Original Title: The Path to Billions. Update on Zcash.
Original Author: Josh Swihart
Original Translation: Peggy
Editor's Note: This article is a periodic update from Josh Swihart, founder of ZODL, on the recent roadmap and ecosystem progress of Zcash. The long-term goal of Zcash is defined as: to build a parallel financial world without large-scale financial surveillance, allowing users to freely hold, transfer, and use assets under default privacy protection. Its core value proposition can be summarized in one sentence: privately holding ZEC and being able to spend it anywhere.
Around this goal, the ZODL team emphasizes that the next key is not to infinitely expand features, but to maintain strategic focus: the core capabilities that must be self-built at the protocol layer and in ZODL products should be prioritized; functionalities that can be combined with external products and public chains should be accelerated through partnerships; and “side tasks” that are unrelated to the mission need to be actively declined.
In terms of specific progress, Zodl iOS 3.4.0 has been released, and Swift and Android SDK 2.5.0 have been updated synchronously. The Coinholder Polling voting feature within the wallet has entered testing, and functionalities such as automatic server switching, multi-server transaction submission, and multi-currency conversion have also entered subsequent scheduling. Meanwhile, Zcash Core continues to iterate on underlying work aimed at shortening block times, fixing shielded transaction issues, advancing Zallet alpha, and optimizing the synchronization engine.
Overall, Zcash is trying to shift from a singular “privacy coin narrative” to a more complete construction of a privacy financial infrastructure. Financial privacy, wallet experience, cross-chain usability, and community governance are being connected into a pathway for mass user adoption. For Zcash, privacy is not just a technical feature, but a prerequisite for establishing financial sovereignty.
The following is the original text:
Our destination is clear: we are building a parallel world without large-scale financial surveillance. There, law-abiding individuals can trade freely and privately; financial privacy is the default state; access to the market is a fundamental right. Without privacy, there is no sovereignty.
Our work is to build a road to that destination for billions of people. From user onboarding and secure storage to payability and practical utility, this road must be wide enough to carry sufficient traffic and solid enough to withstand the test of time.
Every road needs a foundation. Our simplified value proposition is: private holdings, payable everywhere. Private holdings of ZEC keep us free from others prying into our wealth and transaction history; being payable everywhere means that regardless of the currency preference of the recipient, we can truly use our private assets.
Ben Horowitz once said, the only job is to deliver the right product at the right time. Both parts must hold true at the same time. After ten years of continuous polishing, we finally possess both.
We lay stones on the foundation. These stones represent the major bets that really push us forward rapidly: they create value, bring new utility, and promote broader adoption. They are not obstacles for users to progress. Each step the user takes toward the destination must be simple enough.
We will also fill the gaps between the stones with gravel to reinforce the road. These include UI adjustments, minor protocol improvements, and various optimizations. Gravel itself is not the foundation of the road; without stones, it will soon be washed away by rain. They are important, but only if the stones are already laid.
We do not have much time, but we have a lot to build. We cannot linger too long in towns along the way; we cannot make the road too wide, adding elements that do not help us reach our destination faster; we also cannot make the road too narrow, excluding those who will need to travel this road in the future. We cannot each carve out multiple routes simply because we prefer our own plans; nor can we build toward someone else's destination. We must constantly self-calibrate, confirm our direction, and maintain discipline to only build what is truly necessary.
It is this discipline of focus and execution that allows us to categorize and prioritize our work.
· What we must do ourselves: the capabilities that must be built at the protocol layer and in Zodl products.
· What we can combine: things that other products and public chains can already provide, and that can be combined with our core capabilities to release greater utility faster. Our collaboration with NEAR Intents to support swaps and CrossPay is a great example.
· What we choose to refuse: those side tasks, redundant functions, or activities that do not sufficiently drive us toward our destination.
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 stay unified and progress together, maximizing our collective advantages instead of going our separate ways. For a decentralized protocol like Zcash, side paths will inevitably emerge: different ideas and viewpoints are normal. But if we can align on the work of “laying stones” as much as possible, we can reach our destination. We will build this road for billions of people.
The following is this week's ZODL update.
Zodl (Product)
Zodl iOS 3.4.0 has been released. Version 3.3.0 introduced the capability to disconnect the Keystone hardware wallet from Zodl; 3.4.0 ensures a smoother reconnection process. Together, these two versions enable users to complete the full cycle of hardware wallet setup management in Zodl: connecting, disconnecting, and reconnecting. 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 and laying the groundwork for the next wave of mobile functionality with the rewind/rescan pipeline and synchronizer state related work.
