Zakura has unveiled a new cryptography toolkit that could significantly speed up private Zcash transactions, with the team reporting that wallet-side transaction creation can fall from several seconds to below 200 milliseconds in some cases.
The open-source software, called Zakura Common, is designed to reduce the computational workload involved in generating shielded ZEC payments. Zakura said mobile proof generation is more than 14 times faster with the new stack, while desktop transaction creation has improved by more than five times.
Zcash’s shielded transactions protect the sender, recipient and transferred amount from public view. However, creating those transactions requires wallets to perform complex cryptographic calculations to prove that the concealed payment remains valid under the network’s rules.
Because that work happens on the user’s device before the transaction is broadcast, it can become a major source of latency.
Zakura said its new libraries can bring private transaction construction from more than three seconds to under 200 milliseconds in certain cases. The team also reported more than 21 times faster Sinsemilla hashing, over 1.5 times faster trial decryption and a four- to eightfold improvement in zk-SNARK verification.
Zcash co-founder Sean Bowe said the performance gains should benefit both shielded wallets adopting Zakura Common and full nodes running Zakura.
Open-Source Tools Require No Network Change
Wallet developers can integrate Zakura Common without waiting for a Zcash network upgrade or modifying consensus rules. The libraries are compatible with the existing network, allowing developers to deploy the improvements at the application level.
Zakura has already incorporated the new stack into its 1.3.0 node software, while Vizor Wallet is among the first wallet projects to adopt the technology.
The release addresses one piece of a broader scaling challenge facing Zcash. Faster block production alone would not eliminate the other performance constraints affecting the network, including transaction verification, wallet synchronization, blockchain data requirements and proof generation.
Zakura’s broader goal is to eventually support more than 50,000 private transactions per second, a throughput comparable with major card-payment networks. The project has previously described existing wallet software as capable of roughly one transaction per second.
The new cryptography stack specifically targets the time users’ devices spend constructing shielded payments, complementing other efforts to improve Zcash’s overall performance.
Zakura said wallets using the libraries should synchronize more quickly, while full nodes could benefit from faster transaction validation and fewer orphaned blocks. The team also said its implementation can already support the 25-second block interval proposed for NU7, Zcash’s next major upgrade.
Zakura Builds on Its Scaling Initiative
Zakura is a separate Zcash node implementation led by co-founder Sean Bowe and developed with Dev Ojha. Its software operates independently of the implementation maintained by the Zcash Foundation.
The project is serving as an early testing environment for wider scaling efforts, including Project Tachyon, which has also adopted the new stack.
ZEC rose roughly 5% to about $839 following the announcement, although the cryptocurrency later came under pressure as the broader digital-asset market declined.
