Zcash (ZEC) April 2022 Network Upgrade 5 and Halo Arc

Zcash is a cryptocurrency built on Bitcoin’s code base. It is dedicated to protecting privacy. It is the first digital currency to combine the immutability of the blockchain with advanced cryptographic techniques to provide secure and completely confidential transactions. This technology is designed for everyone who is interested in exercising their right to privacy.

Matt Markewicz & Chris Sutherland about the Network Upgrade 5 and Halo Arc stated, Network Upgrade 5 (NU5), the sixth major upgrade to Zcash, is expected to go live in mid-April of 2022. In conjunction with various features included with NU5, the Zcash team is also introducing Halo Arc, a suite of solutions that bundle new features and products with protocol upgrades like NU5 into regular releases.

The NU5 upgrade includes one of the most coveted features for privacy-centric users, the Halo 2 proving system, which does not require a trusted setup. The other significant features of this upgrade enhance privacy and scalability on the Zcash network through recursive cryptography, proof aggregation, and blockchain succinctness.

Further Matt Markewicz:  This April, Zcash will undergo its first significant network upgrade since 2020. Let’s look at what users can expect after the upgrade and what’s coming down the road for Zcash.

Network Upgrade 5 (NU5) encompasses features that lay the foundation for increased privacy and scalability. The most significant change is moving to the Halo 2 proving system, eliminating the need for a trusted setup, and bringing recursive proof composition to Zcash.

So, what does this mean for everyday users? Halo enables enhanced scalability and privacy by changing the underlying cryptographic primitives that power the system. End-users can easily verify large amounts of data by confirming a proof of proofs, like zero-knowledge inception.

And what about that trustless setup? Zcash’s legacy proving system requires that a select group of people destroy “toxic waste” or data that could allow a bad actor to mint ZEC arbitrarily without other users in the system knowing.

TLDR – a trustless setup means you won’t have to deal with this anymore.

After NU5 hits mainnet, the Zcash team expects to shift to a more product-centric focus by building more developer tooling and working on scalability and user experience initiatives.

There are even rumblings of migrating to Proof of Stake by implementing components of the Cosmos stack. IBC? Interchain shielded assets? The multichain design space is still largely unexplored, but an IBC-compatible Zcash running on PoS would open up a world of new use cases.

It helps to have a comprehensive look Halo Arc Overview at the upgrade and its implications for Zcash. Those who want to know more might want to subscribe to Messari Enterprise subscribers.