Zcash Shielded News | Vol.33 ⓩ
Vultisig has ZEC Swaps Live, ZCG Meeting Notes (05/17), Crosslink Update: Milestone 2 Complete, ZF Engineering Update | Sprint 10, The Encryption Norm. ECC Updates and more.
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
The Zcash x Maya integration was released! As we mentioned earlier, this integration makes it possible to swap ZEC with other assets through the Maya protocol, offering different platforms to perform swaps.
To enhance DeFi, Vultisig and Maya have formed a strategic partnership by combining secure, seedless multisig tech with seamless cross-chain trading.
This collaboration represents a significant advancement in the DeFi world, providing users with a secure, efficient & private means of managing & trading digital assets across multiple blockchains, removing the barrier of complexities related to seed phrases and centralized exchanges.
Vultisig was developed and established in 2018 by the creator of THORChain, having its native token in 2025 called $VULT.
On 28th May, Vultisig added the integration of ZEC into Vultisig, allowing users to manage their funds buying, swaping and sending ZEC within the wallet.
This milestone marks another victory for the privacy ecosystem, promoting decentralization and giving us full autonomy over our funds, free from third-party surveillance. 🎉
The swap works as shown above, although it sometimes has a few bugs. If you find one, please report it to the Vultisig team. 👇
Onward!
On May 17th, we received the latest meeting minutes from the ZCG regarding the most recent grant proposals.
Participants included Artkor, Brian, GGuy, Jason, Zerodartz, and Alex as the note taker.
Check out the latest updates.
Zondax is seeking $95,000 to integrate the new Zcash Ledger Shielded app with Ledger Live, focusing first on transparent transaction support for a timely release. While shielded transaction integration is planned for a later phase, the initial priority is delivering transparent support efficiently. The ZCG committee is still deliberating and will provide an update soon.
Zcash Arabia is requesting $10,000 to grow an Arabic-speaking Zcash community through education, engagement, and developer support in the MENA region. ZCG members have been asked to provide feedback and vote.
The committee members unanimously rejected the grant request, citing a lack of community engagement, meaningful content, and improvements in the revised proposal. While they acknowledged the importance of the MENA region, they encouraged the applicant to become more active and demonstrate stronger impact before reapplying.
On that note: At our last ZecHub Sync Meeting on May 27th, we invited Mostafa (24:01) to explain his grant, and a few questions were asked.
Following that, we received a proposal on DAODAO for voting, where the majority voted to reject it.
We encourage Zcash Arabia to continue building and consider submitting a new proposal in the near future.
Taking Zcash to School 2.0 is a 3-month outreach program aimed at introducing Zcash to Nigerian students and young tech professionals through educational events. The team is requesting $9,500, and ZCG members have been asked to provide feedback and vote.
The committee unanimously rejected the proposal, citing its overly localized scope, lack of demonstrated impact, limited technical depth, and insufficient engagement with the broader Zcash ecosystem. While some improvements were noted, members emphasized the need for collaboration with existing regional initiatives like Zcash Nigeria.
QEDIT is requesting $708,000 to continue integrating Zcash Shielded Assets (ZSAs) into Network Upgrade 7 (NU7), building on work from Grant #6.
A dedicated team will focus on protocol updates, compatibility, and coordination with ECC. ZCG has requested more details and noted it’s too early to vote on this proposal.
Zingo Labs is requesting $44,000 to address architectural challenges in the Zaino project caused by inaccurate zcashd RPC specs. Funds will support rewriting key components and creating a reliable spec. The grant was posted recently, and it’s too early for the committee to vote.
8 days ago, Mark (Aphelios) from Shielded Labs announced the conclusion of the second Crosslink Milestone which started on April 1 - May 16, finishing the work two weeks ahead of schedule.
The goal of this Milestone was focused on building the first half of Crosslink's hybrid consensus design: A PoS devnet that finalizes Zcash PoW blcoks.
To be more specific, they implemented Crosslink PoS headers that point to real Zcash mainnet PoW block hashes. In future milestones, the connection will become bidirectional (PoS → PoW and PoW → PoS), allowing for full finality.
Few weeks ago, Shielded Labs conducted a Demo using a fixed roster of nodes on Discord where they attempted to launch the devnet. The event was a success.
Here’s the recording with timestamps.
0:00 Greetings and workshop explainer
3:00 Crosslink explainer
6:47 Question about block timing
11:17 Workshop begins! Solo Node + Visualizer Demo
16:36 Key derivation explainer
22:45 Workshop: Config file editing
35:00 Workshop: First block mined!!
Few days ago, Pili posted new updates of the development on Sprint 10 (May 12th - May 23rd) about the projects Zebra, FROST and DevOps.
