Zcash Launches Four Rapid Zebra Updates in Weeks: What’s Next Move?

The official Zcash Foundation X account provided an engineering update for the Zcash network from September 21 to October 5. This two-week period had four Zebra releases, three of which were 6.4.x versions and one of which was a release candidate for version 7.0.0.

Zebra refers to the official, independent full node implementation for the Zcash network, built from scratch in the Rust programming language by the Zcash Foundation.

Zebra 6.4.0 and 6.4.1 brought security fixes, light wallet serving, lower transaction fees, and a sync fix, and Zebra 6.4.2 was an emergency fix for a crash that any peer on the network could trigger. Zebra 7.0.0-rc.0, NU7’s first release candidate, activated on public Testnet at block 4,465,026 on October 4.

Zebra 6.4.0, a security release, adds an experimental lightwalletd-compatible gRPC server, lowers the ZIP 317 conventional fee, speeds up block template delivery for miners, and moves the end-of-support halt earlier in preparation for NU7. Zebra 6.4.1, released the same day, fixed a potential sync stall near the chain tip.

Days later, Zebra 6.4.2 was released to fix a crash that a malformed transaction from any peer could cause. This bug was found by Google’s OSS-Fuzz, a service that continuously feeds random inputs to open-source software. 

What’s next?

The next big step is the mainnet launch of the NU7 upgrade. NU7 launched on Testnet on October 4, which gives developers and the community time on a live network before the mainnet release.

An upcoming release is planned for next week before 6.4.1 halts around November 2, which will feature NU7 support. Mainnet operators are to install that release before 6.4.x stops in early November. NU7’s mainnet activation is tentatively scheduled for November 5, 2026.

At the time of writing, Zcash was up 2.93% in the last 24 hours to $1,376 and down from a high of $1,696 reached on September 26. Amid the drop, whales continue to accumulate. In a recent move, a newly created wallet withdrew 7,166 ZEC from Coinbase, according to Lookonchain.