
Proof of Stake: Approach, focus, and next steps
As we described in our initial blog on Proof-of-Stake Research, we are releasing updates to the Zcash community as we go.

Not private enough: Mixers and decoys won’t protect you for long
I often hear people say that tools like mixers or using fresh addresses for every crypto transaction are sufficient privacy protections because they provide plausible deniability. This is a naive understanding of how surveillance works.

Perspectives on why NU5 is a historic step forward for human society
Zcash’s Network Upgrade 5 was announced a few days ago. It includes a number of technical improvements to the protocol […]

NU5 activates on mainnet, eliminating trusted setup and launching a new era for Zcash
NU5, the first major upgrade since November 2020, includes the launch of the Orchard shielded payment protocol, utilizing the Halo proving system to remove reliance on complex setup ceremonies.

Zcash Proof-of-Stake Research
In August, ECC shared its rationale for moving Zcash from a proof-of-work consensus mechanism to proof-of-stake.

BOSL exceptions added for Zcash projects and friendly forks
When ECC announced the release of zcashd 5.0.0, we indicated our intent to add two general exceptions to the BOSL license so that our partners and friendly forks could use the Orchard technology deploying in NU5 in a manner consistent with their current licensing choice.

ZSAs and Zcash Economics
Over the last 10 months, ECC published a series of blog posts on our work exploring Zcash Shielded Assets (ZSAs), including our plans to perform an economic analysis of various fee mechanisms that could be employed alongside ZSAs.

New Release 5.0.0
The 5.0.0 release supports NU5 activation on mainnet, which will occur at a block height of 1687104 (May 31st), following the targeted EOS halt of our 4.6.0-2 and 4.7.0 releases on May 16th. Release binaries will be available later today and instructions on how to install can be found on our download site.

Zero-knowledge proving system ‘Halo’ now licensed under MIT or Apache 2.0, making it available for anyone to use
A new agreement between the Filecoin Foundation, the organization that facilitates governance of the Filecoin network, and Electric Coin Co.

New Release 4.6.0-2
4.6.0-2 is primarily a bugfix release that also bumps the End-of-Support height to May 16th. It backports bugfixes from v4.7.0-rc1.

ECC Transparency Report for Q3 2021
This ECC Transparency Report details company income, expenses and use of funds during Q3 2021.