ZSAs in NU7, H2 2025 Extension

[vivek]

Hello Zcash community!

Zcash is getting closer towards NU7 deployment as the days go by, and we had shared an update on our usual thread on what we have done so far, and what we hope to do over the next half of the year. This work will engage all the QEDIT team for the second half of 2025 at $118k/month, until Zcash has deployed ZSA.

@vivek

Dear Zcash Community,

As we reach the midway mark of 2025, we wanted to share a summary of the progress we have made towards getting ZSAs ready for NU7. We also wanted to share our view on where we see ourselves busy over the rest of the year, given the NU7 roadmap.

This work will engage all the QEDIT team for the second half of 2025, at $118k per month, until Zcash has deployed ZSA. We’re looking forward to land this for the community, and are working with first issuers to make sure ZSA is useful on day 1!

H1 2025: Zcash is integrating ZSA

• We have co-ordinated with the ZIP Editors from ECC and ZF towards merging the ZSA-related ZIPs, namely ZIP 226 and ZIP 227. These have achieved general stability over the last few months. We have also co-ordinated with them on the general NU7 related ZIPs such as ZIP 230 and ZIP 246 (related to the transaction format and sighash generation).
• We have been working with the Zcash Foundation on updates to the zebra crate to support ZSAs.
• We have been working with the ECC on the updates to various crates:
  • The ZSA additions to the sinsemilla and zcash_note_encryption crates have been merged.
  • The changes to the halo2 crate are currently under review.
  • The changes to the orchard crate, which are much more far-reaching, are also under review.
  • We have changes prepared for the librustzcash crate, and also the zcash-test-vectors repository, though the review for these is in the pipeline.
• We have been developing the zcash_tx_tool to allow us to generate transactions to submit to a zebra node for our testing and development.
• We have also prepared a testnet with ZSA support and are running a zebra node on a server for interested parties to connect to.
• We have recently also been reviewing the first draft of the design aimed at making changes to the Zcash protocol to achieve smoother future resilience against post-quantum attacks.

More details about all of this progress can be found on previous replies on this thread!

Proposed plans for H2 2025 to get NU7 out

• We would like to continue working with the ECC and ZF to get the ZSA implementations reviewed and merged into the upstream main branches.
• We will continue syncing with ECC, ZF, and Shielded Labs as necessary towards deployment of the NU7 pieces and their interactions with ZSAs.
• Once our changes are merged, we will continue to provide support for ZSA-related changes or changes affecting the ZSA parts of the code — either via pull requests or code reviews.
• We will be analyzing the operation of the deployed testnet, keeping an eye out for issues and possible room for improvement, and implementing any such updates.
• We will also continue development of the zcash_tx_tool so that we can continue to support transactions for the testnet.
• We want to ensure existence of the appropriate API to allow wallets to support ZSAs.
• We will also help handle any unforeseen challenges towards the NU7 integration of ZSAs.
• We would also like to continue to support the Zcash post-quantum resilience effort, including review of the design, implementation support across orchard, librustzcash, zebra and zcash_tx_tool, as necessary.

Best,
The QEDIT Team.

We are sharing here a link to our grant proposal on GitHub. We’re looking forward to see our development work bring value to this community, and as mentioned, we are working with first issuers towards that goal as well!

[Tsupportisharmful]

This is a big monetary ask at a time when Zcash is struggling to increase adoption for its core purpose (private financial transactions) and limiting damage to privacy caused by transparent transaction data being leaked through the way Unified Addresses were implemented in wallets. Zcash users still have funds stuck in Ledger wallets.

Long term funding for things like ZSAs is still uncertain and they will be expensive to maintain.

Lets focus on our core needs first (usable private currency) before we expand to another area with heavy competition (see newly launched Tari for example) and uncertain demand.

The Tari Project

For the good of Zcash (and responsible usage of limited development funds) lets pause all ZSA spending.