Zcash is being reborn: A privacy financial infrastructure heading towards billions of users

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

Original Author: Josh Swihart

Original Translation: Peggy

Editor's Note: This article is a阶段性 update on Zcash's recent roadmap and ecosystem progress by Josh Swihart, founder of ZODL. The article 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.

Around this goal, the ZODL team emphasizes that the key moving forward is not to expand features infinitely, but to maintain strategic focus: core capabilities that must be built within 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" unrelated to the mission need to be actively declined.

In terms of specific progress, Zodl iOS 3.4.0 has been released, with the Swift and Android SDK 2.5.0 updated simultaneously. The in-wallet Coinholder Polling voting feature is in testing, and features like automatic server switching, multi-server transaction submission, and multi-currency conversion are on the upcoming schedule. Meanwhile, Zcash Core continues to iterate on underlying work such as reducing block time, fixing shielding transaction issues, advancing the Zallet alpha, and optimizing the sync engine.

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

Below is the original text:

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

Our work is to build the road there for billions of people. From user onboarding and secure storage to spendability and real utility, this road must be wide enough to carry significant traffic and strong enough to withstand the test of time.

Every road needs a foundation. Our simplified value proposition is: Privately Hold, Pay Anywhere. Privately holding ZEC frees us from others窥探 our wealth and transaction history. Paying anywhere means we can truly 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 effort, we finally have both.

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

We also fill gravel between the stones to reinforce the road. These include UI adjustments, minor protocol improvements, and various optimizations. Gravel itself is not the road's foundation; without stones, it would quickly be washed away by rain. It is important, but only after the stones are laid.

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

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

· What we must build ourselves: Capabilities that need to be built within 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 prime example.

· What we choose to decline: Side quests, redundant features, or activities that do not sufficiently propel us toward our destination, or are contrary to the mission.

We plan to share, test, and recalibrate our work around these categories at the upcoming ZODL Summit in July. I also hope the entire Zcash community can continue to align and move forward together, maximizing our collective strengths rather than going our separate ways. For a decentralized protocol like Zcash, branch paths will inevitably appear: different ideas, different opinions are normal. But if we can align as much as possible on the work of "laying the stones," we can reach our destination. We will build this road for billions of people.

Below are this week's ZODL updates.

Zodl (Product)

Zodl iOS 3.4.0 has been released. Version 3.3.0 introduced the ability to disconnect Keystone hardware wallets from Zodl; 3.4.0 ensures the reconnection process is smoother. Together, these two 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 work related to the rewind/rescan pipeline and synchronizer state, laying the groundwork for the next wave of mobile features.

Implementation and review of Coinholder Polling have been completed on both iOS and Android, with collaborative efforts from the Valar Group team. The code has been merged and is now in internal testing. The first in-wallet coin holder 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 round of feedback. This includes a bottom sheet picker allowing users to select which organization publishes the current list of active polls, and also covers edge case screens for polling and results.

Going forward, the product side will continue to advance:

· Continue testing and polishing Coinholder Polling.

· Continue handling iOS sync errors.

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

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

Zodl iOS Data

Installs (Unique): 41.9k (+0.5k)

Total Downloads: 49.9k (+0.7k)

App Store Rating: 4.9★ (unchanged)

Zodl Android Data

Install Base: 15.6k (+0.3k)

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

Play Store Rating: 4.24★ (-0.02)

Zcash Core (incl. R&D)

This week, discussion around the proposal to reduce block time from 75 seconds to 25 seconds has been converging.

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

Multiple ZEWIF fixes have landed, including blob size corrections and redeem-script processing repairs, further improving wallet and data exchange reliability. Conception of the subsequent zewif2 has also started this week.

Progress on Zallet alpha.4: Reviewed and merged breaking change detection for the alpha version. Old alpha wallets will now refuse to run on incompatible builds rather than corrupting state data.

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

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

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

Going forward, the Core side will focus on:

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

· Completing the review of the z_shieldcoinbase RPC support.

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

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

Other

Community review has begun for a set of NU7 opinion poll questions (forum post, X post). This poll will be conducted via both ZCAP and coin holders, enabling the first in-wallet coin holder vote through Zodl. Hardware wallet users can participate via Zodl + Keystone.

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

Cypherpunk Policy Dinner: Continuing to communicate with the community regarding the ZCG main sponsorship application. This is a side event of 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 members will be joining the team in the coming weeks. Harry will join as a Senior Mobile QA; Danny Willems will join on May 27 as a Lead Cryptography Engineer; Giulia will join as a Marketing Associate.

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

Miner BD: Outreach processes have been initiated. The codebase lead is directly contacting miners to strengthen communication and collaboration processes with the miner community.

Marketing: The ECC blog has been restored. The Zodl x Slope brand collaboration continues.

Market and Ecosystem

This week, Zcash received coverage from The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and Fast Company. Six years ago, some were claiming Zcash was dead.

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

Check out the Bankless podcast episode about Zcash this week.

Keep building, onward.

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