Zcash is Reborn: Building Privacy-First Financial Infrastructure for Billions of Users

Original Title: The Path to Billions. Update on Zcash.

Original Author: Josh Swihart

Original Translation by: Peggy

Editor's Note: This article is a periodic update from ZODL founder Josh Swihart on Zcash's recent roadmap and ecosystem progress. It defines Zcash's long-term goal as building a parallel financial world without mass financial surveillance, where users can freely hold, transfer, and use assets with default privacy protection. Its core value proposition can be summarized in one sentence: Privately hold ZEC and spend it anywhere.

To achieve this goal, the ZODL team emphasizes that the key moving forward is not to expand features indefinitely, but to maintain strategic focus: Core capabilities that must be built into the protocol layer and the Zodl product should be prioritized; features that can be composed with external products and public chains should be accelerated through partnerships; and "side quests" irrelevant to the mission need to be actively declined.

In terms of specific progress, Zodl iOS 3.4.0 has been released, along with synchronized updates for Swift and Android SDK 2.5.0. In-wallet Coinholder Polling voting functionality is in testing, and features like automatic server switching, multi-server transaction submission, and multi-currency conversion are on the upcoming roadmap. Meanwhile, Zcash Core continues iterative work on underlying infrastructure, including reducing block time, fixing shielding transaction issues, advancing the Zallet alpha, and optimizing the sync engine.

Overall, Zcash is attempting to shift from a singular "privacy coin narrative" to building a more complete privacy-focused financial infrastructure. Financial privacy, wallet experience, cross-chain usability, and community governance are being interconnected into a path towards mass adoption. For Zcash, privacy is not just a technical feature; it is the prerequisite for financial sovereignty.

Below is the original text:

Our destination is clear: We are building a parallel world without mass financial surveillance. Where law-abiding people can transact freely and privately; where financial privacy is the default; where access to markets is a fundamental right. Without privacy, there is no sovereignty.

Our job is to build the road there for billions of people. From onboarding and secure storage to spendability and real-world utility, the road must be wide enough to carry significant traffic and strong enough to last.

Every road needs a base layer. Our simplified value proposition is: Privately hold, spend anywhere. Privately holding ZEC frees us from others peering into our wealth and transaction history. Spending anywhere means we can actually use our private assets, regardless of the recipient's preferred currency.

Ben Horowitz once said the only job is to deliver the right product at the right time. Both parts must be true simultaneously. After a decade of continuous refinement, we finally have both.

We lay paving stones on the base layer. These stones represent major bets that truly accelerate us forward: they create value, unlock new utility, and drive broader adoption. They are not obstacles for users. Every step a user takes towards the destination must be simple enough.

We also fill the gaps between the stones with gravel to reinforce the road. This includes UI adjustments, minor protocol improvements, and various optimizations. Gravel alone is not the foundation of the road; without the stones, it would be washed away by rain. It is important, but only after the stones are in place.

We have limited time but much to build. We cannot linger too long in towns along the way; we cannot build the road too wide by adding things that don't help us reach our destination faster; nor can we build it too narrow, excluding those who will need to travel it in the future. We cannot each build our own separate routes just because we prefer our own designs; nor can we build towards someone else's destination. We must constantly recalibrate, confirm our direction, and maintain the discipline to build only what is truly necessary.

It is this focus and execution discipline that allows us to categorize and prioritize our work.

· What we must do ourselves: Capabilities that must be built into the protocol layer and the Zodl product.

· What we can compose: Things that other products and public chains already offer and can be composed with our core capabilities to unlock greater utility faster. Our partnership with NEAR Intents to support swaps and CrossPay is a good example.

· What we choose to refuse: Side quests, redundant features, or activities that do not adequately drive us towards our destination, or that contradict our mission.

We plan to share, test, and recalibrate our work against these categories at the upcoming ZODL Summit in July. I also hope the entire Zcash community can continue to align and move forward synergistically, maximizing our collective strengths rather than going separate ways. For a decentralized protocol like Zcash, branches will certainly emerge: different ideas and perspectives are normal. But if we can align as closely as possible on laying the paving stones, we will reach our destination. We will build this road for billions of people.

Below is this week's ZODL update.

