Zcash Privacy Transactions Aim for Near-Instant Confirmation Speed

Zakura has released a new open-source cryptography toolkit that could substantially reduce the time required to create private Zcash transactions, with some tests showing transaction generation falling from more than three seconds to under 200 milliseconds.

The toolkit, known as Zakura Common, focuses on the computational work performed by wallets when users send shielded ZEC. Zakura said its new stack makes mobile proof generation more than 14 times faster and improves desktop transaction creation by more than five times.

Shielded Zcash transactions are designed to conceal the sender, recipient and amount being transferred. To maintain that privacy while proving the transaction is valid, the wallet must complete complex cryptographic calculations before broadcasting the payment.

Since those calculations take place on the user’s device, they can become a major source of delay even before the transaction reaches the Zcash network.

Zakura said the new stack can cut private transaction creation to below 200 milliseconds in some cases. It also reported that Sinsemilla hashing is more than 21 times faster, trial decryption has improved by over 1.5 times and zk-SNARK verification now runs four to eight times faster.

Zcash co-founder Sean Bowe said the performance gains should benefit both shielded wallets that adopt Zakura Common and full nodes running Zakura’s software.

No Consensus Change Needed

The new libraries can be deployed without a Zcash protocol upgrade or changes to consensus rules. Developers can integrate the open-source tools into wallets operating on the current network.

Zakura has incorporated the stack into its 1.3.0 node software, while Vizor Wallet is among the first wallets to adopt it.

The toolkit tackles one of several performance challenges facing Zcash. Scaling the network involves more than increasing block speed; transaction verification, wallet synchronization, blockchain data requirements and client-side proof generation can all affect performance.

Zakura has set a long-term target of processing more than 50,000 private transactions per second, a level comparable with major card networks. The project has previously estimated that current wallet software is limited to roughly one transaction per second.

Zakura Common focuses on the client-side portion of that problem by reducing the time a user’s device needs to construct a shielded payment.

The team said the new libraries should also allow wallets to synchronize more quickly. Full nodes could benefit from faster transaction checks and fewer orphaned blocks. Zakura added that its software can already support the 25-second block intervals proposed under NU7, Zcash’s next major upgrade.

Zakura Expands Its Scaling Push

Zakura is an independent Zcash node implementation led by co-founder Sean Bowe with Dev Ojha. It operates separately from the implementation maintained by the Zcash Foundation.

The project is being used to test broader scaling improvements, including work under Project Tachyon, which has also adopted the new stack.

ZEC initially gained around 5% following the announcement, trading near $839, before weakening alongside a broader decline across the crypto market.