Zcash Shielded News | Vol.34 ⓩ

Background of the candidates for this year's ZCG, ZKool Demo, Triptych - ECC Update & ZK AV Club at Blockchain Berlin

ZecHub

Jun 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

One of the most important events in our ecosystem is clearly the election of the committee, which takes place every year. Last year, Zerodartz and Arktor joined the committee, replacing Amber and Michael Harms

After one year of this mandate, as we mentioned a few weeks ago, the ZCG has opened two new seats for candidates, with five candidates so far. Today, we will briefly explore their backgrounds to help you decide who to vote for.

Remember: The nomination deadline was yesterday, at 20:00 UTC, applicants can't apply anymore.

Decentralistdan (Dan)

Dan is an OG Zcasher. He joined the forum on May 17, 2020, and has years of experience in the Zcash ecosystem. Over these years, Dan served as Ecosystem Relations Manager at the Zcash Foundation, collaborating with grantees, community members, and organizations across the ecosystem, with deep involvement in every ZCG committee since its inception (ZOMG → ZCG).
Dan is currently working at ECC on Zashi and is very active in every ecosystem call and event, such as Z3, Arborist Calls, ZecHub, X Spaces, Zcash Global Discord, and has had a special role in organizing Zcon, Zcon Voices, the ZK (formerly ZF) AV Club, and more.
His vision and key ideas for ZCG include supporting and accelerating current Zcash ecosystem projects like Zebra, Zaino, Zallet, ZSAs, Tachyon, Crosslink & NSM, as well as backing initiatives that boost ZEC utility and grow the shielded pool, such as DEXs, browser extensions, messaging apps, and broader community growth and stability.
If elected, Dan aims to revive the Gardening Calls and revamp the ZCG RFP Program.
Overall, Dan wants to leverage his unique experience across both ZF and ECC to help ZCG ship faster, foster learning, accelerate adoption, and showcase Zcash to the wider crypto world.

GGuy

GGuy joined the forum on Sep 29, 2021. He's running for the third term on the ZCG to continue championing community values and help make privacy and financial freedom normal.
With the background as a software engineer, GGuy brings practical insight to accelerate decision-making and has supported meaningful grants focused on governance, wallet usability, and community initiatives.
He believes ZCG should fund projects that lower adoption barriers, improve payment integration, and make it easier for newcomers to experience Zcash, paving the way for broader adoption and lasting impact.

T.S

Also known as @vaspholdings in the forum, joined on Jan 24, 2024, T.S is a privacy advocate, a decentralization maximalist, and an active member of ZCAP and ZAC, regularly attending online community events (he loves the Friday Lounge 🙂).
With a background as a generalist and builder and deep experience in vetting thousands of applications globally, T.S brings strong skills in evaluating and supporting grantees and long-term projects, aligning well with ZCG's mission.
He supports a globally distributed committee and grant funding model based on staged, clearly defined deliverables, with a preference for retroactive grants over large up-front payments.
His goal is to contribute to the project's sucess while upholding values of privacy, decentralization & accountability.
T.S knows well the ecosystem and has spent more than 16h (recently) reading the forum.

Prabh

Prabh has been a Zcash user since 2017, joining the forum on Dec 11 2022. He's closely following the project's progress for over 8 years. In his candidacy post, Prabh reflects on the journey from the early days of destop-only shielded transactions to today's more user-friendly solutions like Zashi.
He previously applied to the ZCG in 2022, though his application was not considered due to timing and account approval delays. Now reapplying, he has shared his 2022 application to provide additional background and ideas.
Prabh's key points for ZCG include prioritizing the move to Proof of Stake and marketing initiatives, such as engaging influencers to promote Zcash.

Qdev

Qdev joined the forum on Nov 27, 2024. He's a ZecHub developer, graphic artist and writer, and has been an active contributor to the Zcash Ad Hoc Caucus (ZAC) and a core member of the ZecHub Design SubDAO.
Over the past year, Qdev has engaged deeply with the Zcash ecosystem, contributing both creatively and technically, including Co-Developing the ZecHub website, Designing visuals for multiple Zcash initiatives, Building Zchat, a Zcash-based messaging app and runner-up in the 2024 hackathon, also promoting Zcash withing relevant communities and onboarding new members.

Looking forward: We have strong and new candidates who can bring value and experience for the ecosystem. The ZCAP Voting (Helios Poll): Opens after the Community Call on June 18th (next week 🤩) at 17: UTC and runs until Monday, June 30th at 23:59 UTC.

Results to be announced Tuesday, July 1th. Don't miss it.

Best of luck!

A new successor to yWallet is coming! 🥳

We know yWallet is one of the most advanced wallets, with unique features. Last Friday, Hahn invited us to a demo via Google Meet to test Zkool with community members, and it was a success.

