Zcash Shielded News | Vol.60
ZCAP SIV Poll - ZCG Election - Open Now, Community Grants for 2026, Z3 Updates December 5th, Balance of Power | 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!
📅 Subscribe to the Zcash Event Calendar!
Fact of the Week💡
Zcash is one of the few privacy-focused crypto projects with active, independent community hubs across multiple continents, including ZecHub, Brazil, Spain, Nigeria, Korea, Turkey, Ghana, Ukraine & Arabia, all producing localized education, infrastructure, developer tools, events, and real-world adoption in their own languages and cultures.
📩 Quick Takes
🗳️ ZCAP SIV Poll - ZCG Election - Open Now
• The ZCG election is live! ZCAP members can now delegate their votes to elect the next committee representatives.
👥 Community Grants for 2026 – ZecHub, Zcash Brazil & Nigeria
• Three major proposals focused on education, adoption, infrastructure, and community growth have been submitted for 2026.
⚙️ Z3 Updates | December 5th
• New progress on the Zcashd Deprecation (Z3) effort, including updates across Zallet, Zebra, Zaino, and block explorer support.
🌐 Balance of Power | ECC Updates
• This week’s ECC updates highlight the role of extreme privacy and shielded money in preserving free speech, along with key Zashi progress, Zcash Core and more.
🧑💻 Crosslink Workshop 4b
• The Shielded Labs workshop gave the community a hands-on opportunity to test live staking and block finalization on the Crosslink testnet.
As previously mentioned, the ZCG election process has been underway since November. Members of the community were invited to submit their candidacies, resulting in 17 candidates from across the Zcash ecosystem.
Last Thursday, FPF hosted a 1-hour and 55-minute candidate call, featuring questions collected from forum threads. Each candidate shared their vision and ideas for a better future for the Zcash ecosystem.
The ZCAP (Zcash Community Advisory Panel), a group of Zcashers formed through the Zcash Foundation (ZF), has now received an email to delegate their votes to the candidates, making them responsible for electing the next members of the committee.
We are pleased to announce that Zerodartz and Arktor, whose terms were set to expire this year, have both been re-elected for another term. Meanwhile, after many years of dedicated service on the ZCG, Jason McGee announced his departure from the committee on the forum.
We would like to sincerely thank Jason for his hard work and dedication over the past years. We know these were not easy years, but thanks to his contribution, we achieved meaningful results that benefited both the community and the Zcash ecosystem. McGee remains an active member across social channels and forums.
If you are part of ZCAP and are reading this newsletter, don’t forget to check your email and cast your vote. Your participation matters. 🫡
The election poll is now live and will close at 20:00 UTC on Thursday, December 18.
ZecHub
As the end of the year approaches, new proposals for 2026 have begun to be published.
Last Thursday, we submitted our proposal to the forum, reaffirming its commitment to key initiatives such as the ZecHub DAO with FROST usage, podcast, educational tutorials, hackathons, decentralized wiki, Namada validator operations, and the continued production of newsletters, outreach activities, open-source education, governance, ecosystem communication, and community building.
For 2026, we will also welcome two new core contributors to fill important roles: Kroy as Designer and Tron as Developer.
Both have been long-time active community members and have already made significant contributions to ZecHub and the broader Zcash ecosystem.
For more information, please visit → ZecHub 2026
Zcash Brazil
Zcash Brazil proposes a continuous program focused on education, technical support, and development centered on financial privacy in Brazil, with flexible coordination of a team of up to approximately 15 contributors.
The plan includes the maintenance and expansion of 11 products and services, such as Zebra Pi, ZecGPT, ZecFaucet, ZecStats, ZcashMetro, micropayment bots, and public node and lightwalletd infrastructure, in addition to events, content creation, podcasts, courses, P2P adoption initiatives, and support for the global Zcash community.
The proposed budget covers coordination, technical and design teams, events and partnerships, as well as infrastructure and service costs, with monthly deliverables through Zcash Brazil team reports throughout 2026.
For more information, please visit → Zcash Brazil 2026
Zcash Nigeria
Zcash Nigeria proposes to expand financial privacy education, community growth, and real-world ZEC adoption through localized content, in-person events, AMAs, translations into local languages, and merchant onboarding. The plan includes strong engagement across social media, universities, monthly meetups, and the integration of local businesses for everyday ZEC usage.
