Zcash Shielded News | Vol.7
Introducing Partner Support & Advisory Services, ZCAP NU7 Sentiment Polling Results, ZCG - Meeting Minutes 2/16/26, NEAR Intents 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 💡
The Zcash Arborist Calls are the ecosystem’s bi-weekly protocol-dev sync, where core contributors track network upgrade logistics, unblock consensus-node implementation issues (like Zebra/zcashd compatibility), and share protocol research progress.
Recordings and running notes are published so the wider community can follow what’s moving forward and what still needs decisions
https://zfnd.org/arborist-calls/
📩 In today’s edition:
🤝 Introducing Partner Support & Advisory Services (Shielded Labs)
• Shielded Labs launched Partner Services so teams integrating with Zcash can hire them for technical support, advisory, and ecosystem coordination.
🗳️ ZCAP NU7 Sentiment Polling Results (Zcash Foundation)
• NU7 sentiment polling closed Feb 20 (20:00 UTC), measuring views on 11 proposed features; results are advisory and compared across ZCAP, coinholders, and community groups (ZCAP turnout: 57%).
👥 Zcash Community Grants Minutes — Meeting Minutes 2/16/26
• Several grants were approved (including Zcash Arabia, CipherScan, and Zingo Hackfest), others rejected; Wrapped Zcash remains under review.
🅽 NEAR Intents Update (NEAR Foundation)
• NEAR Intents withdrew its grant proposal, saying it plans to monetize via product fees instead, and highlighted ongoing ZEC-related flows and integrations.
Introducing Partner Support & Advisory Services
On Feb 18, Jason McGee (Shielded Labs CEO) posted a note about the launch of Partner Services, a new Shielded Labs initiative intended to support the organization’s long-term work on Zcash development and its mission to help build “unstoppable private money.”
He noted that, to date, this work has been funded solely through donations. As Shielded Labs grows, the organization is exploring additional funding sources, alongside donations, to support its work over the long term and Partner Services is being introduced with that in mind.
Under the initiative, teams building on Zcash or integrating with the protocol will be able to engage Shielded Labs directly for:
technical support (including help with integrations and other development efforts),
advisory work, informed by experience with the protocol,
ecosystem coordination, which may include support for network upgrades and related work.
The goal is to provide practical solutions and reduce friction for teams working with Zcash, while helping ensure integrations and product decisions fit naturally within the broader ecosystem. He also emphasized that this creates a clearer path for external teams to engage with Zcash and bring new products, integrations, and support online more easily.
It was also emphasized that the primary focus remains building and supporting technology that strengthens Zcash. Partner Services was presented as an extension of that work making that experience available where it’s most useful while also creating an additional revenue stream to support the organization over the long term.
The note also mentions that discussions are already underway with other teams considering similar collaborations, and that partners interested in learning more are welcome to reach out directly.
Learn more! 👇
ZCAP NU7 Sentiment Polling Results - ZF
ZF has wrapped up ZCAP NU7 Sentiment Polling, which closed on Friday, Feb 20 at 20:00 UTC. The poll aimed to measure community sentiment on 11 proposed protocol features and initiatives, each either already completed or expected to be ready within the next year.
Participation:
ZCAP: 99 out of 173 voted → 57% participation.
Coinholders: participation represented 7.25% of circulating ZEC (that’s weighted by coin/voting power, not a headcount of people).
Community group polls (Zcash Engineering Caucus, ZecHub, Zcash Brasil, Zcash Español, Zcash Türkiye): participation rates ranged from 57% to 92%.
Community-supported proposals.
Project Tachyon - Universal or near-universal support across every group.
Orchard Quantum Recoverability - Strong support from both ZCAP (90.5%) & coinholders (94.6%).
Explicit Fees - Consistent support across groups (83.2% ZCAP, 87.2% coinholders).
NSM: Burning Transaction Fees - Both ZCAP (78%) and coinholders (80.1%) support the fee-burning component specifically.
