Zcash Shielded News | Vol.58
Zcash Foundation | Q3 2025 Report, Zebra 3.0.0 Release, ZCG Nominations Now Open, Trezor Support for Zcash Shielded Transactions, Duty Bound ECC Update
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!
Fact of the Week💡
Zcash is the first major blockchain to deploy the trustless (verifiable), recursive Halo 2 proving system in production eliminating the trusted setup, enabling scalable private computation, and powering fully shielded Orchard transactions that make it the most advanced form of financial privacy available today.
📩 IN TODAY’S EDITION
🛡️ Zcash Foundation | Q3 2025 Report
• Highlights progress across grants, infrastructure, and ecosystem development.
🦓 Zebra 3.0.0 Release
• Introduces major performance upgrades and expanded ZSA testnet support.
👥 ZCG Nominations Now Open
• Community nominations are open for new ZCG committee members.
🔐 Trezor Support for Zcash Shielded Transactions
• Trezor is moving forward with Orchard support for shielded ZEC.
🚀 Duty-bound. ECC Update
• ECC reflects on its mission and ongoing work to advance privacy and freedom & updates
🔥 Maya Shielded ZEC Support
• Maya Protocol supports shielded ZEC on mainnet.
On November 17, the Zcash Foundation released its Q3 2025 transparency report. These reports (also published by ECC) aim to provide an overview of the engineering team’s work over the past months, as well as key activities and the costs associated with each operation.
In today’s edition, we will summarize the information provided in this report; however, you may read the full version here.
1) Introducing SAI (Shielded Aid Initiative) 🛡️
Shielded Aid Initiative is a program designed to bring privacy-preserving technology to humanitarian organizations worldwide.
Many aid groups use transparent blockchains like Bitcoin or Ethereum for accountability, but these systems unintentionally expose sensitive beneficiary data. This can put vulnerable people at real risk, including targeting or re-identification.
SAI leverages Zcash’s zero-knowledge technology to enable secure, privacy-protecting digital cash assistance. NGOs can meet donor requirements while keeping beneficiary identities fully shielded, without storing or exposing personal data.
What SAI provides:
Privacy and technology consultations for NGOs
Privacy risk assessments for digital aid pilots
Hands-on support designing and implementing privacy-preserving solutions
Strategic guidance for leadership on integrating privacy into organizational policy
The Zcash Foundation also published a peer-reviewed article on the Humanitarian Practice Network platform highlighting digital privacy as a crucial but overlooked issue in humanitarian blockchain projects.
The piece outlines real-world risks and calls for stronger data governance and privacy-first design. This milestone boosts sector visibility and is the first in a planned series of publications.
SAI is now open for partnerships with organizations seeking safe, effective digital aid solutions. Learn more at zfnd.org or contact SAI@zfnd.org.
Engineering Summary 👨💻
The ZF shared solid progress this quarter, moving from traditional sprints to a leaner workflow that’s helping the team stay more focused and efficient.
They pushed out Zebra v2.4.2 and v2.5.0, wrapped up the NU6.1 work and audit with only minor tweaks needed, and made several upgrades under the hood like smarter coinbase transaction handling, better block syncing for Zaino, new and improved RPC methods, and protections to avoid losing non-finalized blocks after restarts.
On the DevOps side, things got much faster and smoother thanks to parallel test runs, improved Docker caching, and simpler configuration using environment variables.
They also cleaned up the CI system in a big way, cutting thousands of lines of complexity, improving documentation hosting, tightening security, and making the whole setup easier for contributors.
Next up, the team is focused on completing zcashd deprecation, refining the new CI pipeline, working on NU7, and continuing overall performance improvements.
ZF USE OF FUNDS 💰
During Q3 2025, ZF’s monthly operating expenses averaged approximately $199,377 USD. Below is the breakdown of how these resources were allocated.
Community Calls, Event Sponsorship, Forum & Comms (Outreach): $14,492
Conference & Professional Development: 15,470
Dev Summit: $0
General Overhead: $53,100
Program Expenses $48,625
Retreat: $0
Team Compensation: $466,455
ZCG Support: $0
ZF Grants: $0
Total: $598,131
ZF PROGRAMS ⚙️
Community: $91,570
FROST: $54,258
Management & General: $100,082
Protocol (Zebra): $305,537
Shielded Aid Initiative: $46,686
Total: 598,131
Community Focus
Blog Posts
Video Playlist
Still on this topic, ZF has released Zebra 3.0.0, a major upgrade that activates NU6.1 on Mainnet and brings big improvements across performance, reliability, and developer experience.