The ZF team is finalizing the remaining RPC methods needed for Zebra to replace zcashd in the Z3 stack. Work includes support for shielded coinbase transactions, enhancements to getblock and getaddressbalance RPCs, and mitigation of a potential DoS issue in getblocktemplate.
They have been addressing feedback about making the zebra-rpc crate more suitable for RPC clients like Zaino. They are working to ensure it functions both as a server and a client library, and are also developing a notification system to alert RPC clients of mempool changes.
The ZF team released an updated zcash_script with @sellout’s changes and integrated it into Zebra, enabling final testing before switching to the Rust version.
To ensure compatibility between the Z³ stack and zcashd, the ZF team has adapted the RPC testing framework for use with Zallet and Zebra. This work revealed missing features in Zallet, leading to new issues being filed, and included the creation of a preliminary framework for testing Zallet’s RPCs.
In preparation for increased production use of Zebra, the team has been improving their hotfix release procedures. They’ve developed an updated process for tagging and communicating hotfixes and plan to conduct a dry run in the coming weeks.
Looking ahead to NU 6.1, ZF has begun preliminary work in Zebra to add the required network upgrade constants.
In DevOps, they’ve been focusing on issues with CI caused by how cached states are selected for testing Zebra.
To wrap up, the ZF team has been working on containerizing the Z3 stack, submitting PRs to the Zaino and Zallet repos to standardize the process and create a unified container image for stakeholders.
This week's update, Encryption Norm, features Josh highlighting the inevitable rise of encryption in cryptocurrencies as digital assets grow in financial use.
Five years ago, Josh, Balaji & Zooko argued that privacy must be built into blockchains, not added later, and that transparent systems like BItcoin pose risks.
With AI and automation set to handle more financial tasks, Josh emphasizes that encrypted, private digital money will become the standard in the evolving digital economy.
Zashi Product
Progress made ✔️
Finalized base designs for NEAR swap flow
Made significant progress on building the swap UI
Released several UI iterations for iOS testing
Work in progress: NEAR 1ClickSwap API integration and business logic for prototype testing
Upcoming ⏭️
Review and test Tor-based transaction submission for upcoming Zashi 2.1 release (June 3rd/4th)
Continue NEAR 1ClickSwap API integration and prototype logic
Evaluate options for Maya integration and define next steps
🍎 │ IOS Analytics:
📈Unique Installs: 8.11k
⬇️Total Downloads: 9.74k
⭐AppStore Rating: 4.9*
🤖 │ Android Analytics:
📈Total Install Base: 3.8k
⬇️Total Installs (incl. Open Beta): 19k
⭐PlayStore Rating: 4.421*
Zashi Product Marketing
Progress made ✔️
Zashi Risk Model draft (interview with core TBD).
Zashi website redesign work.
Initiated process changes for evaluating user feedback.
Upcoming ⏭️
Ongoing on/off-ramp research (Baxa, Spritz, Ramp)
Zashi 2.1 communications
Include info in Zashi video
Zashi user research and adoption planning
Draft paper on T-Address usage
Record interview with Aaluxx from Maya
🌐 | Other
The next Z|ECC Summit will be held in Prague the week of July 7th.
ECC held the quarterly Bootstrap Board of Directors meeting.
ECC is actively reviewing the pending Market Structure legislation in the US. Paul Brigner is also working with Project Glitch on planning for this year’s DC Privacy Summit.
ECC is preparing a grant submission package for coinholder voting, pending finalization of the distribution mechanism and submission process.
🌳 Arborist Call Highlights
Zebra is advancing RPC support, shielded coinbase, and Z3 test coverage. The team also began protocol milestone work, Docker containerization, and improved hotfix procedures.
Zallet testing fixed new bugs and improved transaction views. The Tachyon sprint boosted team insight. Zcash’s Rust backend now supports Tor-based GET/POST for private API access and exchange rates.
Zaino updates include a near-ready fix, cache improvements, and RPC testing. Excavator V0, a tool for recovering ZEC from old wallets, is out for community testing.
ZSA work continues: a PR to the ZIPs repo fixes terminology, and a new Halo2 PR is under review. Orchard ZSA is being reviewed by ECC, and Zebra’s first ZSA verification PR is live for feedback, supporting ongoing spec alignment.
For more information → Arborist Call #102 - R&D Summary
🟠 Zcash x Citrea | X Spaces
This Monday, we hosted an X Spaces with Citrea to meet their team and community. The conversation focused on ZK rollups, the importance of privacy, the history of both projects, and more. Recording → Link
Citrea intends to scale Bitcoin by bundling transactions off-chain using cryptographic proofs to settle them securely on-chain, faster, cheaper, same Bitcoin security.
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