Zcash private transactions set to drop from 3 seconds to under 200 milliseconds

Zcash developers have released Zakura Common, an open-source cryptographic toolkit that slashes private transaction creation times from over three seconds to under 200 milliseconds. The upgrade requires no network hard fork, allowing wallets like Vizor and nodes running Zakura v1.3.0 to integrate it immediately. Mobile proof generation is now 14 times faster, and node verification is up to eight times quicker. Following the announcement, Zcash's native token, ZEC, jumped 5% to near $839.

Zakura Common toolkit release

• ▪The Zakura Common toolkit is dual-licensed under MIT and Apache 2.0 and requires no Zcash network upgrade or hard fork to be adopted.
• ▪Zcash developers released Zakura Common, an open-source cryptography toolkit designed to reduce private transaction creation times from over three seconds to under 200 milliseconds.

Transaction speed improvements

• ▪Under the Zakura Common toolkit, Sinsemilla hashing is more than 21 times faster and trial decryption is 1.5 times faster.
• ▪The Zakura Common software makes private transaction creation more than 14 times faster on mobile devices and more than five times faster on desktop computers.

Visa-level throughput goals

• ▪The Zakura scaling roadmap involves addressing bottlenecks including node transaction verification speeds, wallet data download volumes, and device-side payment construction times.
• ▪Zakura developers aim to scale the Zcash blockchain to support more than 50,000 private transactions per second, up from a current wallet ceiling of about one transaction per second.

Wallet adoption

• ▪The Vizor Wallet is among the first compatible wallets to adopt the new Zakura Common cryptography libraries.
• ▪The Zakura development team integrated the new cryptography stack into Zakura node software version 1.3.0.

Node performance enhancements

• ▪The Zakura Common software is designed to handle the 25-second block times proposed for Zcash's upcoming NU7 network upgrade.
• ▪The Zakura Common toolkit accelerates zk-SNARK verification for full nodes, making the checking of private transactions four to eight times faster.

ZEC price movement

• ▪The native Zcash token, ZEC, rose approximately 5% to near $839 following the announcement of the Zakura Common release on August 31, 2026.
• ▪The price of the ZEC token experienced a subsequent pullback on the morning of August 31, 2026, alongside a broader cryptocurrency market decline.

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