Zcash Shielded News | Vol.47
Zcash Coinholders Approve Retroactive Grants Program, ZCG Meeting Minutes 9/1/25, ZCAP AMA on Secure Digital Voting | 2/09/2025, Our Story. ECC Update, Zcash Forum: Policy Updates 9-2-2025
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!
Happy Wednesday, Zcashers! Today we’re opening this edition with the approval of the Retroactive Grants Program by Zcash Coinholders!
The community has officially ratified the new Coinholder Grants Program, confirming that it will run as a retroactive grants programs. This decision follows the process outlined in the NU6.1: Coinholder-Directed Retroactive Grants Program.
What makes this especially exciting? Participation hit an all-time high, with 1.49 million coins voting on Question 1. More than half of the coins in the Orchard Pool joined in, and since the last vote in April, over 1 million new coins have flowed into the Orchard Pool.
Great progress, isn't it?
Coming with NU 6.1, Zcash is rolling out the Community & Coinholder (C&C) Funding Model, first proposed by Josh Swihart and detailed in ZIP 1016.
How it works?
From Nov 2025 to the 2018 halving, 12% of block rewards will go to the Coinholder Grants Program and 8% to the Zcash Community Grants. Funds will be held in a multisig wallet managed by ECC, ZF and Shielded Labs.
Now, the Coin-holder Directed Retroactive Grants Program, proposed by Jason McGee, sets the framework for funding under the new C&C model.
The difference?
Grants are paid only after work is completed and verified.
No milestone tracking, hedging, or complex fund management.
Paymenets come directly from the multisig wallet at market price.
This approach lowers the risk of funding unifished work and makes governance simpler.
Three Programs, One Ecosystem:
ZCG: Milestone-based, for medium and large projects
Coinholder Grants: Quarterly, retroactive-only
ZecHub Bounties & DAO: Small grants for grassroots and education, run by ZecHub.
What's next?
With the vote complete, Shielded Labs will turn NU6.1 into a formal ZIP. The draft will be ready for community review by early October.
Attendance 👥
Decentralistdan (did not attend, voted async)
Alex (FPF resource, notetaker)
Open Grants 🔓
1) Zcash integration into the Chainspect analytics platform
Chainspect requested $46K to add Zcash metrics, but ZCG found the value limited and cost too high. Proposal rejected. ❌
2) Ad-Priva
AdPriva requested $150K for a privacy-first ad platform, but ZCG cited high cost and low community interest. Rejected. ❌
3) Zcash Global Turkey
Zcash Turkey requested $10.4K to expand education and awareness. ZCG praised their growth and impact. Approved. ✅
4) Tmek: Twitter Ambassador Program
ZCG approved $4.5K for @_tm3k as a Twitter Ambassador to boost Zcash’s visibility. Members praised his experience and influence. ✅
5) Cycles AI: Bring ZEC to DeFi
Cycles AI requested $25K for a Shielded DeFi Gateway, but ZCG saw limited value given existing DEX options and focus on ZSAs. Rejected. ❌
6) Adoption and awareness of Zcash in Akwaibom state Nigeria
ZAIO requested $4K for Zcash education in Nigeria, but ZCG cited lack of track record and suggested working with Zcash Nigeria first. Rejected. ❌
Brainstorm Session 💡
Ledger
Waiting for a formal grant proposal submission.
ZCG will use €10K from its budget for a mid-tier sponsorship with a booth, with Zashi, ZecHub, ZF, and other community members expected to attend.
ZCG will sponsor the November Argentina event at the €30K tier, with formalization in progress.
ZCG noted the RFP process could be more visible and may update GitHub. Any scope changes must go through the ZIP process.
On September 2, Alex (ZF Interim Executive Director) hosted an AMA with @dsernst, founder & CEO of Secure Internet Voting (SIV.org), to discuss how digital democracy can evolve and how SIV’s open-source platform might power the future of ZCAP voting.
Key Takeaways:
Mission & Vision: SIV was created to make secure, private, and verifiable voting accessible to everyone, ensuring that digital democracy meets the same standards of trust as traditional systems.
Technical Challenges: The biggest hurdles include voter authentication, malware prevention, and defending against vote-selling or coercion. SIV uses advanced cryptography to balance these issues while keeping votes private and auditable.
Transparency + Privacy: Through encrypted mixnets and anonymization, SIV ensures votes remain confidential while still allowing full verification. Voter identity is kept separate from ballot content.
Benefits for ZCAP: The system supports advanced polling formats like pairwise rankings and participatory budgeting, streamlines administrator workflows, and enhances both privacy and integrity of results.
Verifiability: Unlike most paper-based systems, SIV allows every voter to confirm their vote was counted, supports post-election audits, and provides continuous access to verify final results.
Alignment with Zcash Values: With cryptographic proof, delegation options, and anti-censorship safeguards, SIV fits closely with Zcash’s ethos of privacy, decentralization, and transparency.
Why it Matters 🤔
This integration could transform ZCAP polls into a model of secure, decentralized governance, ensuring that participation is private, verifiable, and trustworthy, while opening doors for more creative and inclusive community decision-making.
Full Recording 🎥
This week, ECC update brings a message about how true transformation takes time, setbacks, and persistence, drawing a paralell between Bitcoin's historical rise and the journey of Zcash: Our Story
Here are the ECC's updates from the last week:
Zashi
6740 ZEC have been swapped through Zashi in the week since launching support with NEAR Intents. In fiat terms, that's $324k.
Progress made: ✔️
Finalized cross-chain payments implementation (CrossPay),
Released a new Zashi iOS build with a bug fix.
Upcoming: ➡️
Implement feedback for Crosspay with NEAR,
Continue testing and bug fixing,
Review and finalize Swap to ZEC designs and
🍎 │ IOS Analytics:
📈Unique Installs: 9.88k (prev. 9.71k )
⬇️Total Downloads: 11.9k (prev. 11.6k)
⭐AppStore Rating: 4.9*
🤖 │ Android Analytics:
📈Total Install Base: 3.99k (prev. 3.93k)
⬇️Total Installs (incl. Open Beta): 22.5k (prev.22.1k)
⭐PlayStore Rating: 4.333*
Zcash Core 🦓
Progress made: ✔️
Unblocked Zallet + Zaino (#244),
Forked zewif-zcash & zingolib (#1),
Drafted ZIP 48 (P2SH multisig); Positive feedback,
Added RPC for Zallet alpha,
Investigated Zashi + Librustzcash bugs.
Upcoming: ➡️
Release Zallet Alpha.,
Release Zcashd supporting NU6.1 on Mainnet.,
Prepare draft ZIP for Quantum Resilience,
Make a start on protocol spec changes for NU7.
Others 🌐
Josh participated in the Blockchain Association Tech Policy working group this week.
Made significant progress on the DC Privacy Summit.
Initiated the compliance review process with Transak for Zcash support.
Dark Prague & Web3 privacy Sponsorship Coordination with ZCG.
ZEC holders overwhelmingly voted to support Retroactive Grants Program.
The Zcash Forum is the main channel for community communication on everything related to the project. It’s where dialogues and debates take place about development, projects, proposals, roadmaps, community topics, off-topics, and much more.
Last week, Shawn (Lead Moderator) published a note stating that the Zcash Foundation made certain updates to the forum policies.
Although this is not a major news update about Zcash itself, we recommend that everyone review the recent changes to the Code of Conduct, Privacy Policy, Terms of Service.