Zcash (ZEC) developers plan to add quantum-resistant signatures in January, starting with the transparent pool that holds about 70% of issued coins, though no activation date is set.
Key Points:
- Zakura engineers target January for hash-based signature support on Zcash, but no network activation date has been confirmed.
- The first phase covers transparent payments, a pool holding about 11.96 million of 16.98 million issued ZEC.
- Shielded payments need separate work, and a broader post-quantum project aims for the end of 2027.
Zcash Quantum Upgrade
"Our team plans for post-quantum signature opcodes to land in Zcash in January," Roman Akhtariev, an engineer at Zakura, wrote in an engineering post.
The opcodes, or instructions, would let the network check hash-based signatures, a method of approving payments designed to resist quantum attacks, with Winternitz one-time signatures named as one option.
Those signatures rest on different mathematics than the elliptic-curve keys wallets use today, so a breakthrough against current keys would not automatically defeat them.
Zakura is one of the programs used to run the Zcash network. January is its development target, and no mainnet activation date has been announced.
The plan covers transparent payments, the public side of the network, which work much like Bitcoin (BTC) transfers, with addresses and amounts visible on the blockchain. That pool holds about 11.96 million of the 16.98 million ZEC issued, or roughly seven in 10 coins, according to ZecStats data. Zakura has also built a lookup tool based on private information retrieval, available in experimental form in the Vizor wallet, that lets users check balances without showing a server which addresses belong together.
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Justin Drake Warning
The post followed a Thursday warning from Ethereum (ETH) researcher Justin Drake, who urged holders to prepare for a so-called "bunker mode." Drake said that, in a worst case, AI could find a shortcut through the mathematics protecting Bitcoin and Ether wallets "in months, not years."
No practical attack on those wallet keys has been demonstrated so far. Markets reacted anyway. ZEC ended Thursday near $1,185, down about 11% over the preceding week, before trading near $1,240 on Friday, CoinGecko data showed.
Zcash Shielded Roadmap
Shielded payments, which hide the sender, recipient and amount, need separate work. Zcash's own quantum recovery design warns that an attacker holding a recipient's address could save encrypted payment records today and try to decrypt them after a future mathematical breakthrough.
The January target follows months of quantum planning across the Zcash ecosystem. Josh Swihart, chief executive of Zcash Open Development Lab, said at a Miami conference in May that the project aimed for full post-quantum status within 12 to 18 months. A July network upgrade introduced quantum-recoverable Ironwood notes, and Shielded Labs launched its Epoch project on Oct. 1 with a goal of production-ready post-quantum cryptography by the end of 2027.
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