Zakura has launched new libraries that drastically reduce private transaction preparation time in Zcash to under 200 ms, enhancing efficiency.
Zakura has introduced new cryptographic libraries aimed at significantly improving the efficiency of private transactions within the Zcash ecosystem. The latest release, announced on August 29, allows for a dramatic reduction in preparation time for these transactions—from over three seconds to under 200 milliseconds in certain scenarios.
Introducing Zakura Common.
We just shipped 14x faster proving, 21x faster hashing, 1.5x faster trial decryption, and 4-8x faster verification.
New releases of Zakura and wallets that use Zakura Common will benefit immediately.
— Zakura (@ZakuraZcash) August 29, 2026
This enhancement focuses on the computations conducted by users’ devices prior to submitting transactions rather than on the confirmation process on the blockchain itself. Notably, these improvements do not require any modifications to the existing Zcash protocol, and the libraries are licensed under MIT/Apache 2.0, facilitating integration by wallet developers.
Performance Improvements
Internal tests by Zakura revealed substantial performance boosts across various functions:
- Proof generation is over 14 times quicker on mobile platforms and more than five times on desktops.
- Hashing with Sinsemilla is enhanced by over 21 times.
- Trial decryption speeds have increased by 1.5 times.
- zk-SNARK verification has improved 4 to 8 times.
The speed enhancements stem from a series of optimizations rather than a singular change, drawing from established cryptographic techniques and tailored improvements for the Zcash framework. The key development resides in a consolidated repository known as zakura-core/common, which includes revised versions of librustzcash and additional Rust libraries.
Furthermore, the Zakura team is working on zakura-core/wallet-libraries, which will provide components for private wallets and third-party integrations, with future additions planned for Private Information Retrieval (PIR) tools to enhance user privacy.
The announcement also highlighted the release of Zakura version 1.3.0 on the same day, transitioning to Zakura Common and urging third-party developers to adopt this new framework.
Scaling Zcash's Capabilities
According to the Zakura team, their network nodes are capable of managing the proposed reduction in block intervals from 75 seconds to 25 seconds, as detailed in ZIP 218. This proposal aims to decrease the latency while preserving rollback protections, although the actual latency cut may fall short of three times.
Additionally, the proposal imposes limits on private pool operations for Sapling and Orchard, aiming to cut daily data synchronization volume from 271 MB to 169 MB and reduce trial decryptions from 4.8 million to 2.3 million.
The throughput for Orchard transactions is projected to rise from 2.9 to 6.6 transactions per second. This comes after Zcash's recent update on July 28, which addressed a critical vulnerability and introduced a new privacy feature named Ironwood.
