Inside Zcash's new node that targets Visa-scale privacy at 50,000 transactions per second
Developers have released Zakura, a new Zcash full node software designed to handle high-volume transactions comparable to Visa's scale. The project aims to improve privacy and throughput while maintaining compatibility with existing Zcash infrastructure.
Why it matters
Scaling privacy-focused blockchains to handle mass-market transaction volumes is a critical hurdle for the mainstream adoption of decentralized finance.
The first piece of that plan is Zakura, a new full node software released Wednesday at version 1.0.0. It is maintained by Sean Bowe, a founding member of Zcash's zero-knowledge cryptography, and Dev Ojha, the Osmosis cofounder who now leads Valar Group. Both teams are funded by private ZEC donations rather than by a company or a foundation.
"Our dream is to support the world's payments. Mastercard and Visa handle more than 50k transactions per second; that's our floor. With Zcash's existing cryptography, that volume would demand over 500 MB/s of throughput from the node,” a blog post said. “The current stack won't get us there. The cryptography our teams are developing closes much of that gap.”
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