As you might have heard, Zcashd maintainers received a responsible disclosure of an issue in sprout. After Shielded Labs and ZODL devs wrapped up their response procedure and released Zcashd 6.13.0 I quickly ran through our contact master list and messaged the rest of the organizations so they updated ASAP to the new version.
Zebra
ZF folks worked on adding ZIP 235 to Zebra, fixes on regtest mode and getblocksubsidy RPC. They are also working on sync improvements on testnet that will later translate to Mainnet. I had the chance to try that code locally and on a clunky cheap server I have and the improvements on testnet were incredible. Congratulations!
Zaino is working hand in hand with Zallet and also with light wallets. Zingo folks wrapped up Zebra 4.3.0 support and fixes on get_block_range lightclient RPCs that solved issues with ZODL wallet. Lots of progress is being made.
ZODL engineers reported having improved integration to Zaino’s chain-index service to a great extent and syncing full blocks. They are also getting P2SH import for Zcashd migration and also working on ancient regtest wallets to then test the wallet migration path with curious wallet schemes and not just happy paths.
This has been paused in order to wrap up chain_state work first. Otherwise these RPCs will have to be reworked with the new chain_state changes.
Pending:
Zaino and Zallet collaboration continues as they are integrating Zaino into Zallet. Zingoistas are working on the release of version 0.2.1. I’m collaborating on testing parity between Zaino and Lightwalletd by revitalizing old test made by Oscar Pepper and also porting them to the zcash integration tests.
ZODL engineers continue the integration to Zaino’s chain-index and are heading towards alpha.4. This alpha is intended to exercise the workflow for new wallets, while the migration workflows are still being worked on and debugged due to the great number of possible scenarios that are possible. You can take a look of what’s ahead for the Alpha.4 release here.
This has been paused in order to wrap up chain_state work first. Otherwise these RPCs will have to be reworked with the new chain_state changes.
Pending:
It’s been a crazy week. From Brasil I want to thank all the folks from @ZcashBrazil and @vito from Zechub who made me feel at home. Thank you for opening the doors of your beautiful country. The privacy house at IPE Pop-up city is a success thanks to @michaeloff and his team.
Outreach
Status: paused
Reassessing how to engage with partners so that they can share testing scenarios with us better.
Zebra
Zebra engineers are preparing a new release and also working hard on optimizations and security hardening by researching bugs with AI tools as the signs of this era demand.
Zaino 0.2.1 release candidate is imminent! Merged contributions from Str4d on regtest fixes and they are also documenting new features better so they can be adopted easier by Zallet folks
Zallet full node wallet
Status: working towards alpha.4
tracking work on this repository and collaboration opportunities tracked on this board. You can take a look at what’s ahead for the Alpha.4 release here.
ZODL engineers continue working on alpha.4 and they are preparing a new version of the librustzcash crates.
This work is about to be resumed. Zingo folks are asking folks to provide feedback on deprecating 1.23: Add Zcash RPC z_validateaddress and moving it into Zallet
Pending:
We are going to start promoting the use of Shielded Labs’ deployment scenario proposal. Judah will iron out some last details with Pili and they will signal a green light for me to start contacting partners.
Zebra
Zcash foundation engineers released a new update go read it! The ZF team is focused on ongoing improvements on the Zebra full-node.
Zaino got updated to Zebra 4.3.1 and Zingoistas are working on the next Zaino version.
Zallet full node wallet
Status: working towards alpha.4
tracking work on this repository and collaboration opportunities tracked on this board. You can take a look at what’s ahead for the Alpha.4 release here.
ZODL engineers continue working on alpha.4 and they are releasing new versions of the librustzcash crates. The team is analyzing the scope of Zallet’s next versions in order to accelerate Zcashd deprecation as much as possible due to the latest responsible disclosure events.
Hello everyone! There was an interesting discussion in yesterday’s Zcash Arborist Call about how we are shifting our approach given the latest developments. Go watch it!
Outreach
Status: paused
ZF and SL engineers continue working on improvements on Shielded Labs’ deployment scenario proposal for exchanges and mining pools. Once this is done we will evaluate reaching out partners to promote this setup.
Zebra
ZF engineers have been working on more bugfixes reported on Zebra and they will release a new version soon.
Zingoistas are work under the hood, integration tests, LWD Parity tests, cleanup of code and 0.3.0 release in preparation.
Zallet full node wallet
Status: working towards alpha.4
tracking work on this repository and collaboration opportunities tracked on this board. You can take a look at what’s ahead for the Alpha.4 release here.
ZODL engineers keep doing updates to the librustzcash crates, they also responded to core2 library being yanked and released a coreZ crate that replaces it. They added the ability to regression test Zallet wallets that go back to genesis block on regtest.
