Zcash has successfully upgraded Scaping at 10:15

Zcash successfully hard forked and upgraded Scaping at 10:15

Payments to the new Safari shielded addresses can be constructed in seconds and take up only 40MB of memory. Exchanges, mobile wallets, vendors, small traders, and other third parties will be able to support shielded transactions.

The increasing usage of hidden addresses will improve the privacy protection efficiency of the entire network.

Zcash official statement:

We are pleased to announce that the Zcash Sapling network upgrade activated today at block 419200. Sapling introduces new shielded addresses and significant performance improvements: time to construct transactions is reduced by 90% and memory usage is reduced by over 97%. The activation of Sapling, occurring at an important time on its second birthday, brings us closer to widespread adoption of an open, permissionless, and private payment system.

Upon activation, Sapling addresses were immediately enabled for zcashd users. The ecosystem will need time to integrate the new addresses, as demand allows. In the meantime, the Sapling upgrade brings other practical benefits to users, such as improved parameters for Ceremonies (multi-party computation) and the BLS12-381 curve, which benefits all shielded address users.

Currently, funds cannot be transferred from traditional shielded addresses to new Sapling shielded addresses without revealing the amount. This allows us to audit the monetary basis of ZEC held in shielded addresses. We are developing a tool to automate the migration of funds in a way that allows users to minimize the impact on their privacy. We recommend that users wait for the release of this tool if it is feasible.

Making shielded addresses ubiquitous is at the heart of our mission. “Empowering everyone” is more than just words to our team. In fact, it’s the light that guides our sense of purpose and direction as we continue to innovate, create, and experiment. We look forward to future milestones outlined in our operational roadmap, demonstrating how privacy is a pathway to economic freedom and opportunity.

We consider this a collaborative effort and invite you to join our ongoing work, learn more about Sapling, connect with the community, or contact our ecosystem team to assist with implementation. We also ask that you reach out to your favorite wallet providers and exchanges to ask them to start adopting the currently supported features in the protocol.