Share this article
Zcash Sets Roadmap for Blockchain Upgrades in 2018
The zcash development team is planning a series of network upgrades for next year, according to a roadmap published today.
By Stan Higgins
Updated Sep 13, 2021, 7:15 a.m. Published Dec 8, 2017, 10:45 p.m.
The zcash development team is planning a series of network upgrades for next year, according to a roadmap published today.
Writing on the zcash blog, co-founder Zooko Wilcox and CTO Nathan Wilcox detailed two milestone upgrades – "Overwinter" and "Sapling" – the latter of which was discussed in a roadmap update earlier this year. According to the post, the goal of next year's upgrades is to "further upgrade zcash's performance, security, and usability."
STORY CONTINUES BELOW
Don't miss another story.Subscribe to the Crypto Daybook Americas Newsletter today. See all newsletters
The first update, Overwinter, is scheduled to go live in June 2018. Per the post, that upgrade is focused on "making itself and future network upgrades safer for users, even in the case of governance contention." Though light on detail at present, the Wilcoxes said that future details about the update would be released in a future blog post.
The second one, set to take place in September, is centered around its "Sapling" protocol, which is aimed at boosting the capability of the cryptocurrency's privacy-oriented shielded transactions.
The two wrote:
"Sapling will activate the Sapling protocol update, bringing orders of magnitude improvements in both time and memory to shielded transactions, making mobile wallet support feasible. Additionally, Sapling will rely on the Powers of Tau open-participation parameter setup, largely mitigating concerns about the parameter setup risks for zkSNARK applications (including other applications outside of Zcash)."
The post concludes by suggesting that other upgrades may be in the offing, including functionality for smart contracts and research into the proof-of-stake algorithm.
"Possibilities include scalability improvements to allow practically unlimited numbers of transactions, novel consensus algorithms such as Proof-of-Stake, and private and scalable smart contracts," they wrote.
Disclosure: CoinDesk is a subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, which has an ownership stake in Zcash Company, the for-profit entity that develops the zcash protocol.
Code graphic image via Shutterstock
More For You
What to know:
- As of October 2025, GoPlus has generated $4.7M in total revenue across its product lines. The GoPlus App is the primary revenue driver, contributing $2.5M (approx. 53%), followed by the SafeToken Protocol at $1.7M.
- GoPlus Intelligence's Token Security API averaged 717 million monthly calls year-to-date in 2025 , with a peak of nearly 1 billion calls in February 2025. Total blockchain-level requests, including transaction simulations, averaged an additional 350 million per month.
- Since its January 2025 launch , the $GPS token has registered over $5B in total spot volume and $10B in derivatives volume in 2025. Monthly spot volume peaked in March 2025 at over $1.1B , while derivatives volume peaked the same month at over $4B.
More For You
Coinbase Sees Crypto Recovery Ahead as Liquidity Improves and Fed Rate Cut Odds Climb
The crypto exchange also took note of a so-called AI bubble that continues to go strong and a weaker U.S. dollar.
What to know:
- Coinbase Institutional is seeing a potential December recovery in crypto, citing improving liquidity and a shift in macroeconomic conditions that could favor risk assets like bitcoin.
- The firm's optimism is driven by rising odds of Federal Reserve rate cuts, with markets pricing in a 93% chance easing next week, and improving liquidity conditions.
- Several recent institutional developments, including Vanguard's crypto ETF policy reversal and Bank of America's greenlighting of crypto allocations, have contributed to bitcoin's rebound from recent lows.
Top Stories
