Zcash developer Zakura announces hash-based signatures coming in January to protect against AI and quantum attacks, with address rotation privacy tool rolling out this week.
Tech & Launches ·
Zakura, a Zcash full node developer, expects post-quantum signature opcodes to arrive in January, enabling hash-based signatures on the network's transparent payment layer. Alongside this, a privacy tool for rotating transparent addresses is launching this week in the Vizor wallet, allowing users to test address rotation through a "private queries" setting.
The approach pairs address rotation—refreshing to a new address after each transaction to keep public keys hidden—with private information retrieval, a cryptographic technique that prevents servers from linking multiple addresses to a single user when checking balances. Hash-based signatures avoid the elliptic-curve mathematics that researchers worry quantum computers or advanced AI could eventually compromise, addressing concerns raised recently by Ethereum Foundation researcher Justin Drake about risks to ECDSA encryption.
The plan applies only to Zcash's transparent payments, not its privacy-preserving shielded transactions. No network activation date for the opcodes has been confirmed, and the engineering approach to deploying these changes remains unspecified.