The brief

Analyst view

• Shielded ZEC supply grew to 30% of total (4.9M ZEC) via adoption of Zodl and other wallets.
• May 2026 critical vulnerability in Orchard pool patched; July Ironwood upgrade replaced Orchard with quantum-resistant design.
• ZODL (team from former ECC) raised $25M seed from Paradigm, a16z crypto, Winklevoss Capital and others.

Technical approach

As reported

Zero-knowledge proofs

zk-SNARKs for privacy

zk-SNARKs prove transaction validity without revealing sender, receiver, or amount. Enables transactions recorded on-chain while preserving privacy.

Shielded pools

Sapling, Orchard, and Ironwood designs

Multiple privacy pools: Sapling enabled on-chain privacy, Orchard improved proof speed, Ironwood added quantum resistance.

Wallet infrastructure

Zodl wallet (formerly Zashi)

Mobile wallet defaults to shielded transactions. Unified Addresses auto-route to the most private available pool.

Quantum readiness

Ironwood quantum-resistant records

Ironwood upgrade July 2026 replaced Orchard with new pool design including transaction structure resistant to future quantum computers.

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