packaging software with docker images, debian packages, etc.

Zallet Alpha continues! For anyone interested in diving into it, The Zallet Book is the go to reference.

Block Explorer Support

  • Status: Testing

Several devs are working on Block Explorer supports RPCs for Zaino.

Thanks for reading!

8 Likes
Zcash Developer Relations Engineer
110

October 10th

Did you notice that $ZEC surpassed $SOL today? All eyes on Zcash! Another week, another Z3 development update!

Let’s go with the updates.

Outreach

Status: Resumed :white_check_mark:

We have started reaching out to some exchanges about the Zcashd 6.10.0 release and we are waiting for Zebra 3 to be out to do a 2-in-1 outreach where we invite Zcashd clients to start looking at Zebra and Z3.

Zebra

Zebra folks are preparing the Zebra 3.0.0 release which includes NU 6.1 plus many other fixes. This is likely to happen between today and Tuesday
Also Gustavo has been working a lot in the Z3 infra repository which can be found here GitHub - ZcashFoundation/z3: Repository to iterate on the grand unification of Zebra, Zaino and Zallet

Zebra folks are wrapping up shielded coinbase which will help Zaino testing time to be lowered considerably and they are waiting their code to be added to librustzcash add(zcash_primitives): Support constructing coinbase transactions

Zaino (ZingoLabs)

  • Status: in progress

Project Board

Zaino tooling is getting overhauled everywhere, while block explorer support RPCs are being crossed off our list very quickly! I expect we will have further news from the Zingo team in terms of milestone announcements soon!

Zallet full node wallet

  • Status: Alpha Released :white_check_mark:

tracking work on this repository.

With NU 6.1 released for Zcashd, Zallet work resumes and RPC auth is in the works other things have been complete like Fix JSON-RPC error responses

Zallet Alpha continues! The Maya team has started looking at it and we are awaiting their feedback.

For anyone interested in diving into it, The Zallet Book is the go to reference.

Block Explorer Support

  • Status: Testing

Tracking: Zaino Continuation · GitHub

Only two methods are in our TODO list! Great lift from @dorianvp and @aaal!

Thanks for reading!

9 Likes
Zcash Developer Relations Engineer
111

Thank you for this well detailed constant update. It is very helpful to us!

2 Likes
113

October 17th

Lots of things going on! It’s hard to keep up with every single thing! Another week, another Zcash Z3 update! Let’s go!

Outreach

Status: Resumed :white_check_mark:

We completed the Tier 1 and 2 outreach for NU 6.1 and we are awaiting the Acknowledge from exchanges, mining pools and API providers. Price action is definitely helping us get faster responses.

Zebra

Zebra folks released Zebra 3.0.0 release candidate which includes NU 6.1 plus many performance upgrades reducing full blockchain sync to a couple of hours versus a couple of days of Zcashd or a full day from previous Zebra versions.. The ZF team presented those at the last Arborist Call in more detail. This will reduce downtime for node operators and reduce costs as well.

Zaino (ZingoLabs)

  • Status: in progress

Project Board

Chain index refactoring designed by Zallet and Zaino folks is being wrapped up and will undergo review shortly. Block explorer RPC continues (see BE section below)

Zallet full node wallet

  • Status: Alpha Released :white_check_mark:

tracking work on this repository.

Crypto X seems to be going through a $ZEC Fever! and that’s taking a toll on the Zashi team which… is also the Zallet team. After addressing some issues on light client code the Zallet team will resume Zallet work this following week. Progress was made towards RPC authentication support with cookie auth coming soon.

Alpha still continues! For anyone interested in diving into it, The Zallet Book is the go to reference.

Block Explorer Support

  • Status: Testing

Tracking: https://github.com/orgs/zingolabs/projects/15

Block explorer support development progresses and we are almost there!

Thanks for reading!

7 Likes
Zcash Developer Relations Engineer
114

Hey, this sounds quite cool, can u explain what specifically has contributed into the sync time going down from days to hours? Like, are we using some snapshot mechanism, or, is it some improvement in the sync process itself on zebrad?

115

Well… this is more of a @conradoplg @pili question but since you asked me, I think the bulk of it comes from Zebra migrating from code they had built long ago to scan the chain to batch scanning from the sapling and orchard crates. This isn’t “obvious”, these batch processing tools didn’t exist at the time zebra implemented the code it used before. Then they did a whole lot of smaller optimizations that they had flagged as tech debt since long ago but that in terms of priorities were not high up in the queue

1 Like
116

We actually had a performance regression on the initial sync time which was fixed and released with the latest Zebra release last Thursday. There may be some other performance fixes and improvements that we can do but that is the most significant one so far :slight_smile:

8 Likes
117

Actually, speaking with @Marek we also had some improvements in performance from using the Sapling verifier from the sapling-crypto crate which is what @pacu was referring to :slight_smile:

5 Likes
118

October 24th

Price goes up, price goes down, price goes up. Shielded pools are only growing. We keep building as we’ve always done

Outreach

Status: Resumed :white_check_mark:

We continue with the NU 6.1 outreach and nudging people on Zallet Alpha.

Zebra

The Zebra team released 3.0.0 and continue to work on outstanding items on Zcashd deprecation like Orchard shielded coinbase. Also reviewing a lot of work on NU7 and looking into collaboration opportunities with the rest of the Z3 teams.

Zaino (ZingoLabs)

  • Status: in progress

Project Board

Zingo is working on wrapping up the Chain index work and adopting Zebra 3.0.0. Oscar Pepper author of Pepper sync is joining the Zaino team to work on chain index as well while Dorian, Nacho and myself are working or reviewing Block Explorer RPC development.

