TL;DR: Farside’s Zcash table records a $15.2 million inflow for ZCSH on October 21. Two positive sessions improved the recent picture, but the displayed October 2–21 period still totals $70.5 million of net withdrawals.
Demand returned to the Zcash investment product tracked under ticker ZCSH on Wednesday, producing its strongest positive session in the October dates displayed by Farside Investors.
The research firm’s flow table records $15.2 million in net inflows for October 21, following $1.6 million the previous day. Combined, the two sessions brought in $16.8 million.
That improvement comes after several withdrawals earlier in the month. Adding the observations shown from October 2 through October 21 produces a net outflow of $70.5 million. The calculation covers those displayed dates, rather than claiming a complete calendar-month total.
The product’s ticker appears in Grayscale Zcash Trust’s August SEC filing, which described the planned listing and name change. That filing provides background on the vehicle; it is not the source of Wednesday’s daily flow estimate.
The current reading comes from Farside’s compiled dataset. It should be attributed as such, rather than represented as a fresh issuer filing or an independently audited record of every purchase of ZEC.
Investment-product subscriptions can be a useful measure of demand through brokerage channels. They do not show all buying across exchanges, identify the investors making the allocations or measure the use of Zcash’s privacy features.
They also differ from trading volume in the fund’s shares. Shares can change hands between investors without the same dollar amount entering the vehicle as new capital. That is why a flow figure and a busy trading session need not tell the same story.
Wednesday’s inflow is meaningful against the recent sequence because it adds a second positive observation after net selling. The larger period remains negative, so describing it as a complete reversal in October demand would go beyond the numbers.
The next comparison is with subsequent fund-flow observations, not an assumed reaction in the token price. The two-day improvement can be reported on its own without assigning it to a particular network announcement or market narrative.
This article was written by the News Desk and edited by Samuel Rae.
TL;DR: The Zcash Foundation says it merged fixes for Zebra nodes that stopped syncing near the chain tip. The October 21 update places the work ahead of a stable NU7 release and reminds operators of the older client’s approaching stop date.
Zcash’s preparation for NU7 includes a less glamorous but essential task: making sure nodes keep following the chain reliably.
In an engineering update published Wednesday, the Zcash Foundation described fixes for synchronization problems reported after Zebra 7.0.0-rc.0. Its team also confirmed the same underlying cause on a mainnet node.
The changes adjust how Zebra requests blocks from peers and handles failed downloads. At the time of the update, the work was merged into the development branch but had not appeared in a published release. The foundation described Zebra 7.0.0 as the likely next stable NU7 release.
That release distinction matters. A fix being accepted into development does not mean an exchange, wallet provider or individual node is already running it.
Operators normally receive the benefit when an appropriate release is published and deployed. Services relying on their own nodes then need to establish that those nodes have caught up and continue to follow the network correctly.
The update also describes improvements to handling ZEC amounts through Zebra’s RPC types and a migration guide for services moving from zcashd’s interface. These are integration concerns that can affect the reliability of downstream systems even when they do not change what an ordinary transaction looks like.
The foundation repeated that Zebra 6.4.x is designed to stop around November 2, making an upgrade to the NU7 release an operational requirement for affected mainnet users. The broader NU7 planning thread provides the surrounding upgrade schedule.
The October 21 report covers engineering work from October 6–19. It should be read as a dated account of readiness, not as proof that every item was already deployed across the network or that every subsequent release decision had been completed.
There is also no basis in this update for describing the synchronization issue as a theft of coins. The reported problem concerns node behavior and the work needed to deliver a stable client ahead of the upgrade.
This article was written by the News Desk and edited by Samuel Rae.
TL;DR: Zcash’s NU7 upgrade is targeted for early November, promising 25-second blocks, while final activation parameters still require implementation work.
Zcash developers are moving closer to a substantial change in the network’s basic rhythm. The NU7 schedule points to November 5 for mainnet activation, with the upgrade designed to shorten target block spacing from 75 seconds to 25 seconds.
That change could make multiple confirmations arrive much sooner than under the existing parameters. NU7 also includes the Network Sustainability Mechanism and changes affecting older transaction formats, including the retirement of legacy Sprout-related functionality.
But a date on a community roadmap is not the same thing as a completed activation. The development teams still have to lock down the mainnet height in software, finish releases and ensure the network’s operators are ready. The Zcash Foundation’s latest engineering notes describe syncing fixes and work on the Zebra node release needed for NU7.
For users, the visible effect should be quicker block confirmations once the change is actually live. For node operators and infrastructure providers, the near-term task is upgrading carefully enough to remain on the correct chain. Zcash’s privacy architecture is not being replaced wholesale; this is an engineering upgrade with real compatibility consequences.
Written by the News Desk and edited by Samuel Rae.
TL;DR: Zakura has proposed assigning a separate viewing key to each Zcash swap made through NEAR Intents, reducing how much transaction history a future attacker might be able to link.
Zcash’s privacy model is built around shielding transaction details, but cross-chain swaps introduce awkward points where information can become public. A new proposal from Zcash software developer Zakura focuses on one of those points: the refund addresses involved when shielded ZEC moves through NEAR Intents.
A publicly visible address can be linked to a wallet’s viewing-key structure. If future cryptographic advances allowed an attacker to recover or exploit that relationship, exposing one address could reveal more of a user’s transaction history than intended.
