Zcash's New Node Zakura Goes Live: Privacy Payments Can Reach 50,000 TPS, Aiming to Rival Visa and Mastercard
Zcash, a privacy-focused cryptocurrency, has launched a new full node software called Zakura version 1.0.0. Developed by Zcash co-founder Sean Bowe and Dev Ojha, with private ZEC donations, its goal is to enable Zcash to process over 50,000 transactions per second (TPS)—matching the scale of Visa and Mastercard—while maintaining full transaction privacy and verifiability. This addresses a key bottleneck, as Zcash currently handles only about 1 private transaction per second.
Zakura is a fork of the Zcash Foundation's Zebra node. It features chain pruning and snapshots, reducing disk usage and allowing new nodes to sync in under two minutes. It also offers compatibility with the legacy `zcashd` client interface.
The scalability challenge stems from the large data size of privacy proofs. Bowe's Tachyon project aims to use recursive proofs to reduce consensus-layer data needs from ~500 MB/s to ~100 MB/s. For wallet scalability, Valar Group is researching Private Information Retrieval (PIR) tech to allow wallets to fetch their data privately.
Zakura supports fast block propagation and the upcoming "Ironwood" network upgrade (NU6.3), scheduled for activation around July 28th. Ironwood was created to contain a critical inflation bug discovered in the Orchard shielded pool in May 2024. The fix uses "turnstiles" to trap any counterfeit ZEC created during the vulnerability period within the shielded pool, preventing it from entering circulation and restoring supply integrity.
marsbit07/21 06:15
