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Zcash is Back On Track

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From Privacy Coins to Privacy Financial Infrastructure

Original Title: The Path to Billions. Update on Zcash.
Original Author: Josh Swihart
Translation: Peggy

Editor's Note: This article is a milestone update from ZODL founder Josh Swihart on Zcash's recent roadmap and ecosystem progress. The article defines Zcash's long-term goal as: to build a parallel financial world without large-scale financial surveillance, allowing users to freely hold, transfer, and use assets with default privacy protection. Its core value proposition can be summarized in one sentence: Hold ZEC privately and spend it anywhere.

Around this goal, the ZODL team emphasizes that the key ahead is not unlimited scalability features but maintaining a strategic focus: core capabilities that must be self-built at the protocol layer and within Zodl products should be prioritized; features that can integrate with external products and public blockchains should be accelerated through partnerships; and "side tasks" unrelated to the mission need to be actively rejected.

In terms of specific progress, Zodl iOS 3.4.0 has been released, Swift and Android SDK 2.5.0 have been updated simultaneously, the Coinholder Polling voting feature within the wallet has entered testing, and features such as automatic server switching, multi-server transaction submission, and multi-currency conversion are also scheduled for subsequent releases. Meanwhile, Zcash Core continues to iterate on fundamental work such as reducing block times, fixing shielded transaction issues, advancing Zallet alpha, and optimizing the sync engine.

Overall, Zcash is aiming to transition from a singular "privacy coin narrative" to a more comprehensive privacy financial infrastructure. Financial privacy, wallet experience, cross-chain usability, and community governance are being linked into a path aimed at mass user adoption. For Zcash, privacy is not just a technical feature but a prerequisite for financial sovereignty to exist.

The following is the original text:

Our destination is clear: we are constructing a parallel world without large-scale financial surveillance. There, law-abiding individuals can transact freely and privately; financial privacy is the default state; market entry is a fundamental right. Without privacy, there is no sovereignty.

Our work is to pave the way for billions of people to that destination. From user onboarding, secure storage, to spendability and real utility, this path must be wide enough to carry significant traffic and robust enough to withstand the test of time.

Every path needs a foundation. Our distilled value proposition is: private holding, universal spending. Holding ZEC privately shields our wealth and transaction history from prying eyes; universal spending means that regardless of the recipient's currency preference, we can truly transact with our private assets.

Ben Horowitz once said that the only thing that matters is delivering the right product at the right time. These two parts must happen simultaneously. After a decade of continuous polishing, we have finally achieved both.

We are laying down stones at the foundation. These stones represent significant bets that truly propel us forward: they create value, bring new utility, and drive broader adoption. They are not something that hinders users from moving forward. Every step the user takes towards the destination must be simple enough.

We will also fill in gravel between the stones to reinforce the road. These include UI adjustments, small protocol improvements, and various optimizations. The gravel itself is not the foundation of the road; without the stones, they would quickly be washed away by the rain. They are important, but the prerequisite is that the stones are already laid.

We are running out of time, yet there is much to build. We cannot linger too long in the towns along the way; we cannot widen the road unnecessarily, adding things that do not help us reach our destination faster; nor can we narrow the road too much, excluding those who will need to travel on this road in the future. We cannot carve out multiple lanes just because we prefer our own plans; and we definitely cannot build towards someone else's destination. We must constantly self-calibrate, confirm the direction, and maintain discipline by only building what is truly necessary.

It is this focus and disciplined execution that allow us to categorize and prioritize our work.

· Things we must do ourselves: capabilities that must be built at the protocol layer and within Zodl products.

· Things we can combine: things that other products and public chains can already provide and that can be combined with our core capabilities to unleash greater utility more quickly. Our collaboration with NEAR Intents to support swaps and CrossPay is a great example of this.

· Things we choose to decline: tasks that are sideline, redundant features that do not fully drive us towards our destination, or activities that are contrary to our mission.

We plan to share, test, and recalibrate our work around these categories at the upcoming ZODL Summit in July. I also hope that the entire Zcash community will continue to stay aligned and move forward together, maximizing our collective advantage rather than going separate ways. For a decentralized protocol like Zcash, diverging paths are inevitable: different ideas and viewpoints are normal. But if we can align our work around "laying the stones," we will reach our destination. We will pave this road for billions.

Here are this week's ZODL updates.