Zakura’s proposed answer is to give each swap its own viewing key while leaving spending authority under the user’s control. A compromised viewing key would then reveal information related to one swap, rather than opening a window onto an entire wallet’s past.
The design also contemplates private information retrieval, allowing software to locate relevant refunds without broadcasting which addresses a user is checking.
This isn’t a response to a demonstrated quantum attack against Zcash. It is preventative engineering based on a possible future risk. The proposal remains under review, and supporters have not yet delivered a widely deployed solution.
That distinction matters. Good privacy work often means fixing linkability problems before they become exploitable, but protection must still be implemented, audited and adopted by wallets before it benefits ordinary users.
Written by the News Desk and edited by Samuel Rae.
TL;DR: Zakura has proposed assigning a separate viewing key to each Zcash swap made through NEAR Intents, reducing how much transaction history a future attacker might be able to link.
Zcash’s privacy model is built around shielding transaction details, but cross-chain swaps introduce awkward points where information can become public. A new proposal from Zcash software developer Zakura focuses on one of those points: the refund addresses involved when shielded ZEC moves through NEAR Intents.
A publicly visible address can be linked to a wallet’s viewing-key structure. If future cryptographic advances allowed an attacker to recover or exploit that relationship, exposing one address could reveal more of a user’s transaction history than intended.
Zakura’s proposed answer is to give each swap its own viewing key while leaving spending authority under the user’s control. A compromised viewing key would then reveal information related to one swap, rather than opening a window onto an entire wallet’s past.
The design also contemplates private information retrieval, allowing software to locate relevant refunds without broadcasting which addresses a user is checking.
This isn’t a response to a demonstrated quantum attack against Zcash. It is preventative engineering based on a possible future risk. The proposal remains under review, and supporters have not yet delivered a widely deployed solution.
That distinction matters. Good privacy work often means fixing linkability problems before they become exploitable, but protection must still be implemented, audited and adopted by wallets before it benefits ordinary users.
Written by the News Desk and edited by Samuel Rae.
TL;DR: Investigators have raised new concerns about stolen crypto flowing into Zcash, following earlier tracing of roughly 2,746 ZEC linked to the Bitget breach. Shielded transactions obscure details after entry, but do not prove that the underlying network has been compromised.
Privacy is a legitimate feature of cryptocurrency. It is also what makes Zcash a difficult destination for investigators trying to follow money stolen in a hack.
An October 17 warning from on-chain investigator Specter drew attention to reported flows tied to several crypto security incidents, including Bitget and other reported thefts. The warning follows a more detailed September 30 tracing of approximately 2,746 ZEC, then valued at about $3.9 million, entering Zcash’s Ironwood shielded pool from wallets linked by investigators to the Bitget attacker.
Before assets reach a shielded pool, analysts can sometimes identify funding wallets, transfers and swapping patterns on public chains. Once inside the pool, the usual visible trail becomes harder to follow because shielded transfers do not publicly reveal the same information about sender, recipient and amount.
That does not make Zcash’s cryptography broken. Nor does the appearance of suspect funds establish wrongdoing by every person who uses private transactions. It illustrates the longstanding tension between financial privacy and investigations into theft.
The precise combined total for flows from the newer incidents remains less firmly established than the earlier Bitget transactions. Estimates should not be lumped together without transaction-level verification, particularly when the same funds may move repeatedly through intermediaries.
What investigators are highlighting is a recurring tactic: thieves may leave clues before entering a privacy system, but tracing the subsequent path becomes substantially more difficult. For exchanges and forensic teams, the most useful intervention may happen before stolen assets disappear from public view.
Bitcoin Magazine
Bitcoin Privacy Breakthrough a Zcash Killer? | Misha Komorov, Alloc Innit
Researchers have proposed a way to make Bitcoin private without changing Bitcoin itself. Misha Komarov, co-founder of alloc/init, explains Shielded Bitcoin: zero-knowledge proofs that hide the sender, receiver, and amount of a Bitcoin transfer, with no soft fork, no custodians, and no bridges. He covers how Bitcoin PIPEs make it possible and what the proposal still needs. It is a research proposal, not a finished product.
Chapters:
0:00 Shielded Bitcoin: Private Bitcoin Transactions With Zero-Knowledge Proofs
0:38 How Bitcoin PIPEs Make Privacy Possible Without a Soft Fork
1:42 Do Indexers and ZK Rollups Require Trust?
3:16 Shielded Bitcoin vs. Monero and Zcash
4:21 What Privacy Shielded Bitcoin Protects
5:59 How Private Are Early Users? The Small Privacy Set Problem
7:37 Is Shielded Bitcoin an Altcoin Killer?
9:12 Fees, Block Space, and Larger Shielded Transactions
10:50 Who Needs Private Bitcoin? Wrench Attacks and Corporate Treasuries
12:20 Dark Pools, Governments, and the Next Wave of Bitcoin Buyers
DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this show are those of the participants and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of BTC Inc., Bitcoin Magazine, or any affiliated entities. This content is provided for informational and educational purposes only and should not be construed as investment, legal, tax, or accounting advice. Nothing contained in this show constitutes a solicitation, recommendation, endorsement, or offer to buy or sell any securities or financial instruments. Viewers should consult their own advisors before making financial or business decisions.
This post Bitcoin Privacy Breakthrough a Zcash Killer? | Misha Komorov, Alloc Innit first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Patrick Green.
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