The proposed budget covers team compensation, 12 community meetups, support for major Web3 conferences, and content production, with monthly performance reporting throughout 2026.
For more information, please visit → Zcash Nigeria 2026
Another week, another update. A few days ago, Pacu shared new progress on the Zcashd Deprecation (Z3) project. Check it out!
The NU 6.1 outreach phase has officially wrapped up, and the retrospective survey is now underway. As part of our ongoing commitment to improving the Zcash developer experience, partners are being invited to share feedback on what worked well, what didn’t, and how things can improve. The results of the NU friction survey conducted in Q3 2025 have also been published.
On the Zebra side, the Zcash Foundation delivered significant updates with two consecutive releases around NU 6.1. More details are available in their latest engineering update.
For Zaino (ZingoLabs), development continues on the chain index refactor, with feedback from ECC. Transparent data support has been completed and is currently awaiting review. Work is also ongoing to maintain parity with the latest lightwalletd additions.
The Zallet full node wallet has reached Alpha release status. The collaboration board was updated this week to highlight new contribution opportunities. Str4d and Kris are preparing new alpha builds, and partners are actively testing migrations from the Zcashd workflow, with fixes incoming in the next release.
Finally, Block Explorer support remains in the testing phase. Several Zcash RPC methods are already implemented, others are under review, and additional endpoints such as gettxoutsetinfo, getblockhash, getnetworkinfo, and z_validateaddress are moving forward as part of the Zaino continuation work.
For more informations → Z3 Updates | December 5th
Zashi Updates 📱
Completed
Zashi 2.4.9 released to production with performance improvements, UX/UI updates, bug fixes, and improved error handling.
Keystone hardware wallet disconnect logic completed.
Hacker House planning for January is underway.
Next
Focus on Zashi 2.4.10.
Maya DEX integration prototype.
Finalization of the Duress/Decoy Wallet feature
Continued improvements to internal processes and workflows.
Zashi | Adoption Numbers
🍎 | iOS | Total Downloads: 37.2k downloads | 4.9 rating (2k increase)
🤖 | Android | Total Installs: 38.2k installs | 4.25 rating (1.2k increase)
🔄 | Swap Volume: December: $12.5M | YTD: 315M
Zcash Core 🦓
Completed:
Added new PCZT APIs for external signing workflows.
Released lightwallet protocol v0.4.0 with transparent transaction data.
Shipped zcash_client_sqlite hotfix with critical bug fixes.
Advanced Zallet with deterministic builds and new account methods.
Progressed Orchard, Halo2, and Sapling releases for external PCZT signing.
Next:
Continue work on transparent address rotation.
Review P2SH multisig support for Keystone.
Update lightwalletd to the latest protocol spec.
Release Zallet v0.1.0-alpha-3 and build z_shieldcoinbase.
Continue Orchard and EIP-681 reviews.
Other 🌐
Two new ECC team members: BostonZcash (Support & Community Manager) and Dan S. (Business Development & Partnerships Manager)
Over 300 submissions to the Zypherpunk Hackathon.
ZCG elections are underway (already listed above).
OKX relisted ZEC.
Last Wednesday, the community witnessed another Shielded Labs workshop on Crosslink.
Held in collaboration with @dorianvp and @Juanky from the Zingo! team, the session brought together participants in two key roles: stakers and finalizers, giving everyone a hands-on experience with the Crosslink testnet.
Stakers connected using the Zingo! mobile wallet or the Shielded Labs desktop wallet to:
Connect to the Crosslink testnet
Receive testnet ZEC (cTAZ)
Perform basic staking actions
Meanwhile, finalizers joined the Crosslink BFT network with no manual intervention required. Participants were able to:
Add, remove, and move stake between roster members
Observe stake accumulation as PoW blocks were finalized
Join without sharing an IP address (a laptop was sufficient, though running a public server improved network resiliency)
Throughout the session, attendees watched live staking and finalizer activity unfold directly on the Crosslink testnet, making it a truly interactive learning experience.
As a special reward, participants received limited-edition Crosslink NFT badges, available in three different rarity levels.
Builds for Linux (Ubuntu 24.04) and macOS were provided ahead of time to ensure everyone could participate smoothly.