Key highlights:

  • Zcash developers say new cryptography optimizations can cut private transaction time to less than 200ms, down from over three seconds
  • The speed improvements will make Zcash more practical for everyday private payments, particularly on mobile devices, without requiring a network upgrade
  • Zcash price spiked by over 80% in August, inching toward $900 for the first time in eight years

Zcash developers are eyeing a major improvement in private transaction speeds, potentially cutting times from over three seconds to under 200 milliseconds. The development comes on the heels of ZEC surging by over 80% in August, giving the privacy cryptocurrency another catalyst as developers race to make its core privacy technology more usable

Zcash targets sub-200ms private transactions using Zakura Common

Zakura, a Zcash node software project led by co-founder Sean Bowe, released Zakura Common, an open-source suite of cryptography and protocol libraries aimed at improving the performance of Zcash wallets and nodes. 

According to Zakura, the new software can reduce private transaction construction to under 200 milliseconds, compared to more than three seconds under the previous implementation. Per the benchmarks, mobile proof generation improved by over 14 times, while desktop performance increased by five times.

The optimization targets work that happens locally on a user’s device before a shielded transaction is broadcast. Zcash shielded transactions use zero-knowledge proofs to hide transaction details while allowing the network to verify that the transaction follows the protocol’s rules. 

Zakura also reported more than a 21-fold improvement in Sinsemilla hashing and fourfold to eightfold gains in zk-SNARK verification. The improvements can be adopted by wallet and node developers without requiring a Zcash network upgrade or consensus change.

Zcash has undergone a raft of network upgrades designed to improve its privacy and scalability functionalities. Last month, the network rolled out the Ironwood upgrade, with another upgrade targeting quantum computing risks scheduled for November 2026.

ZEC price surges in August

The Zakura Common development comes on the heels of a bullish rally for Zcash’s native token. According to crypto price aggregators, ZEC surged from $481 in early August to reach an eight-year high of $880 toward the end of the month.

At press time, ZEC is trading at around $837, with its market capitalization of $14.1 billion making it the 11th-largest cryptocurrency. The asset’s daily trading volume currently sits at $1.25 billion, a near-1% increase from the previous day.

 

Apart from a streak of technical improvements, Grayscale’s Zcash ETF added to the tailwind behind ZEC’s meteoric rally in August. Analysts at the firm disclosed that Zcash can snag a portion of Bitcoin’s market capitalization, citing its privacy features and steady streak of network upgrades.

Despite a bullish April, ZEC price is still 85% below its all-time high of $5,941. For context, Bitcoin’s strong recovery in August sees it sit at 37.88% below its price peak of $126,198 that it set in October 2025.