Electric Coin Company, which is behind Zcash’s cryptocurrency network, has announced that Zcash will soon undergo the most significant upgrade ever. Zcash’s development team released 5.0.0, which is compatible with the NU5 upgrade. This will take place on May 31 at block height 1687.104.
Electric Coin Company, Zcash prepare for network upgrade
Zcash will be the second largest privacy-centric cryptocurrency network in market capitalization. A significant upgrade is expected to take place around May 31. The binaries for Zcash 5.0.0 have been released by Electric Coin Company and Zcash development team. They can be downloaded from the Zcash web portal. Zcash developers are asking participants to upgrade to either the current or future version of the codebase.
According to the Electric Coin Company’s (ECC) most recent blog post, NU5 plans to implement the Orchard shielded payment protocol and the Halo proving system. The firm says that it will “remove reliance on complex setup ceremonies.” “The efficiencies built into this upgrade make possible — for the first time ever — private, trustless digital cash payments on mobile phones,” ECC’s blog post notes. “Halo also paves the way for increased interoperability by providing a system that could unlock private cross-chain proofs at scale.”
Zcash founder Zooko Wilcox-O’Hearn further tweetedInformation about Wednesday’s release. It’s here — Zcashd 5.0.0 — If the Zcash users choose to run zcashd 5.0.0, then at the end of this month Zcash Network Upgrade 5 will activate on mainnet,” Zooko said. “This is a historic step forward for human society. This is historic because of two things: It puts the soundest money in the world—Zcash—on a foundation of long-term, scalable, and extensible cryptography. 2. It marks the maturation of zero-knowledge proofs into a general-purpose technology.”
Zcash founder Morris continued his work:
Network Upgrade 5 moves Zcash onto the foundation of a completely new Zero-Knowledge Proof system: Zcash Halo, the first zero-knowledge proof system that is both (a) efficient and recursive, and (b) doesn’t rely on Ceremonies (“trusted setups”).
ECC Executive: ‘Complex Trusted Setup Ceremonies Are Now a Thing of the Past’
According to ECC, the upgrade has been under “extensive review at both the specification and implementation levels” and the team used third-party audits from NCC and QEDIT as well. Mary Maller (ETHF researcher in cryptography) was also part of the review team. Maller checked the “theoretical reasoning behind the zero-knowledge and soundness of the protocol” in the Halo2 security review. Josh Swihart, the senior vice president of growth, product strategy, and regulatory affairs at ECC, said the upgrade will be the protocol’s largest.
“NU5 is the largest network upgrade in Zcash history. By utilizing the Halo proving system and Orchard shielded payment protocol, complex trusted setup ceremonies are now a thing of the past, and users can make private, trustless digital cash payments on mobile phones,” Swihart said in a note sent to Bitcoin.com News. “The upgrade marks a significant milestone, not only for Zcash, for the field of zero-knowledge cryptography.”
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