Zodl (Product)

Zodl iOS 3.4.0 has been released. Version 3.3.0 introduced the ability to disconnect a Keystone hardware wallet from Zodl; 3.4.0 ensures the reconnection process is smoother. Combined, these versions enable users to complete the full cycle of hardware wallet setup management within Zodl: connect, disconnect, reconnect. See the release post for details.

The underlying Swift SDK 2.5.0 and Android SDK 2.5.0 have also been released simultaneously, completing the 2.5.0 cycle on both platforms. They bring rewind/rescan pipeline and synchronizer state-related work, laying the groundwork for the next wave of mobile features.

The implementation and review of Coinholder Polling have been completed on both iOS and Android, carried out in collaboration with the Valar Group team. The code has been merged and is now in internal testing. The first in-wallet coinholder poll will be used as planned for the upcoming NU7 opinion poll.

The design, user experience, and UI for Coinholder Polling have been updated based on the latest feedback round. This includes a bottom sheet picker allowing users to select which organization publishes the currently active list of polls, along with added edge case screens for voting and vote results.

Next steps for the product side include:

· Continuing to test and polish Coinholder Polling.

· Continuing to address iOS sync errors.

Upcoming features include: Automatic server switching, multi-server transaction submission, and multi-currency conversion.

Finalize 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 Installs (incl. Open Beta): 50k (+0.5k)

Play Store Rating: 4.24★ (-0.02)

Zcash Core (incl. R&D)

This week, discussions regarding the proposal to reduce block time from 75 seconds to 25 seconds have converged.

Diagnosed and fixed a shielding (transfer to shielded pool) failure issue (librustzcash #2347). This issue affected Android Zashi/Zodl users holding a large number of small transparent UTXOs, a typical scenario for miners receiving small, frequent payments.

Several ZEWIF fixes have been landed, including blob size corrections and a redeem-script processing fix, further improving wallet and data exchange reliability. Conception for a subsequent zewif2 has also begun this week.

Progress on Zallet alpha.4: Reviewed and merged destructive change detection for the alpha version. The old alpha wallet will now refuse to run on incompatible builds instead of corrupting state data.

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

Completed follow-up work on CompactBlock messages, reducing legacy burdens and protocol overhead.

Unified the handling of sending and receiving transparent UTXOs in zcash_client_backend (librustzcash #2260), fixing inconsistencies in the transparent UTXO path.

Next, the Core side will focus on:

· Focusing on the remaining scope for Zallet alpha.4.

· Completing the review for z_shieldcoinbase RPC support.

Three sync engine tasks are being worked on sequentially: put_blocks / store_decrypted_tx refactoring to unify shielded and transparent processing paths; full block scanning support in zcash_client_backend; and migration to Zaino's new ChainIndex trait.

Extending Zallet's zcashd migration capabilities to support all legacy key types and building integration tests around keys generated by historical versions of zcashd.

Other

Opened a community review for a set of NU7 opinion poll questions (forum post, X post). This poll will be conducted via both ZCAP and coinholders, and will feature the first in-wallet coinholder poll via Zodl. Hardware wallet users can participate via Zodl + Keystone.

ZODL Summit invitations are now open (forum post, X post). The ZODL Summit, formerly the Z|ECC Summit, is a bi-annual working gathering for Zcash contributors and ecosystem partners. The meeting will be held July 8-10 in Prague, Czech Republic. Apply here.

Cypherpunk Policy Dinner: Continuing to communicate with the community regarding the ZCG sponsored grant application. This is a side event for the 2026 DC Privacy Summit. Once approved, the next step will be to recruit more Zcash ecosystem sponsors while ensuring the event remains focused 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 27 as Lead Cryptography Engineer; Giulia will join as Marketing Assistant.

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

Miner Business Development: Outreach processes have begun, with codebase leads directly contacting miners to improve communication and collaboration processes with the miner community.

Marketing: The ECC blog is restored. The Zodl x Slope brand collaboration is still ongoing.

Market & Ecosystem

This week, Zcash was featured in the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and Fast Company. Six years ago, some declared Zcash dead.

Still holding solZEC? Please move it to a shielded address, folks. It's simple.

Check out the Bankless podcast on Zcash this week.

Keep building, onward.

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