Zcash Shielded News | Vol.32 ⓩ
Josh on PGP for Crypto, Zcash & Maya Together, The State of FROST for Zcash, ZCG Opens Two Committee Seats for Candidacy, Zk Av Club Foundry #4: Contests for live events & ECC Updates.
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
This week, we heard a prescient message from Josh Swihart (ECC), not only about Zcash, but about the risks of transparency in our digital lives. “Shielded,” a core principle of Zcash technology, represents more than privacy, it stands for freedom, security, and sovereignty in all aspects of life, protecting individuals from threats like surveillance and even physical attacks.
These cases happened this year, and are more ocucurring without being made public.
Zcash is not just a private payment technology, it also brings us valuable knowledge and increasingly highlights its importance in our lives.
Protect yourself. Shield it.
Zcash on Maya is real!
After a rigorous development process, Maya & ECC announced this past Saturday the completion of the ZEC + Maya integration.
This integration enables users to operate with ZEC by performing swaps on a decentralized exchange, with no KYC or personal information required, delivering a powerful combination of privacy and self-sovereignty, the core principles behind this integration.
The Maya team hosted a 2-hour X Spaces on Saturday to engage with the community about this new integration, joined by the Zcash community and a few Zcashers who took the stage to join the discussion.
This is a major milestone for the ecosystem, and we’re growing stronger every day!
Looking Forward: In an article published by ECC, we learned that the team is already working on a future integration between Maya and the Zashi wallet, which will enable Cross-Chain Payments and Maya-Powered Swaps. Both features are top priorities for the team and are already on Zashi’s 2025 roadmap.
Part of the Zcash Foundation’s development efforts were focused on FROST (Flexible Round-Optimized Schnorr Threshold), an advanced cryptographic technology designed to improve threshold signature schemes.
FROST allows multiple participants to create a digital signature together using shared private key parts, requiring only a set threshold to approve a transaction. This enhances security and protects against key loss or compromise, reducing network overhead with efficient two-round (or even single-round) signing, maintaining security and concurrency, making it ideal for Zcash.
ZF developed FROST for Zcash to meet key needs inthe ecosystem, including:
Enabling secure, privacy-preserving multisignature support for shielded transactions.
Filling a gap in shielded multisig functionality
Ensuring compatibility with existing Zcash standards like RedDSA
Allowing easy integration without major infrastructure changes.
In the current state of FROST, the Zcash Foundation has completed development of the FROST reference implementation, frost-core, and its ciphersuite crates. To support deployment, they also built frostd (a FROST server) and frost-client, a CLI tool designed for both standalone use and as a reference for wallet integration.
Next, wallets should integrate FROST with the provided tools; ZF will assist and can host a frostd server if needed. Because messages are end-to-end encrypted, frostd needn’t be trusted, and a key-generation standard for interoperability is in progress with ECC’s input.
If you’re curious to learn more about FROST, Conrado presented a Demo.
Check it out! 🚀
Time to act! You can now apply for a seat on the ZCG committee. 👀
That’s right! On Thursday, May 22, the Zcash Community Grants announced a new election for this year. Two members, Wobbz and GGuy, will conclude their terms on June 30 after one year, opening two spots on the committee for new community members.
How it works?
Anyone can stand for election. To nominate yourself, you just need to post a candidacy announcement (ideally five paragraphs or fewer) in the #governance:zcg-elections category outlining your vision, priorities, and reasons for wanting to serve on ZCG.
There will be an online call where you'll need to answer some questions and present your ideas during the conversation. Webcams will not be required. No KYC required.
Key Dates:
Nomination Deadline: Monday, June 9th 20:00 UTC
Community Call with Candidates: Wednesday, June 18th 17:00 UTC
ZCAP Voting Period (Helios Poll): Opens after the community call on June 18th and runs until Monday, June 30th at 23:59 UTC.
Results to be announced Tuesday, July 1st.
So far, Dan (@decentralistdan) has been the only one to announce his candidacy.
Best of luck, Dan and everyone! 💛
Do you enjoy live events, clip contests, and video editing? Then this session is for you!
This Monday, the ZK AV Club announced its next Foundry session, focused on clip contests for live events and video editing. The goal is to help you get involved in upcoming ZK AV Club contests by sharing tips, advice, and essential video editing basics.
And the best part? These skills won’t just help with ZK contests, they’ll level up your own content too!
Save the Date
📅Date: 05/30/2025
🕟Time: 16:30 UTC
📺Platform: Youtube
Don’t miss it!
This week, Josh shared a personal reflection on his love for old radios, a passion inherited from his father, and how these simple yet powerful devices symbolized human connection across distances. He recalled how, in All the Light We Cannot See, radios allowed Marie-Laure and her great-uncle to connect with the resistance, while also being used by Nazi Germany for propaganda and surveillance.
Josh emphasized that radios were a powerful tool, used for both liberation and oppression, much like encrypted money today. He also argued that, though some in power may fear it, encrypted money shouldn't be seen as dangerous. Like radios, it can serve both good and bad purposes, but in the end, human connection, freedom, and hope will prevail.
Read more.
Progress of ECC during this week:
Zashi Product
Progress made ✔️
Zashi 2.0.3 released to production.
A new Cross-Chain Payments design was reviewed and received strong feedback.
They began integrating Cross-Chain Payments with the Near 1Click API, started UI work, and aim to launch as early as June.
They have made significant progress in researching Swapkit API for Maya DEX integration.
Upcoming ⏭️
Finalize and test Tor-based transaction submission for the Zashi 2.1 release, tentatively set for June 2–3.
Finalize Cross-Chain Payments design with Near 1Click API and build a testable prototype.
Assess UI/UX and tech changes for integrating the Swapkit API.
Identify design/dev tasks possible before Swapkit adds Zcash support.
🍎│IOS Analytics:
📈Unique Installs: 7.96k
⬇️Total Downloads: 9.56k
⭐AppStore Rating: 4.9*
🤖│Android Analytics:
📈Total Install Base: 3.76k
⬇️Total Installs (incl. Open Beta): 18.7k
⭐PlayStore Rating: 4.556*
🦓| Zcash Core
Progress made ✔️
R&D for the lockbox distribution mechanism
Found and fixed a bug in zebrad
Zallet development
Various reviews
ZIP reviews and support
Upcoming ⏭️
Meetings with Sean Bowe on the next steps for Project Tachyon
Specification work in support of NU 6.1
🌐| Other
The next Z|ECC Summit will be held in Prague the week of July 7th. Infos available here.
Josh participated in an invite-only symposium hosted by Coin Center in Washington, DC.
Paul & Josh attended the Solana Accelerate conference in NYC.
ECC began work on a Z.cash website redesign.
These were the top highlights of the week, folks. Of course, there’s much more you can check out in the latest edition of the Zcash Ecosystem Digest.
If you want to stay up to date with Zcash ecosystem events, visit https://lu.ma/zcash or keep an eye on the “events” category on Discord.
And don’t forget to subscribe to our Shielded Newsletter for network stats and ecosystem updates delivered straight to your Zcash 👉 zechub.wiki/newsletter