Areas of Significant Disagreement
Zcash Shielded Assets (ZSAs) - ZCAP support was 70.4%, while coinholders voted 98.6% against.
Network Sustainability Mechanism (NSM) - Issuance Smoothing — ZCAP supported NSM at 84%, but coinholders opposed it at 83.5%.
Consensus Accounts - 77.9% ZCAP support, 97.3% coinholder opposition.
Memo Bundles - Supported by 76.8% of ZCAP, but coinholders voted 99.3% against.
Sprout Deprecation (v4 Transactions) - 77.7% ZCAP support, 84.6% coinholder opposition
STARK Proof Verification via TZEs - The weakest result in ZCAP (56.8% support, 38.4% oppose), with coinholders opposing at 83.6%
Summary by Daira Emma → Link
What did you think of the results? Share your thoughts with us! 🙂
Zcash Community Grants Meeting Minutes 2/16/26 - @ZCG Zcash Community Grants
Approved ✅
Zcash Arabia (Q1 2026) - $7,500: Arabic Zcash education/community (MENA), content + events.
CipherScan - $58,800: block explorer + privacy analysis features (privacy scoring) and APIs.
Zingo Labs Hackfest (Rome) - $25,500.23: in-person hackfest aligned with major ZK/crypto events.
Approved (async)
Sustainability & Zbase Vision (Zcash Türkiye) - $31,000: operational setup (base/office/equipment) to sustain local programs.
Rejected ❌
Mnemosyne - $50,000: AI inference network using ZEC payments (deemed out of scope).
Zcash India - $10,400: India dev/community program (wanted more track record + ZecHub alignment).
ZEX for Zcash - $75,000: ZEC integration into an order-book DEX (seen as premature/too centralized).
Zcash Web Gateway - $25,450: standardized gRPC-web gateway for browser wallets (overpriced / limited track record).
X402 Payment Bridge - $35,000: x402-compatible bridge settling privately to ZEC (too early / low adoption).
NUFI Wallet - $49,000: add Zcash to a multi-chain wallet (preference for organic integrations).
SA-SMS - $37,500: FROST-secured SMS gateway for shielded aid (security/design concerns).
Zebra Fork/Reorg Observability - $20,000: Prometheus metrics for Zebra forks/reorgs (weak proposal/overlap).
Dev Testing & Automation Toolkit - $28,000: testing/CI toolkit for Zcash devs (red flags/duplication concerns).
Still open 👀
Wrapped Zcash (WZEC) - $80,000: ERC-20 wrapped ZEC with proof-of-reserve/custody (awaiting feedback).
Zebra ↔ lightwalletd RPC cookie auth - $18,000: cookie-file auth support for safer deployments.
Few days ago, NEAR posted a note on the forum saying the NEAR Intents team is withdrawing its grant proposal after internal discussion. They emphasized they’re still committed to helping grow Zcash adoption and supporting the ZEC ecosystem, but they want to take a different route: build products good enough that people are happy to pay for them, instead of relying on grants to subsidize engineering.
They also added context on why some numbers may have looked low. Right now, NEAR Intents doesn’t charge protocol-level fees, fees are only live on the app.near-intents.org frontend, and those were turned on just a few weeks ago.
According to the team, the plan is to enable fees more broadly across NEAR Intents flows starting next week, as part of their monetization rollout.
In the post, they pointed to multiple teams already using NEAR Intents to support ZEC inflows and put the asset in front of communities that previously had limited on-chain access to it. mentioning ZODL (formerly Zashi), Infinex, THORswap, THORwallet, Rhea, Templar, & others.
They also stressed that NEAR Intents isn’t “just another DEX,” but a universal liquidity layer for different assets and trading types. They said independent teams are already building things like lending and DCA on top of it, that ZEC has been bridged to Solana, and that they plan to expand access to more chains via Omnibridge.
The team claims it has already routed hundreds of millions of dollars in flows into the Zcash ecosystem and expects to scale further as new products roll out in the coming months.
Read more → forum.zcashcommunity.com/t/near-intents
