Zcash Shielded News | Vol.21

Zashi 1.4 Release, Crosslink Hybrid PoS Roadmap, Jack Gavigan Stepping Down, ZF - Engineers Updates & Building Consensus | ECC Update.

ZecHub

Mar 12, 2025

Zcash Shielded News is a community article format based on the weekly Zcash Ecosystem Digest Newsletter.

Providing insight on current events and informing the community about important news in the Zcash ecosystem.

Check out the best Highlights below

Zashi has introduced a major UX upgrade, enhancing transaction management with new tools for search, filtering, and organization. Users can now bookmark important transactions, add private encrypted notes, and filter history by type, memo, or notes. ‘

The improved search functionality allows queries by amount, contact name, wallet address, and more. A tax-friendly export feature simplifies financial reporting, while the home screen now displays recent transactions with an option to view a fully searchable history, grouped by month.

Additional UI refinements improve navigation, accessibility, and design, with Keystone integration now more easily accessible from Settings.

🔗| Learn more

Shielded Labs is developing Crosslink, a hybrid Proof-of-Work (PoW) / Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus algorithm for Zcash. The project consists of two phases: a 12-month development phase to build a complete implementation, followed by a 9-month productionization phase to prepare it for mainnet activation.

Project Goals & Impact

Crosslink aims to introduce staking and delegation, increasing network decentralization and shifting market dynamics by reducing sell pressure from mining pools. It also enhances security through economic finality, unifying deposit times across exchanges and bridges while laying the groundwork for future scalability improvements.

Development Approach & Challenges

Shielded Labs is balancing:

Speed vs. Quality (delivering quickly while ensuring stability),
New Infrastructure vs. Upstream Compatibility (aligning with Zebra and Zcash tooling), and
Flexibility vs. Structure (avoiding unnecessary complexity).

The team is using Malachite (a Rust implementation of Tendermint BFT), RegTest simulations, and an incremental development approach ("Vertical Slice") to ensure each milestone delivers functional components.

Roadmap & Milestones

Placeholders & Processes (1 month, In Progress)
- Establish engineering processes, CI/CD, and collaboration with Zebra maintainers.
Disconnected BFT (2 months)
- Introduce PoA-based BFT finalization without modifying PoW consensus.
PoW Consensus (3 months)
- Modify PoW consensus to respect BFT finalization and ensure rollback protection.
Staking & Transaction Semantics (4 months)
- Implement staking transactions, delegation, rewards, and slashing.
Pre-Production & Refinements (2 months)
- Address technical debt and finalize governance decisions.

Productionization Phase (9 months)

Finalizing ZIP specifications, security audits, and integration with wallets, exchanges, and staking providers before scheduling Crosslink for a Zcash Network Upgrade.

Shielded Labs is committed to continuous community engagement, releasing early test versions and integrating feedback throughout development.

🔗| More info

The outgoing Executive Director of the Zcash Foundation announced his decision to step down after 8 years of involvement in the Zcash ecosystem. His journey began nearly a decade ago when he provided feedback on Zooko Wilcox’s investor pitch for Zcash. He later became an advisor to the Zerocoin Electric Coin Company (now ECC) and officially joined the ECC team shortly before Zcash’s launch.

Over the years, he played a key role in the growth and decentralization of the Zcash ecosystem, working alongside various teams and organizations that support the project’s mission. As Executive Director of the Zcash Foundation for the past four years, he recognized the importance of leadership transitions and decided that the time was right to step aside.

Alex Bornstein, previously the Foundation’s COO, will take over as interim Executive Director while the Board searches for a permanent successor. Jack expressed gratitude to the Zcash Foundation team and Board, reaffirmed his commitment to the Zcash mission, and clarified that his departure was not due to any disagreements or external job offers. He will continue to support the Foundation and the broader Zcash community in a personal capacity.

🔗| More Info

During this sprint, the Zebra team focused on zcashd deprecation, enhancing RPC support in the new Zcash network stack. Updates included:

Supporting -1 as the block height for the last known valid block.
Improving getpeerinfo to display inbound connections.
Ensuring coinbase transaction address order matches zcashd.
Adding invalidateblock and reconsiderblock RPC methods.

They also addressed technical debt to facilitate future database format upgrades. CI issues delayed merging, but completion is expected soon.

The FROST project demonstrated frostd for Zcash transaction signing and addressed issues from Least Authority’s audit of the FROST server and client.

DevOps team hosted a community call on Zebra with Docker and CI/CD and resolved a Docker image issue that was blocking automatic node deployment.

🔗| Link

ZconVI, hosted by the Zcash Foundation, was a major success, featuring presentations from 17 organizations and numerous independent community members worldwide. The Zcash community continues to grow, much like its shielded pool.

During the event, ECC announced plans to fork the zebrad repo (the new Zcash consensus node developed by the Zcash Foundation) to manage its own software version. This move will accelerate development and is part of Zcash’s protocol governance, which is evolving beyond the previous 2-of-2 multisig governance model. While legal enforcement of governance has ended, ECC and ZF still must agree on consensus rules to prevent a chain split.

ECC envisions a future where multiple organizations, including Shielded Labs, maintain their own versions of the software while collaborating on consensus changes. ECC will continue to gather community feedback to guide its development priorities.

Separately, decisions on block reward-based funding, Shielded Labs will soon begin discussions on how to gauge community sentiment and allocate resources effectively.

The Zcash ecosystem is entering a new era of collaboration and execution, bringing renewed optimism for the future!

🔗| Read more

Zashi

📱| Zashi Design

Multiple iterations of the Zashi Vault mockups
Progressing on Shielding, Syncing Progress and Balances redesign
Supporting engineering, product and marketing with ad hoc design requests

🧑‍💻| Q&A and Dev Support

Tested 1.4 release candidate builds (iOS, Android, FOSS)
Cooperated with ZF on ZconVI organization and preparation
Taking care of user support issues and Discord
Supporting Marketing with announcements and socials management

🍎| Zashi iOS

Analytics Update:

Unique Installs: 6.79k
Total Downloads: 8.09k
AppStore Rating: 4.9*

Releases:

Finished metadata encryption/decryption for bookmarking, annotations and read flags
Tested 1.4 release candidate, addressed comments in all PRs and fixed discovered bugs
Released Zashi 1.4 to production!
Released Zcash SDK version 2.2.9

Continued Home Screen redesign - implementing navigation changes:

Implemented new bottom sheet with access to integrations
Rewired the Receive menu to the new navigation and tested all flows

WIP: Scan & Send menu - many changes and implications need to be addressed

🤖| Zashi Android