Initial sync is now 35–65% faster (15–16 hours instead of 24+), with native ARM64 support for Apple Silicon, Raspberry Pi, and ARM cloud servers. New health check endpoints make it easy to run Zebra in production using Kubernetes, load balancers, or other orchestration tools.
Zebra’s Docker images now include SBOMs and build attestations for stronger supply-chain security. The Foundation is also running new highly-available Zebra nodes, boosting network reliability and peer discovery.
For developers, Zebra is now simpler to configure via environment variables, includes three new RPC methods, improves many existing ones, and ships with a faster, modernized test system for quicker CI feedback.
Zebra 3.0.0 is part of the broader Z3 Stack (Zebra, Zaino, and Zallet) designed to deliver a full, production-ready Zcash infrastructure.
With Zebra 3.0.0, the ecosystem gets a faster, more secure, and easier-to-operate node as the team moves toward NU7 and future upgrades.
Read the full article here.
The FPF recently published on the forum that elections for new members of the ZCG committee are now open. With three members (@aquietinvestor, @zerodartz, & @artkor) finishing their terms in December, the community will vote to fill the open seats.
Any community member may run or nominate someone (with their consent) by posting a candidacy statement in #governance:zcg-elections.
Current candidates include ShieldOrder, Tom Howard, Vlad Costea, Radbro, Dontbeevil, Hanh, Chibuike, Kellyjoe, Zerodartz, Anaximander, Batuhan, Artkor, Readymouse all of whom will be marked as “ZCG Candidate” during the election.
A Community Call with Candidates will take place on December 4th, followed by the ZCAP voting period from December 4–18.
ZCG members serve one-year terms, must sign a conflict of interest declaration, and may receive compensation after signing an independent contractor agreement.
Members may remain publicly anonymous, provided the Foundation knows their real identity. The role includes weekly brainstorming sessions and biweekly formal meetings.
The FPF encourages all participants and prospective candidates to join the discussion in the forum’s election thread.
Jason McGee shared that he had a productive call with the Trezor team on Wednesday morning. During the conversation, the company confirmed that they plan to pick up their pending grant again and move ahead with adding Orchard support for Trezor users, an important step toward expanding wallet compatibility in the Zcash ecosystem.
According to McGee, Trezor will be reviewing their internal resource allocation over the next few days and expects to give a more detailed update in about a week. As soon as there’s new information, the team will share it with the community.
Keep an eye on the forum thread for more updates.
This week, Josh highlighted that many people in the Zcash ecosystem stay committed to the project out of a deep sense of duty, the responsibility to protect freedom and financial privacy.
Inspired by stories of service and by Thoreau’s words, he emphasized that there is no “someone else” who will do this work; it’s up to the community to act, build, and defend these values. “We are duty-bound".
Zashi Updates 📱
Completed
Zashi 2.4.8 is live with fully shielded swaps & payments.
Zashi 2.4.9 finalized with improved error handling, better sync widget behavior, and swap UX upgrades.
New internal debug tools (iOS & Android).
New dashboard for tracking swap + payment volumes.
On-site collaboration to refine engineering workflows.
Met with Coinbase regarding Onramp; temporarily removing it to preserve user privacy.
Finalized UI for Keystone Disconnect/Resync.
Completed designs for Transparent Address Rotation and other UX updates.
Continued work on new store screenshots with Marketing.
Next
Zashi 2.4.9 heading to production next week.
Zashi 2.5 coming with Keystone follow-ups + more bug fixes.
Review of final designs for Ledger support, Multi-Account, and more.
Finalizing Duress/Decoy Wallet designs.
Continued improvements to internal processes and workflows.
Zashi | Adoption Numbers
🍎 | iOS | Total Downloads: 35.2k (+4.1k)
🤖 | Android | Total Installs: 37k (+2.7k)
🔄 | Swap Volume: November: $187.9M | YTD: $273.4M
Other 🌐
Paul joined the Crypto for America Podcast.
Monthly PGP meeting held.
ECC signed the Solana Policy Institute letter.
Z|ECC Summit applications closed; invites going out next week.
Ongoing hiring for engineering, partnerships, support, and community roles.
There’s big news in the Maya Protocol ecosystem 🎉
Support for shielded ZEC transactions is soon live on mainnet. This integration brings a meaningful step forward in privacy, keeping sensitive data protected without compromising system auditability.
And the results are already showing.
The ZEC pool on Maya has not only surpassed ETH and RUNE, but is now rapidly closing in on the BTC pool, competing for the top spot on the platform. This is a major milestone for asset adoption and for expanding privacy within the ecosystem.
With this coming release, Maya strengthens its commitment to combining privacy, security, and transparency, offering more options for users who want to transact with advanced protection, now powered by Zcash technology.
Stay tuned! 👀
ZEC’s growth within Maya is just getting started.