Zcash Performance Soars with Release of Common Libraries

Zcash developer Zakura has made significant improvements to the Zcash network's performance with the release of Common, a group of cryptography and protocol libraries. The update focuses on speeding up various tasks such as proof generation, hashing, verification, and decryption.

The most notable gain is in mobile proof generation, which is now over 14 times faster than before. Desktop proof generation has also seen a significant improvement, with speeds increasing by more than five times. Additionally, Sinsemilla hashing is now over 21 times faster, while trial decryption is approximately 1.5 times faster.

The update targets Zcash wallets and full nodes, which will benefit from the improved performance. Zakura's announcement highlighted the potential for reduced transaction latency, with some users currently waiting more than three seconds for transactions to be processed. With Common, this time can be reduced to under 200 milliseconds in many instances.

The update does not involve a network change and only affects the libraries used by developers to create apps and full nodes. Adoption of the Common protocol is dependent on wallet and node providers integrating the code into their respective releases.