The Zcash (ZEC) developers plan to introduce quantum-resistant, hash-based signatures to the transparent pool—which holds about 70% of the total supply—with January next year as their target. However, the specific date for mainnet activation has not yet been determined.
Key points
Engineers working on the Zcash client ‘Zakura’ aim to develop support for hash-based signatures by January, but the schedule for deploying them on the network has not been finalized.
Phase 1 will target the transparent payment area. The pool contains about 11.96 million of the 16.98 million ZEC issued.
Shielded payments, which hide senders, recipients, and amounts, require separate development, while the broader post-quantum project is targeting the end of 2027.
Zcash’s quantum security upgrade
“Our team plans to include an OPCODE for post-quantum signatures in Zcash in January.”
Zakura engineer **Roman Akhtariev** wrote in an engineering post:
The OPCODE in question is a type of instruction set that enables the network to verify hash-based signatures. Methods such as the frequently cited Winternitz one-time signatures are payment authorization mechanisms designed to withstand attacks by quantum computers.
These signature schemes are based on mathematics entirely different from the elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) used by current wallets. So even if an attack on the current key system is developed, these schemes would not be compromised in the same way.
Zakura is one of the major clients powering the Zcash network. January is only a development target; no date has yet been announced for the feature to actually go live on mainnet.
The first phase of the plan focuses on the transparent payment pool, similar to Bitcoin’s. As with Bitcoin (BTC), addresses and amounts are visible on-chain. According to on-chain data analytics site ZecStats, the transparent pool currently holds about 11.96 million ZEC—roughly seven out of every 10 coins—out of the 16.98 million ZEC issued to date.
Zakura has also developed a lookup tool based on private information retrieval (PIR). An experimental version is integrated into the Vizor wallet, allowing users to check the balances of multiple addresses without revealing to the server “which addresses are related to one another.”
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Justin Drake’s ‘bunker mode’ warning
This announcement comes amid a quantum risk warning issued by Ethereum researchers last Thursday.
Ethereum (ETH) researcher **Justin Drake** urged holders in a comment to prepare for what he called “bunker mode.”
Drake warned that, in the worst case, AI could find a way to bypass the mathematical safeguards protecting Bitcoin and Ethereum wallets “in months, not years.”
So far, however, there have been no known real-world attacks on these wallet keys. Even so, the market reacted sensitively. According to market data firm CoinGecko, ZEC closed Thursday at around $1,185, down about 11% from a week earlier, before rebounding to trade at around $1,240 on Friday.
Zcash shielded payment roadmap
Zcash’s shielded payment pool, which hides both senders and recipients as well as transaction amounts, requires a separate response. Zcash’s own publicly released quantum recovery design warns that if an attacker knows a particular recipient’s address, they could start collecting encrypted payment records sent to that address now and try to decrypt them later, once a mathematical breakthrough becomes possible.
The January development target builds on months of quantum preparedness discussions across the Zcash ecosystem. At a conference in Miami last May, Zcash Open Development Lab CEO Josh Swihart said the project aims to reach “full post-quantum” status within 12 to 18 months.
A network upgrade in July introduced quantum-recoverable “Ironwood notes.” Then, on October 1, Shielded Labs launched Project Epoch, setting out a long-term roadmap to complete post-quantum cryptography for post-production use by the end of 2027.
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