Zcash is promoting a round of infrastructure upgrades around privacy payments. The newly released full-node client, Zakura, is considered the first official landing component of this route. The team wants to move Zcash from the current level of close to one private transaction per second to the capacity to pay network level.
Zakura solves node synchronization and compatibility first
Zakura has published version 1.0.0, maintained by Sean Bowe, an early member of Zcash Zero Knowledge Password, and Dev Ojha, head of Valar Group. It was mentioned that the team was funded by private ZEC donations rather than by companies or foundations.
The software was developed on the basis of Zebra client fork in Zcash Foundation but was independently maintained. It supports data tailoring, which allows for the removal of historical block data that are no longer needed at nodes, thus significantly reducing disk occupancy.
The team also provided post-cut chain snapshots of about 11 GB. The new node does not need to pull complete historical data from head to head and can be launched in two minutes after downloading a snapshot. According to the team, the process was about 680 times faster than it had been.
Another focus is compatibility. The original client zcashd will end its life cycle on 18 July, and Zakura will provide a compatible model to keep the wallet and exchange ' s existing access interface as far as possible and reduce the movement resistance.
Target points to more than 50,000 rounds per second.
The team used the processing capabilities of Visa and Mastercard as a reference, stating that 50,000 transactions per second were a “bottom line”, not the end goal. Based on these measurements, if the existing privacy certificate structure of Zcash were to be followed, the nodes would need to continuously process validation data exceeding 500 MB per second and the current software would be unbearable.
To compress the certification burden, Sean Bowe-led Project Tachyon is moving forward with the Recursive Certification Program. In short, to cover tens of thousands of certificates with a single certificate, reducing the volume of data on the consensus layer would need to be checked one by one.
The aim in this direction, according to the report, is to reduce the nodal validation pressure to an achievable level of engineering, providing a basis for high-level private transactions.
The main network upgrade was synchronized on July 28th.
Even if the nodal validation is more efficient, the end of the wallet faces a separate problem. Because Zcash hides the payee information, it is not possible to ask the server directly which transactions belong to itself, or to reveal its own information. As a result, wallets often require a large amount of data to be downloaded and self-screened, which also limits the speed of processing.
Valar Group is working on private information retrieval technology, hoping that the wallet will obtain its own data from the server without exposing the search target. If the programme matures, the end-of-barrel performance bottlenecks are expected to be eased.
In addition, Zakura has an experimental fast-dissemination system that aims to reduce the time of new blocks to nodes within 0.5 seconds in the default network. This function is, however, currently closed by default.
Zakura has supported the Ironwood upgrade that came into effect on July 28, i.e. NU 6.3 since its launch. The upgrade will be activated at the height of the main network block 3,428,143.
At the heart of this upgrade is the addition of a turnstile mechanism to the Orchard shield boundary, which limits the size of the funds that can be released. This is related to an old loophole discovered at the end of May this year.
At that time, the researchers found that Orchard had demonstrated that the circuits were defective, that it was theoretically possible for the attackers to forge ZEC and that it would not leave identifiable traces on the chain. The developer then made an emergency shutdown of Orchard in early June and repaired the circuits through NU6.2.
However, as the zero-knowledge certificate does not by itself disclose the amount and flow of money within the transaction, it cannot be traced back to confirm whether counterfeit currency has occurred in the past. The Ironwood approach is to block Orchard 's new deposit path, keep restricted exit channels and limit any possible unusual balances to the border.
As described in the report, this means that normal balances can still be moved out over time, while potential unusual supplies are more difficult to reach, thus restoring market confidence in the reliability of ZEC supply.