Zodl (Product)

Zodl iOS 3.4.0 has been released. Version 3.3.0 introduced the feature to disconnect from the Zodl Keystone hardware wallet, and 3.4.0 ensures a smoother reconnection process. These two versions combined allow users to complete the full hardware wallet setup management cycle within Zodl: connect, disconnect, reconnect. See release post for details.

The underlying Swift SDK 2.5.0 and Android SDK 2.5.0 have also been simultaneously released, completing the 2.5.0 cycle on both platforms. This release includes rewind/rescan pipeline and syncer state-related work, laying the foundation for the next wave of mobile features.

The implementation and review of Coinholder Polling have been completed on both iOS and Android, with collaborative work by the Valar Group team. The code has been merged, entering the internal testing phase. The inaugural wallet-embedded coinholder vote is scheduled for use in the upcoming NU7 consensus vote.

The design, user experience, and UI of Coinholder Polling have been updated based on the latest round of feedback, including a bottom sheet selector that allows users to choose which entity releases the currently valid list of votes; boundary scenario interfaces for voting and vote results have also been added.

Next, the product side will continue to advance:

· Continue testing and refining Coinholder Polling.

· Continue addressing iOS sync errors.

Next features include: automatic server switching, multi-server transaction submission, multi-currency conversion.

Finalize the design updates for Coinholder Polling and shift focus to multi-account support design.

Zodl iOS Data

Unique Installs: 41.9k (+0.5k)

Total Downloads: 49.9k (+0.7k)

App Store Rating: 4.9★ (No change)

Zodl Android Data

Install Base: 15.6k (+0.3k)

Total Installations (including Open Beta): 50k (+0.5k)

Play Store Rating: 4.24★ (-0.02)

Zcash Core (including R&D)

This week, the proposal to reduce the block time from 75 seconds to 25 seconds has seen converging discussions.

A bug causing a shielding (to the shielded pool) failure has been diagnosed and fixed (librustzcash #2347). This issue affected Android ZecWallet/ZecWallet Lite users holding a large number of small transparent UTXOs, commonly seen in scenarios where miners receive frequent microtransactions.

Multiple Zcash Enhancement Proposal (ZEIP) fixes have been implemented, including blob size corrections and redeem-script handling fixes, further enhancing wallet and data exchange reliability. The vision for zewif2 has also been initiated this week.

Progress has been made on Zallet alpha.4: a review and merge of alpha-breaking changes detection. The old alpha wallets will now refuse to run on incompatible builds rather than disrupt the state data.

Reviewed a set of PRs for the shielded-voting Swift SDK and multi-server transaction submission implementation, both directly supporting the aforementioned mobile work.

Completed follow-up work on Compact Block messaging, reducing legacy burdens and protocol overhead.

Standardized the zcash_client_backend for handling sending and receiving transparent UTXOs (librustzcash #2260), addressing inconsistencies in the transparent UTXO path.

Next, the Core team will focus on:

· Finalizing the remaining scope of Zallet alpha.4.

· Completing the review of z_shieldcoinbase RPC support.

Three sync engine efforts are progressing in sequence: put_blocks/store_decrypted_tx refactoring for unifying shielded and transparent processing paths; supporting full block scans in zcash_client_backend; migrating to the new ChainIndex trait in Zebra.

Enhanced Zallet's zcashd migration capability to support all legacy key types and built integration tests around keys generated by historical versions of zcashd.

Other

Community review of a set of NU7 governance polls initiated (forum post, X posts). This vote will be conducted concurrently via ZCAP and coinholder processes and will feature the first wallet-inclusive coinholder vote using Zodl. Hardware wallet users can participate through Zodl + Keystone.

ZODL Summit invitations are now open (forum post, X posts). The ZODL Summit, formerly known as the Z|ECC Summit, is a biannual working meeting of Zcash contributors and ecosystem partners. The event will take place in Prague, Czech Republic, from July 8th to 10th. Apply here.

Cypherpunk Policy Dinner: Continued communication around ZCG main sponsorship application with the community. This is an ancillary event to the 2026 DC Privacy Summit. Once approved, the next step will be to onboard more Zcash ecosystem sponsors while ensuring the event continues to focus on Zcash.

New team members will be joining in the coming weeks. Harry will join as Senior Mobile QA; Danny Willems will join on May 27th as Chief Cryptography Engineer; Giulia will join as a Marketing Assistant.

Submitted a Coinholder Grant application for Zcash Core work. See the post for details.

Miner BD: Outreach process initiated, with codebase stewards reaching out to miners directly to strengthen communication and collaboration with the mining community.

Marketing: ECC blog is back up. Zodl x Slope brand interactions are ongoing.