Zcash developer Zakura has released Common, a new set of cryptography and protocol libraries aimed at making Zcash faster. The release brings major speed improvements across proof generation, hashing, and verification.
Following this release, Zcash native token ZEC has climbed about 5%, now trading at $838.60.
Zakura Common Brings Major Speed Boost To Zcash
Zakura has released Common, a new set of cryptography libraries designed to make Zcash wallets and full nodes faster. The biggest improvement is in proof generation, which can now be more than 14 times faster on mobile and over five times faster on desktop.
The speed gains have also drawn attention from crypto industry figures.
Helius CEO Mert called the release an “insane engineering feat,” pointing to the 14x reduction in latency achieved in a single release.
The improvements go beyond proof generation. Sinsemilla hashing is now more than 21 times faster, while trial decryption is over 1.5 times faster. zk-SNARK verification has also improved by four and eight times faster.
New Libraries Could Make Zcash Wallets Faster
These changes are designed to improve the experience for both wallets and full nodes.
Zakura said users can currently wait more than three seconds for a wallet to create a transaction in some cases. With Common, that time could fall below 200 milliseconds in many situations.
Wallets using the new libraries should also sync faster, while Zakura full nodes can benefit from faster transaction propagation and fewer orphaned blocks.
Zcash co-founder Sean Bowe said the release brings major performance improvements to the network.
“Shielded wallets that use Zakura Common, and full nodes like Zakura itself, all benefit from these massive performance improvements.”
No Network Upgrade Needed for Common
One of the key points is that Zakura Common does not require a Zcash network upgrade.
The libraries are open source, thus the developers can use them in new releases of Zakura and compatible wallets. This allows the performance improvements to reach users without changing Zcash’s underlying network rules.
ZEC Token Jumps 5%
The release comes as Zcash is already seeing heavy market activity.
ZEC recently moved above $800 for the first time since January 2018. As of now, ZEC is trading around $838.38, after jumping 5%.