Zcash Foundation Sets Bold 2026 Strategy to Advance Privacy-Centric Digital Cash
- In 2026, Zcash will focus on implementing Zebra as the sole consensus node implementation for ‘principled and practical privacy.’
- It also intends to advance its work with FROST, which enables multiple participants to authorize shielded transactions.
Zcash has unveiled its 2026 roadmap, and it says this year’s priorities reflect both its maturity and ambition. The Zcash Foundation (ZF) pledges to strengthen the tools that make privacy possible across engineering, humanitarian initiatives, and community engagement.
This year, the Foundation will lay the groundwork to ensure that the next phase of the network’s development is more resilient, accessible, and impactful, it said.
ZF will focus on two main initiatives: Zebra and FROST. Zebra is an independent node implementation that will become the sole consensus implementation after Network Upgrade 7, which has advanced but no date has yet been set for its activation.
According to ZF, Zebra embodies its commitment to “open, modular, and verifiable infrastructure—designed to make it easier for developers, wallets, and applications to integrate with the Zcash ecosystem.”
Zebra replaces the original implementation, which the network has been depending on since its inception in 2016. Known as zcashd, it has been maintained by the Electric Coin Company. As we reported, the company has been engaged in a public dispute that saw its entire developer team exit three weeks ago.
This year, ZF pledges to work on three key areas for Zebra: integration and privacy, performance, and consensus. Under performance, it intends to address any issues regarding regressions and ensure reliable and high-throughput operations. It also wants to ensure there is full consensus within the community, as well as advance the Z3 stack (Zebra, Zaino, and Zallet). While Zebra is the full node, Zaino is an indexing tool and data service, while Zallet is the new official wallet software.
Zcash’s New Threshold Signatures and Community Building
Beyond Zebra, the Foundation also pledged to double down on its new threshold signatures. Known as FROST, or Flexible Round-Optimized Schnorr Threshold Signatures, they allow multiple participants to authorize shielded transactions, while still maintaining their unlinkability.
With FROST, ZF will move it out of draft status with the release of ZIP-312, integrate it into zcash-devtool to expand accessibility, and implement a Distributed Key Generation protocol to enable key generation and multiparty signing.
“These milestones ensure that multi-party control over Zcash funds is not only possible but easy to implement—empowering institutions and communities alike,” the Foundation stated.
As part of boosting privacy in humanitarian practice, ZF will demonstrate how its technology can directly improve lives through the Shielded Aid Initiative (SAI). This year, SAI will conduct pilots to build credibility, explore new partnerships globally, and provide direct support to organizations that provide aid around the globe.
To cultivate a stronger community, the Foundation will conduct three major events in March, May, and October. It stated:
ZEC trades at $312.99, dipping 7% for a $5.16 billion market cap, enough to place it among the 20 largest crypto projects.
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