If you don’t know Zkool yet, here are some features it brings to improve your experience

It supports every type of account
- 12/18/21/24 - word seed phrases (with optional password)
- Internal address derivation (Zashi, ZIP 316)
- Unified Viewing Key (Full or Partial)
- Legacy Shielded Keys (zcashd secret/viewing keys)
- Transparent xpub/xprv (Electrum, BIP 32)
- BIP 44 seed phrases (Exodus, Ledger, Others)
- Transparent Secret Keys (any export)
- Plus: Full support for yWallet
It handles account individually
- Each account has its own synchronization state
- Accounts can be enabled or disabled (parked). Inactive accounts don't slow down active sync
- Accounts can be exported/imported with full data (notes, spends, witnesses) in an encrypted file
- Wallet files can also be encrypted
- Zkool supports multiple accounts, no fixed account list, flexible management.
Its shielded features are as good as Ywallet. It will:
- Minimize cross pool usage
- Allow you to select your pools
- Can create multi recipient payments.
Its transparent privacy as good as transparent wallets.
- Most shielded wallets require shielding transparent funds before spending. Zkool instead supports address rotation to enhance privacy.

There are some features that still need to be implemented or fixed. You can check the thread for more information here.

Demo:

This week's update, Josh highlighted the ''Rule of Three'‘ as a guiding principle for achieving Unstoppable Private Money with ZEC, requiring acess, privacy & self-custody.

Access enables acquiring or exchanging ZEC
Privacy ensures free expression and security
Self-custody allows permissionless storage and private use

These three elements must work in harmony to create a frictionless, permissionless user experience at scale.

Josh notes that ZEC is becoming Unstoppable Private Money not just through the protocol, but via integrations like DEXes (Maya via Near Intents), apps like Zashi, and projects like Tachyon that enable limitless money movement.

Read more!

Zashi

Progress made ✔️

Evaluating a dKiT proposal and API for Maya integration
Redesigned the NEAR swap and payments interfaces
Worked on NEAR 1Click API integration + business logic for the initial testing prototype
Continued work on the transaction submission over Tor due to a performance bottleneck

Upcoming ⏭️

Finalize Tor transaction submission & test
NEAR 1Click API prototype
Finalize UI for Pay with NEAR
Evaluate Maya integration options & plan
Publish Maya interview (Aaluxx)
Zashi-ZecHub podcast
Collaboration with Zcash Brazil on Zashi Portuguese localization

🍎 │ IOS Analytics:

📈Unique Installs: 8.25k (prev. 8.11k)
⬇️Total Downloads: 9.93k (prev. 9.74k)
⭐AppStore Rating: 4.9*

🤖 │ Android Analytics:

📈Total Install Base: 3.82k (prev. 3.8k)
⬇️Total Installs (incl. Open Beta): 19.2k (prev.19k)
⭐PlayStore Rating: 4.362 (prev. 4.421)

Zcash Core

Progress made ✔️

Implemented zcashd changes for NU6.1 to enable one-time lockbox disbursement; reviewed related zebrad changes.
Published new librustzcash crate releases:
zcash_protocol 0.5.2, zcash_address 0.8.0, zip321 0.4.0, zcash_transparent 0.3.0, zcash_primitives 0.23.0, zcash_proofs 0.23.0, zcash_keys 0.9.0, pczt 0.3.0, zcash_client_backend 0.19.0, zcash_client_sqlite 0.17.0.
Added Tor support to mobile wallet SDKs (enabling Near & Maya interactions over Tor); released zcash-light-client-ffi 0.17.0.
Coordinated with Zingolabs on API improvements for zaino and zewif crates.
Upgraded zcashd to secp256k1 0.29 and latest librustzcash crates; released updated incrementalmerkletree-testing and bridgetree crates.
Progressed testing of zcashd wallet.dat migration to zallet — key migration is feature-complete; fixed a zallet sync issue causing high load.

Upcoming ⏭️

Continued work in support of NU 6.1 and Zallet for NU7

🌐 | Other

Check out Josh's recent conversation with @arjunkhemani & zooko. They cover various topics, including different perspectives on transparent addresses.
ECC is finalizing the agenda and session leaders for the upcoming Z ECC Summit. ZecHub, ZCG, ZF, ZK AV Club, Shielded Labs, Reddevinc, NEAR Protocol, and others will be attending
Josh participated in the BlockchainAssn policy summit and are evaluating and providing input into the US Digital market Structure Bill.
Josh had a good conversation with Diego from Cypherstack to get his feedback on the Zcash trajectory.
Josh received the confirmation from Gemini that they will add unified address support (Sapling only) in the coming weeks.

This Monday, we watched an amazing preshow presented by the ZK AV team to explain the upcoming Blockchain Berlin 2025 event.

Ryan, Squirrel, Robmar, Zerodarz and John (Trippleyou) gathered to host a great talk about their plans and the successful outcome of the fundraiser.

To help the team attend the event, Ryan organized a fundraiser and, with the help of ZecHub, added coupons for donors.

0.5 ZEC: Coupon for any sticker sheet
1 ZEC: Coupon for any pin button
3 ZEC or more: Coupon for any T-shirt

So far, the team has raised over 160 ZEC, and to celebrate, they will release a Zcash podcast during the event. Interviews and different types of content will be recorded during the conference, along with networking for future partnerships and more