Arborist Call #105 | R&D Summary (07/10/2025)
Core Team Updates, Research & Implementation Updates, Open Announcements & Discussion.
The Zcash Arborist Calls are bi-weekly protocol development meetings focused on tracking upcoming protocol deployment logistics, consensus node implementation issues, and protocol research.
This summary focuses on the last call that took place on 07/10/2025
The next Zebra release (v2.0) is imminent, landing today or tomorrow! This version includes key RPC enhancements (e.g. raw Sprout/Sapling tx support), GRPC sidechain visibility, and Prometheus metrics enabled by default.
Zebra v2.0 includes a DB upgrade.
Rollbacks will require full resyncs, so backup your state if you plan to test or revert. The changelog will cover everything in detail. Plan accordingly.
Following the v2.0 release, the team will begin investigating recent sync performance issues in Zebra. Performance improvements will be a key post-release focus.
Shoutout to the community! Several recent Zebra features like raw tx RPC were the community contributed PRs. keep the feedback and issues coming. The team is actively tracking and iterating.
Zaino is nearing completion of both finalized & non-finalized state representations—soon available to Zallet & other consumers. This is a major milestone toward robust, modular integrations in the Zcash ecosystem.
Error handling in Zaino is being re-architected to provide semantically useful, future-proof public error enums—decoupled from internal dependencies. This ensures clean interfaces for tools like Zallet.
To maintain dev velocity and ship encapsulated, well-architected components, the Zaino team will seek expanded support via @ZcashCommGrants. Investment in deeper protocol cohesion is a top priority.
Proposal upcoming: a cross-team protocol for weekly test branches (e.g. "Z2") to ensure integration readiness across Zcash tooling,reducing impedance mismatches & surfacing issues early.
ZSA development is progressing with upcoming PR reviews coordinated alongside ECC engineering schedules. A security audit is in the pipeline as part of our continued focus on robust implementation.
@ShieldedLabs is advancing Crosslink testing with offline, binary-format test cases that simulate network inputs without requiring live connections. These tests enhance speed, determinism, and reproducibility.
The custom instruction format uses a simple binary structure with headers, arbitrary data, and execution steps. This isolates tests from Rust implementation changes while allowing realistic data simulations,including malformed or malicious inputs.
Tests now run along real consensus code paths, ensuring end to end validation. A visualizer helps inspect state transitions, identify where tests fail, and observe deviations from expected behavior.
By treating test inputs as raw bytes, Crosslink testing mimics adversarial environments critical for secure, resilient protocol development. This rigorous approach helps harden the network against malformed or malicious data.
Zingo is set to release its first wallet update in months and early benchmarks suggest it may be the fastest syncing Zcash wallet to date. More tests are underway, but the results so far are promising.