A new version of Zcashd was released (6.12.3). Dan and Kris communicated with exchanges overnight with the most important partners and Pacu followed up with the rest of the contact list.
Zingoistas are work under the hood, integration tests, LWD Parity tests, cleanup of code and 0.3.0 release in preparation. This week Zingoistas have been focused on their Hackathon that focused on NYM mixnet integration into ZingoLib but included other work on the Zingo Stack like migrating out of the core2 yanked dependency in favor of corez now maintained by ZODL core engineers
Zallet full node wallet
Status: working towards alpha.4
tracking work on this repository and collaboration opportunities tracked on this board. You can take a look at what’s ahead for the Alpha.4 release here.
During the hacking week some took a stab at the remaining block explorer RPC which are now almost complete. From the list of RPCs tracked on github, only getblockhashes` is pending which is a low priority item and might be deprecated or implemented on demand.
Pending:
Zcashd 6.12.3 outreach has finished. Dan (BD from ZODL) is going to start an additional communication channel based on the master list that we have built over these years to have comms channel redundancy. Thanks @joshs for the idea and Dan for the execution. It was a lot of work/
Zebra
ZF engineers continue maintaining and improving Zebra while attending important conferences and the Zcash Dev Summit.
Hackathon went great and Zingo presented a NYM powered version of their Zingo wallet at the Zcash Dev Summit. Meanwhile they are close to completing the MS1 of Zaino completion grant.
Zallet full node wallet
Status: working towards alpha.4
tracking work on this repository and collaboration opportunities tracked on this board. You can take a look at what’s ahead for the Alpha.4 release here.
After some research and development work Zaino folks and myself decided that 1.6: Add Zcash RPC getblockhashes is not a strong candidate for implementation any longer. The team will pivot to other work since this RPC is really time consuming and not used by any other than nighthawk explorer which the community is moving away from anyway. This means that the bulk of the work is almost completed.
Hello! Another week! Another Zcash Z3 development update! Did you know that Block Explorer support on Zainod is dev complete? Kudos @Zingolabs!
Outreach
Status: resumed
Zcashd 6.12.3 outreach has finished. Dan (BD from ZODL) is going to start an additional communication channel based on the master list that we have built over these years to have comms channel redundancy. Thanks @joshs for the idea and Dan for the execution. It was a lot of work/
Zebra
ZF engineers have published a new engineering report! Zebra keeps getting improvements and ZF engineers also continue to contribute to Zallet development with tighter integration tests and PR reviews.
Did you know that now Zaino Block Explorer support is complete? Check this update from @Zancas.I can’t tell you to go to that section of the post because it’s no longer there!! Also Chain Index work is “dev complete” and Zaino engineers are now pivoting to Zaino Completion Milestone 2 which focuses on internal improvements and debugging. Also being able to take some Zallet integration review and testing themselves.
Zallet full node wallet
Status: working towards alpha.4
tracking work on this repository and collaboration opportunities tracked on this board. You can take a look at what’s ahead for the Alpha.4 release here.
Zallet folks keep crossing their t’s and dotting their i’s. There’s a lot of work already done that needs review and attention from other devs:
How do I help?
Simple. Go to the alpha.4 dagny. People should focus on the bottom half of the graph. Which are the issues
* 278
* 1219
* 1203
* 1212
* 1211
* 1126
* 1328
* 1220
Apart from that @nullcopy is working on the Zcashd key material import use case which is fundamental for migrating exchanges to Z3. @nuttycom is going through Str4d’s PR’s on Zaino integration and adoption of latest revisions of Zainod.
Hello! Another week, another Zcash Z3 development update. This is my last report as part of ZCG Committee. I’ll keep writing these from another role starting next week.
We have great news for Zaino, which is “feature complete” for Zcashd Deprecation and integration work will tell what are the adjustments that need to happen next. Congratulations @ZingoLabs!
Outreach
Status: resumed
Messaged partners running Zebra nodes to update to 4.5.0
The Zaino Team has great news. Zainod 0.4.0 is being prepared and it contains Block Explorer RPC support and is also feature complete for Zcashd Deprecation.
Zallet full node wallet
Status: working towards alpha.4
tracking work on this repository and collaboration opportunities tracked on this board. You can take a look at what’s ahead for the Alpha.4 release here.
Zallet folks keep crossing their t’s and dotting their i’s. There’s a lot of work already done that needs review and attention from other devs:
How do I help?
Simple. Go to the alpha.4 dagny. People should focus on the bottom half of the graph. Which are the issues
* 278
* 1219
* 1203
* 1212
* 1211
* 1126
* 1328
* 1220
Apart from that @nullcopy is working on the Zcashd key material import use case which is fundamental for migrating exchanges to Z3. @nuttycom is going through Str4d’s PR’s on Zaino integration and adoption of latest revisions of Zainod.
