CoinDesk
Zakura, a new Zcash full node maintained by founding Zcash cryptographer Sean Bowe and Osmosis co-founder Dev Ojha, launched Wednesday at version 1.0.0 as the first live piece of a multi-year plan to push Zcash toward payment-network scale. It is a pruned, fast-syncing fork of the Zcash Foundation's Zebra node, ships with snapshot-based sync that takes a new operator from zero to a running node in under two minutes (the team clocks that at roughly 680x faster than the legacy path), and reproduces the interface of zcashd ahead of that client's July 18 end of life. Zakura also supports Ironwood (NU6.3), the hard fork activating at block 3,428,143 on July 28.
Why it matters
The team frames Mastercard and Visa's 50,000 transactions per second as the floor, not the target. Zcash's current cryptography would need a node to ingest and verify more than 500 MB per second to keep up, because every shielded transaction carries a zero-knowledge proof, and proofs are large. Three pieces of the plan attack that: Project Tachyon, where Bowe is working on recursive proofs so a node verifies one proof instead of thousands; private information retrieval from Valar Group, which lets a wallet pull its own data from a server without revealing which entries it asked for (today's wallet software tops out near one transaction per second precisely because it has to download and test everything); and Zakura itself, which ships an experimental fast-block-propagation layer targeting sub-half-second block delivery across the network. None of this is shipped yet at Visa scale; the node and the Ironwood fork are the onramp.
Market impact
The near-term catalyst is Ironwood, built to close a soundness bug in Orchard's proof circuit that Shielded Labs researcher Taylor Hornby disclosed on May 29. The flaw had been live since Orchard activated in May 2022 and could have let an attacker mint untraceable ZEC; developers disabled Orchard on June 2 and patched the circuit via NU6.2 on June 3.
Frequently asked questions
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What is Zakura and how does it differ from the existing Zcash node?
Zakura is a new Zcash full node maintained by founding Zcash cryptographer Sean Bowe and Dev Ojha. It is a pruned, fast-syncing fork of the Zcash Foundation's Zebra node, ships with snapshot sync that brings a new operator from zero to running in under two minutes, and reproduces the interface of zcashd ahead of its…
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Why is the Ironwood hard fork on July 28 important for ZEC supply?
Ironwood (NU6.3) activates at block 3,428,143 on July 28 and adds a turnstile to Orchard that caps what can leave the shielded pool. Because amounts crossing into and out of shielded pools are public even when transactions inside are not, any counterfeit ZEC that may have been created via the May 2022 Orchard…
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What was the Orchard soundness bug discovered on May 29?
Shielded Labs researcher Taylor Hornby disclosed on May 29 that Orchard's proof circuit contained a soundness bug that could let an attacker mint counterfeit ZEC with no onchain trace. The flaw had been live since Orchard activated in May 2022; developers disabled Orchard on June 2 and patched the circuit via the…
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How does Project Tachyon aim to reach 50,000 transactions per second?
Project Tachyon is Bowe's work on recursive proofs, where a single proof attests to the validity of thousands of others. The team claims this can cut consensus data requirements from roughly 100 MB per second down toward a level that is technically achievable with careful engineering, removing the main verification…
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Why do Zcash wallets only manage about one transaction per second today?
Because Zcash hides who a transaction is for, a wallet cannot ask a server which entries belong to it without revealing itself. Today's wallet software downloads the full set and tests each one, which is why it tops out near one transaction per second. Valar Group's private information retrieval work is designed to…
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