ZCash could soon receive a very important upgrade. According to Nathan Wilcox, CTO of the ZCash Company, the Sapling protocol would allow shielded transfers to be 100 smaller in size. At the same time, he mentioned that they would probably be six times faster. The information has been released by Wilcox during a conversation with CoinDesk.
ZCash to Receive an Important Upgrade
Shielded transactions on the ZCash network are clearly computationally heavy to support. Although this is one of ZCash’s main characteristics, there are some exchanges that cannot support them. These shielded transactions allow users to secure their data using zk-snarks.
On October 29, the network is expected to activate a new upgrade. That would be very positive for those using privacy transactions. The upgrade is known as Sapling and would be reducing transaction times and sizes. This would allow wallets and exchanges to be able to accept shielded transactions.
On the matter, Nathan Wilcox, commented:
“The Sapling protocol will allow shielded transfers to be completed with about 100 times less memory and probably six or more times faster. […] We hope to see a migration toward shielded Sapling adoption, and as that migration continues we hope to transition to privacy-by-default when the time is right.”
Since light clients will be able to support Sapling, users will have a much better experience with ZCash. Light clients do not store the full data from the blockchain but are still secure to use.
Wilcox explained that the intention is to build a light wallet that would add privacy protections ‘even against a service provider.’ Sapling will also be encouraging ‘diversified addresses.’ This makes it easier for exchanges to support more users that use this transaction type. The same wallet would have multiple addresses assigned.
Another important feature that will be added through Sapling will allow users to selectively reveal transactions. This is something that will benefit from optional transparency.
“If we have a privacy-by-default chain and you want to have an account that’s public you can just publish the viewing key to the world,” he explained.
ZCash is currently the 19th most valuable virtual currency in the market. In the last 24 hours, it has lost around 3% of its price and has a market capitalization of $621 million dollars. Each ZEC coin can be bought for $121 dollars.
Carlos is an international relations’ analyst specializing in cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology. Since 2017, Carlos has written extensively for UseTheBitcoin and other leading cryptocurrency sites; with over 2,000 articles published.
