Zcash Shielded News | Vol.48
Staking Economics by Shielded Labs, PGP for Crypto | September 17, Zaino, the Zallet Release Grant Application by Zingo, Avalanche Red-Bridge & 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!
Undoubtedly, Crosslink is one of the most awaited Zcash upgrades, introducing a hybrid Proof-of-Work (PoW) and Proof-of-Stake (PoS) system designed to make the network more secure and resilient.
To better understand it, imagine a heart with two sides: miners continue adding new blocks to the blockchain, while stakers (finalizers) confirm and finalize those blocks to prevent rollbacks or attacks.
In this model, block rewards are split equally between miners and finalizers (or stakers, if you prefer). Anyone can participate by staking ZEC through their wallet, choosing one or more finalizers based on factors like commission rate or voting power.
Stakes are made in fixed amounts and during 10-day windows to help preserve privacy, and there is a 30-day unbonding period before funds become spendable after unstaking. This balances transparency, allowing the community to see how much is staked and hold finalizers accountable, with privacy, protecting individual users.
Rewards accumulate over the entire staking period and are automatically compounded, allowing your position to grow over time. There is no automatic slashing in this design. Instead, stakers can move their funds to other finalizers if an operator performs poorly, keeping the power in the hands of the community.
With this in mind, Crosslink is set to strengthen the Zcash network, encourage decentralization, and protect privacy, while giving users a way to actively participate in governance and security.
Interested? Check out Shielded Labs’ full blog post for more information here: shieldedlabs.net/zcash-and-staking-economics. This is important! 🙂
PGP was launched in 2022 by ECC to raise awareness of Zcash and other privacy-enhancing protocols within Washington, DC’s policy community.
This July, Paul applied for a $20,000 grant — $5,000 per event — to cover the costs of the upcoming sessions in September, November, and December, as well as the second annual DC Privacy Summit taking place on 16 October.
Following ZCG’s approval, Paul announced the next edition of PGP for Crypto, which took place today in Washington, DC, from 9:00 AM to 11:30 AM EDT.
The next PGP event is happening next month! If you’re interested in joining, click here to RSVP or keep an eye on our social media for updates
Approximately 5 days ago, Zancas (from Zingo Labs) submitted a proposal requesting $69,811.20 to bring Zaino to a production-ready state.
To update you in case you didn’t know:
Zaino is a pure rust indexer that provides real-time indices of Zcash blockchain state, enabling efficient queries and operations for apps and wallets.
Zallet is a consumer-facing Zcash wallet that relies on Zaino to quickly access blockchain data for sending, receiving, and syncing transactions and it will be the wallet that replaces Zcashd.
In short, Zaino powers Zallet, so when Zaino improves, Zallet (and other apps like Zec.Rocks & Zingolib) get faster, more reliable performance.
This grant matters because, during recent development work, the Zingo Labs team realized several areas of Zaino needed to be redesigned and refactored to leverage new community tools, fix integration issues uncovered by Zallet developers, and strengthen type systems to prevent runtime errors before they occur.
The team is targeting two weeks to complete the remaining tasks, prioritizing fixes critical for Zallet users. Once completed, Zallet users will enjoy smoother, faster wallet operations, and the entire Zcash ecosystem will benefit from a strong, standardized indexing tool.
What do you think? Check out the proposal and share your feedback!
Red-Bridge is a project to create an elastic subnet bridge between Zcash and Avalanche. It will enable ZEC to move seamlessly between the Zcash blockchain and an Avalanche subnet, unlocking faster transactions, lower fees, and access to Avalanche’s DeFi ecosystem, all while preserving Zcash’s strong privacy features.
Approximately 6 days ago, Kit published updates on the progress made in development:
Aratrika successfully reproduced the FROST demo, reported and fixed a bug, and used Go with UniFFI to run a DKG ceremony with three FROST nodes. She’s now working on sending an Orchard-to-Orchard transaction.
Tamil set up two Avalanche L1s using XSVM to exchange warp (ICM) messages. After a successful manual test, he’s now automating the process by adding a relay agent, a key step toward building the redbridgeVM, which will eventually connect to Avalanche’s C-Chain.
Security: The team met with auditors from Least Authority to review the ZavaX Oracle threat model and is implementing their recommendations this month. This work will inform the broader Red·Bridge threat model.
Next steps: A revised project timeline will be shared with the community this week, giving everyone a clear view of upcoming milestones and priorities.
🔗 For more details: forum.zcashcommunity.com/t/zcash-elastic-subnet-bridge-on-avalanche/44220
In this week's update, Josh remembered a dinner in DC where people with different political views came together to talk about privacy. It reminded him of a Zcash community: diverse opinions, but shared respect and purpose. Josh also mentioned that he's proud to help build a world where freedom and privacy are protected.
Zashi
Last week:
ECC implemented feedback and fixes to the CrossPay flow.
ECC have built prototypes for Swap to ZEC feature,
ECC designed Zashi promo materials for the Dark Prague event.
Upcoming
Test Swap to ZEC prototype, decide on, and implement production requirements.,
Implement changes for confirmation configurability from the core team.,
Focus on reviewing & finalizing all open designs.
Analytics:
IOS
Unique Installs: 10.2k (prev. 9.88k)
Total Downloads: 12.2k (prev. 11.9k)
AppStore Rating: 4.9*
🤖 Android
Total Install Base: 4.09k (prev. 3.93k)
Total Installs (incl. Open Beta): 22.7k (prev.22.6k)
Playstore Rating: 4.333*
Zcash Core Team Updates 🦓
Last week:
zcash wallet import support (librustzcash#1768)
Zallet alpha design blocker resolved, TX v6 issues fixed
zcash_script refactoring progress
zcash_primitives v0.24.1 release and several ZIP PRs merged.
Next:
Zallet alpha & NU6.1 releases
Quantum resilience draft ZIP
lockbox address setup guide and limited-use t-addr rotation.
Other 🌐
Josh spoke at the Radical Innovation Summit in Mexico City alongside Naomi Brockwell and Pete Snyder from Brave.
Published announcements of the PGP* Breakfast on Wednesday and the DC Privacy Summit on Oct. 16.
ECC is working through final edits on our coinholder grant application.
New Zashi T&C’s page added to ECC website.
Important Reminder: This Friday, we’ll be hosting a Zcash Town Hall with Alex (ZF), Jason McGee (Shielded Labs), and Josh Swihart (ECC) to learn about the new funding system, Coinholder Directed Retroactive Grants.
The Town Hall is a rare event that takes place only a few times a year, whenever an important decision is being made for the Zcash ecosystem. So if you care about the future of Zcash, we’d love for you to join us!
Save the Date 📅
Day | 19/09/2025
Time | 9am PST (4pm UTC)
See you there!