Zallet full node wallet

  • Status: Alpha Released :white_check_mark:

tracking work on this repository.

The ECC team had been busy responding to bug fixes on Zashi and NU7 PR reviews on the Orchard crate. Although progress on Zallet did continue with Cookie authentication. ZF folks will review and bring their expertise from implementing it on Zebra.

Alpha still continues and we are looking for people who have Zcash.dat files on testnet and are willing to test the migration path on Zallet. For anyone interested in diving into it, The Zallet Book is the go to reference.

Block Explorer Support

  • Status: Testing

Tracking: https://github.com/orgs/zingolabs/projects/15

There are three RPC left to go

Done but In review

We are in good shape to start working on integrating Zebra + Zaino into the Zcash Block Explorer. @cacho did a hack adaptation that used Zebra only at the expense of performance and a lot more RPC requests.

Thanks for reading!

10 Likes
Zcash Developer Relations Engineer
119

October 31st

Zallet alpha.2 is out! go check it out!
https://github.com/zcash/wallet/releases/tag/v0.1.0-alpha.2

Another week, another Zcash Z3 development update.

As you may have noticed, we flipped our ring-signatured cousins both in price and market cap and almost 10x on daily volume. These last weeks have brought an influx of users and new edge cases that put our wallet software into stress test and while it is going very well, this takes a huge toll on code developers’ availability to work on Zcashd deprecation since prod issues > backlog github issues. As I said in yesterday’s Arborist Call, we all met and re-assessed our timeline and although we are missing the end-of-2025 milestone, we are not missing it for much. We have changed a bit how we are working to cope with this “All eyes on Zcash” effect.

ECC posted a Roadmap update on X which reflects this

Outreach

Status: Resumed :white_check_mark:

We continue nudging people on Zallet Alpha and reminding them to update their Zebra and Zcashd nodes before November 23rd.

Zebra

The Zebra team continues working on improvements and collaborating with ECC on the RPC Testing framework and testing of Zallet.

Zaino (ZingoLabs)

  • Status: in progress

Project Board

Zingo is working on adopting Zebra 3 and wrapping up the Chain index and block explorer support work and deprecating lightwalletd. More info on block explorer support in the corresponding section below.

Zallet full node wallet

  • Status: Alpha Released :white_check_mark:

tracking work on this repository.

As I mentioned, the ECC team had been busy responding to bug fixes on Zashi. But that didn’t stop them from cutting a new Alpha release. We have worked together on a way to organize contributions into Zallet and PR reviews into Librustzcash to alleviate as much as possible the bottlenecks of the Z3 development pipeline and grow our overall capacity over time. Reviewers don’t grow overnight like mushrooms after a heavy rain, but we won’t have new reviewers if we don’t start investing in fostering these roles regardless of the initial overhead this may have.

Block Explorer Support

  • Status: Testing

Tracking: https://github.com/orgs/zingolabs/projects/15

There is only ONE RPC LEFT 1.14: Add Zcash RPC gettxoutsetinfo

Done but In review

Thanks for reading!

6 Likes
Zcash Developer Relations Engineer
120

November 7th

Hello! What a Week huh?

Outreach

Status: Resumed :white_check_mark:

We doubled down on remembering people to update their Zcashd nodes before November 23rd and we started contacting wallet operators so they update their consensus branch ID before then as well.

Zebra

No other is better to tell you what the ZF engineering team has been up to then themselves. Please check ZF’s engineering update here. Highlights related to this topic are Shielded Coinbase and Regtest feature fixes that will accelerate Zaino’s testing tooling to run faster. Also build times of Zebra have been shortened a lot which is very much appreciated.

Zaino (ZingoLabs)

  • Status: in progress

Project Board

Zingo is testing Zebra 3 integration and wrapping up the chain index work to unblock some areas of Zallet development. I’m helping out in the Lightwalletd deprecation work and working with Larry from ECC to reach parity with LWD on transparent data addition to the light client protocol

Zallet full node wallet

  • Status: Alpha Released :white_check_mark:

tracking work on this repository.

Collaborators Unite! We are putting together this board so ecosystem devs know what’s ready to be worked and can collaborate on building Zallet. If you want to contribute to Zallet just pick the github issue you like the most and get hacking, that’s it! Advice: look for the ones labeled as “good first issue” if you are new to the ecosystem.

Also, to my good surprise the StageX team is working on reproducible builds for Zallet and Zaino. This is super important for consistent runs of our software and debugging possible issues along the way.

Block Explorer Support

  • Status: Testing

Tracking: https://github.com/orgs/zingolabs/projects/15

There is only ONE RPC LEFT 1.14: Add Zcash RPC gettxoutsetinfo

It turns out that these two were not being tracked on the board. Sorry about that!

In review:

Done

Thanks for reading!

6 Likes
Zcash Developer Relations Engineer
121

Hello,

I’m a developer running a custodial Zcash wallet currently on zcashd, and I’m preparing for migration to Zebra. I have a few questions regarding the deprecation timeline:

1. Is zcashd v6.10.0 the final release?

The release notes for v6.10.0 don’t explicitly state that this is the final version. The halt height is set to block 3,214,000 (approximately January 21, 2026), but there’s no clear statement about whether any future releases are planned after this.

Can someone officially confirm: will there be any zcashd releases after v6.10.0, or is this the last one before full deprecation?

2. Zebra support timeline vs Zallet alpha status

Zebra is production-ready and I’m testing it now. However, Zallet is still in alpha and not ready for production custodial services.

My concern: the halt height for zcashd 6.10.0 is block 3,214,000 (January 2026), but Zallet may not be stable by then. For custodial wallets that need wallet RPC methods, what’s the recommended migration path?