Zcash developers have released the first live version of a new node client, dubbed Zakura, that aims to catapult the privacy coin’s throughput from roughly one shielded transaction per second to payment-network scale.
The Electric Coin Company, which maintains Zcash, said Zakura is the initial piece of a multi-phase plan to handle 50,000 transactions per second – a level that would put it on par with Visa’s global processing capacity. Today, Zcash’s shielded (private) transactions are computationally expensive, limiting the network to about 1 TPS even as its transparent transactions run faster.
Zakura is built on a modular architecture. It separates the core transaction logic from the consensus layer, allowing each component to be optimized independently. That design, the team said, should drastically cut the time needed to verify shielded transactions without sacrificing privacy.
The node is still experimental. The company warned that Zakura is not yet ready for production use on the main Zcash network. Developers plan to test it on a dedicated testnet before any migration of real funds.
For ZEC holders, the upgrade addresses the most persistent criticism of the protocol: that its privacy feature is too slow for mainstream payments. Competing privacy-focused coins and layer-2 solutions have long argued that Zcash’s cryptographic overhead makes it impractical for high-volume use. If Zakura delivers on its 50,000 TPS target, that argument would vanish.
The broader privacy landscape is also shifting. Regulators in several jurisdictions have stepped up scrutiny of anonymous transactions, while some exchanges have delisted privacy coins altogether. A faster, still-shielded Zcash could face renewed compliance pressure – or, alternatively, prove that privacy and scale can coexist.
The next concrete milestone to watch is the launch of Zakura on a public testnet, likely later this year. If that testing phase clears, the client would be proposed for mainnet activation via a network upgrade.
Zcash launches Zakura software to target Visa-scale private payments
Zcash, a privacy-focused cryptocurrency, released Zakura, an experimental network client that aims to raise private transactions from roughly one per second to 50,000 per second. The project could address the speed problem affecting Zcash holders and make private payments more practical, but Zakura must be tested before it can handle real funds.