Editor's Note: This article is a periodic update by Josh Swihart, founder of ZODL, on the recent roadmap and ecosystem progress of Zcash. 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 privacy protection by default. Its core value proposition can be summarized in one sentence: Hold ZEC privately, and spend it anywhere.
Focusing on this goal, the ZODL team emphasizes that the key going forward is not infinite feature expansion, but maintaining strategic focus: Core capabilities that must be built natively at the protocol layer and within Zodl products should be prioritized; functionalities 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 rejected.
In terms of specific progress, Zodl iOS 3.4.0 has been released, Swift and Android SDK 2.5.0 have been updated synchronously, the in-wallet Coinholder Polling voting feature is in testing, and features like automatic server switching, multi-server transaction submission, and multi-currency conversion have been scheduled for later development. Meanwhile, Zcash Core continues to iterate on foundational work, focusing on reducing block time, fixing shielding transaction issues, advancing the Zallet alpha, and optimizing the synchronization engine.
Overall, Zcash is attempting to shift from a single "privacy coin narrative" to more complete privacy financial infrastructure construction. Financial privacy, wallet experience, cross-chain usability, and community governance are being connected into a path towards mass user adoption. For Zcash, privacy is not just a technical feature; it is the prerequisite for financial sovereignty.
Original text follows:
Our destination is clear: we are building a parallel world without mass financial surveillance. There, law-abiding individuals can trade freely and privately; financial privacy is the default state; 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 actual utility, this road must be wide enough to carry sufficient traffic, and robust enough to withstand the test of time.
Every road needs a foundation. Our simplified value proposition is: hold privately, pay anywhere. Holding ZEC privately protects us from others prying into 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 ship 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 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 things that impede user progress. Every step a user takes towards the destination must be simple enough.
We also fill gravel between the stones to reinforce the road. These include UI tweaks, minor protocol improvements, and various optimizations. Gravel alone is not the road's foundation; without stones, it would quickly wash away in the rain. It is important, but only after the stones are laid.
Our time is limited, but there is much to build. We cannot linger too long in towns along the way; we cannot build the road too wide, adding extra things that don't help us reach the destination faster; nor can we build it too narrow, excluding future travelers. We cannot each carve multiple paths just because we prefer our own solutions; and we certainly cannot build towards someone else's destination. We must constantly self-correct, 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: Those capabilities that must be built natively at the protocol layer and within Zodl products.
· What we can compose: Things that other products and public chains already provide and can be combined 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 reject: Side quests, superfluous features, or activities misaligned with the mission that do not sufficiently advance us towards the 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 remain aligned and move forward cohesively, allowing us to maximize our collective advantage rather than going our separate ways. For a decentralized protocol like Zcash, diverging paths are inevitable: different ideas and perspectives are normal. But if we can align on the work of "laying the stones" as much as possible, we will reach the destination. We will build this road for billions.
Here 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; version 3.4.0 ensures a smoother reconnection process. Together, these versions allow users to complete the full hardware wallet setup management cycle 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, completing the 2.5.0 cycle on both platforms and bringing rewind/rescan pipeline and synchronizer state work, setting the stage for the next wave of mobile features.
The implementation and review of Coinholder Polling have been completed on both iOS and Android, a collaborative effort with the Valar Group team. The code is now merged and in internal testing. The first in-wallet coinholder vote is planned for the upcoming NU7 opinion vote as scheduled.
The design, UX, and UI for Coinholder Polling have been updated based on the latest round of feedback, including a bottom sheet picker allowing users to choose which organization publishes the currently valid voting list; boundary scenario interfaces for voting and viewing results have also been added.
Going forward, the product side will continue to advance:
· Continue testing and refining Coinholder Polling.
· Continue addressing iOS sync errors.
Upcoming features include: automatic server switching, multi-server transaction submission, multi-currency conversion.
Finalize the 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★ (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 (Including R&D)
This week, discussions on the proposal to reduce block time from 75 seconds to 25 seconds have converged.
Diagnosed and fixed a shielding (transferring to the shielded pool) failure issue (librustzcash #2347). This issue affected Android Zashi/Zodl users holding many small transparent UTXOs, a typical scenario for miners receiving regular small payments.
Multiple ZEWIF fixes have landed, including a blob size correction and a redeem-script handling fix, further improving wallet and data exchange reliability. Conception of a follow-up zewif2 also began this week.
Zallet alpha.4 progress: Reviewed and merged alpha version breaking change detection. Old alpha wallets will now refuse to run on incompatible builds instead of corrupting state data.
Reviewed a set of PRs for shielded-voting Swift SDK and multi-server transaction submission implementation, both directly serving the mobile work mentioned above.
Completed follow-up work on CompactBlock messages, reducing legacy burden and protocol overhead.
Unified zcash_client_backend's handling of sending and receiving transparent UTXOs (librustzcash #2260), fixing inconsistencies in the transparent UTXO path.
Going forward, the Core side will focus on:
· Focusing on the remaining scope for Zallet alpha.4.
· Completing review of z_shieldcoinbase RPC support.
Three synchronization engine works are progressing sequentially: put_blocks / store_decrypted_tx refactoring to unify shielded and transparent processing paths; supporting full-block scanning in zcash_client_backend; migrating to Zaino's new ChainIndex trait.
Extending 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 vote questions (forum post, X post). This vote will be conducted simultaneously via ZCAP and coinholders and will implement the first in-wallet coinholder vote via Zodl. Hardware wallet users can participate via Zodl + Keystone.
ZODL Summit invites are open (forum post, X post). The ZODL Summit, formerly the Z|ECC Summit, is the biannual working gathering for Zcash contributors and ecosystem partners. It will be held in Prague, Czech Republic, from July 8-10. Apply here.
Cypherpunk Policy Dinner: Continued community communication around the main ZCG grant application. This is a side event of the 2026 DC Privacy Summit. Once approved, next steps include recruiting more Zcash ecosystem sponsors while ensuring the event remains focused on Zcash.
New team members are joining in the coming weeks. Harry will join as Senior Mobile QA; Danny Willems will join on May 27th as Principal Cryptography Engineer; Giulia will join as Marketing Assistant.
A Coinholder Grant application for Zcash Core work has been submitted. See the post.
Miner BD: Outreach process has commenced, with codebase maintainers directly contacting miners to enhance communication and collaboration with the mining community.
Marketing: The ECC blog is back. Zodl x Slope brand engagement continues.
Market & Ecosystem
This week, Zcash was covered by The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and Fast Company. Six years ago, some were declaring Zcash dead.
Still holding solZEC? Shield it, folks. It's easy.
Watch out for Bankless' podcast episode on Zcash this week.
Keep Building, Forward.