Hello! all hands on deck! ValarGroup has also joined this effort and they are developing a Zcashd API wrapper to accomodate organizations that can’t migrate directly to Z3. Kudos to Dev and his team!
Outreach
Status: resumed
We have been actively communicating to miners and other partners to coordinate the moving to ironwood and deprecating Zcashd in around 6 weeks.
Zebra
ZF engineers just released version 5.1.1 with enhancements to the syncing performance and continue to collaborate with ZODL engineers on Zallet integration tests, Ironwood specification and development. ZF is also supporting partners moving to Zebra. Go Team!
Zaino team, ZODL and ValarGroup have been working on a DB optimization for Zaino which unblocks adoption on Zallet and continue to work on release of 0.4.0
We keep making the alpha.4 DAG smaller and we are close to having a release ready. Once we have the release out we will reach out to partners for feedback
We continue to engage with partners about Ironwood as the core engineers progress on development and specifications. On Wednesday June 17th LCWG met on a special call with wallet developers to present possible approaches for light clients to migrate users’ Orchard Funds to Ironwood.
Zebra
ZF engineers just released version 5.2.0 with enhancements to max reorg window which will let node operators of our ecosystem react to this kind of events with a broader time span.
Zaino 0.4.0 was released and Zingo folks are working on 0.5.0. Also, Zaino and Zallet developers are working on issues that are being discovered through Zallet Alpha.4 testing. Zingo folks reworked their integration testing environment which eliminated a few troublesome dependencies for Zallet devs by leaning into the Zcash-devtool.
We keep making the alpha.4 DAG smaller and we are close to having a release ready. Once we have the release out we will reach out to partners for feedback
Days pass quickly and the different teams are moving as fast as they can. Considering the activation height that the Zcash orgs agreed on (see ZODL’s Ironwood post), the current Zcashd EOS halt is approximately July 15th and Ironwood activation would be around July 21st. This is an aggressive timeline that responds to the Zcash ecosystem’s urgency for migrating to a formally verified version of the Orchard pool as it was well explained in @joshs’ X post.
We are working closely with ecosystem partners to avoid disruptions and have a smooth NU6.3 activation. This takes a lot of coordination and commitment from all involved parties. Valar Group is collaborating with ZODL to bring technical solutions that can ease this transition.
Testnet is our best ally to achieve this. Valar Group has been developing ironwood-ready librustzcash code on their private Ironwood Testnet with good results. Official Testnet NU6.3 activation is targeted around next Friday.
Outreach
Status: resumed
Zallet alpha and Ironwood outreach efforts are ongoing and we are communicating with different ecosystem actors to know their sentiment about the current timeline
Zebra
ZF engineers continue to collaborate with ZOLD engineers on Zallet integration while they are also progressing in Ironwood consensus work.
Zaino engineers are working on optimizations for Zaino sync times and overall performance and responding to issues that ZODL engineers are reporting on their alpha testing and development work
We communicated the current timeline to miners and exchanges and we are getting feedback from them as they assess the current software releases and the proposed timeline. According to the information ZF and ZODL have gathered, the majority of the hash power is or plans to move to Zebra (88% taking the last 3 months average)
Zebra
ZF engineers released Zebra 6.0.0-rc which deploys NU6.3 on testnet. At the current block rate NU 6.3 testnet activation is expected to happen July 4th around 18.00 UTC. A lot of the testnet deployment progress is due to Marek’s expertise on mining and his generous contribution on this front, both with hashpower and brainpower. Gustavo is also working closely with Zaino and ZODL folks on Z3 stack integration and testing juggling rapid iteration and changes. Kudos to Gustavo as well.
Zaino Engineers completed their release of “everything up to ironwood”. See Zingo’s post and continue to work with the rest of the teams towards the current timeline.
Alpha.4 is getting excellent feedback and so far one exchange could migrate their wallet.dat successfully with no problems. We continue to improve documentation and receive feedback and requirements ecosystem partners hadn’t surfaced on previous outreach efforts. The in-progress work for Alpha.5 is focused on three areas: adding JSON-RPC methods for working with PCZTs, designing and implementing z_sendfromaccount and supporting t-to-t transactions
Another week, another Zcashd update! As you might have seen online, NU6.3 mainnet activation has been set and it’s scheduled for July 28th. Zcashd will reach End-of-Life on July 18th. Everyone should move to Zebra before then
Outreach
Status: resumed
We are completing the outreach process. ZF, ZODL, Valar Group and Shielded Labs are working together to support miners and exchanges. According to Pacu’s records 89% of hash power is ready to move entirely to Zebra. Which will lead to a Zebra-only peer-to-peer network from July 18th 2026 onward.
Zebra
ZF engineers are working on the release of Zebra 6.0.0 which will set mainnet activation of Nu 6.3 at Height 3428143.