The implementation and review of Coinholder Polling have been completed on both iOS and Android sides, with the relevant work being advanced collaboratively by the Valar Group team. The code has been merged and is now in internal testing. The first wallet-based coinholder vote will be used for the upcoming NU7 opinion poll as planned.
The design, user experience, and UI of Coinholder Polling have been updated based on the latest feedback rounds, including a bottom pop-up selector allowing users to choose which organization publishes the currently valid voting list; it also adds interfaces for the boundary scenarios of voting and voting outcomes.
Next, the product side will continue to advance:
· Continue testing and refining Coinholder Polling.
· Continue addressing iOS synchronization errors.
Future features include: automatic server switching, multi-server transaction submission, and multi-currency exchange.
Finalize the design updates for Coinholder Polling and shift focus to multi-account support design.
Zodl iOS Data
Independent installs: 41.9k (+0.5k)
Total downloads: 49.9k (+0.7k)
App Store rating: 4.9★ (no change)
Zodl Android Data
Installation base: 15.6k (+0.3k)
Total installs (including Open Beta): 50k (+0.5k)
Play Store rating: 4.24★ (-0.02)
Zcash Core (including R&D)
This week, discussions around the proposal to shorten block time from 75 seconds to 25 seconds have converged.
A shielding (transferring to shielded pool) failure issue has been diagnosed and fixed (librustzcash #2347). This issue impacted Android Zashi/Zodl users holding a large number of small transparent UTXOs, with a typical scenario being miners regularly receiving small payments.
Several ZEWIF fixes have been implemented, including adjustments to blob size and redeem-script handling, further enhancing wallet and data exchange reliability. The subsequent zewif2 concept has also begun this week.
Zallet alpha.4 has made progress: the alpha version’s destructive change detection has been reviewed and merged. The old alpha wallet will now refuse to run on incompatible builds rather than corrupting state data.
A set of PRs for the shielded-voting Swift SDK has been reviewed, along with the implementation of multi-server transaction submission, both directly serving the mobile work mentioned above.
Follow-up work on the CompactBlock message has been completed, reducing legacy burdens and protocol overhead.
The handling of sending and receiving transparent UTXOs in zcash_client_backend has been unified (librustzcash #2260), fixing inconsistencies in the transparent UTXO paths.
Next, the Core side will focus on:
· Concentrating on the remaining scope of Zallet alpha.4.
· Completing the review of z_shieldcoinbase RPC support.
Three synchronization engine tasks are progressing sequentially: restructuring put_blocks/store_decrypted_tx for unified shielded and transparent processing paths; supporting full block scans in zcash_client_backend; migrating to the new ChainIndex trait of Zaino.
Expand Zallet's zcashd migration capabilities to support all old key types and build integration tests around keys generated from historical versions of zcashd.
Others
A community review for a set of NU7 opinion voting issues has begun (forum post, X post). This voting will be conducted simultaneously through both ZCAP and coinholders, and will implement the first wallet-based coinholder voting through Zodl. Hardware wallet users can participate via Zodl + Keystone.
Invitations for the ZODL Summit have been opened (forum post, X post). The ZODL Summit, formerly known as the Z|ECC Summit, is a biannual working meeting for Zcash contributors and ecosystem partners. The conference will be held from July 8 to 10 in Prague, Czech Republic. Applications can be submitted here.
Cypherpunk Policy Dinner: Ongoing community communication around the ZCG main sponsorship application. This is a peripheral event for the 2026 DC Privacy Summit. Once approved, the next step will be to recruit more sponsors from the Zcash ecosystem while ensuring the event remains focused on Zcash.
New team members will be joining in the coming weeks. Harry will join as a senior mobile QA; Danny Willems will join on May 27 as the chief cryptography engineer; and Giulia will join as a marketing assistant.
A Coinholder Grant application for work on Zcash Core has been submitted. See the post for details.
Miner BD: Outreach processes have been initiated, and the codebase lead is directly contacting miners to enhance communication and collaboration processes with the miner community.
Market: The ECC blog has resumed. The Zodl x Slope brand interaction continues.
Market and Ecosystem
This week, Zcash was reported by The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and Fast Company. Six years ago, some claimed Zcash was dead.
Still holding solZEC? Please transfer it to a shielded address, everyone. It’s easy.
This week, check out the Bankless podcast about Zcash.
Continue to Build, move forward.
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