News linked to both this project and an event.
Odaily News: ZEC treasury company Cypherpunk Technologies (Nasdaq: CYPH) has released its Q2 2026 financial report, posting a net profit of $39.39 million, or $0.18 diluted earnings per share; in the same period last year, the company reported a net loss of $16.64 million and an operating loss of $4.69 million. R&D expenses stood at $0.2 million, down from $10.54 million in the same period last year, primarily due to the completion of clinical trials; general and administrative expenses reached $4.49 million, up $2.75 million year-over-year, mainly driven by increased stock-based compensation. As of June 30, the company's cash balance was $7.6 million. During Q2, the ZEC price rose from $243.35 to $400.09, generating approximately $46 million in non-cash unrealized gains for the company. As of August 11, 2026, the company held a cumulative total of 323,400 ZEC, with an average cost basis of approximately $341.83, representing about 1.92% of ZEC's total circulating supply. On the business development front, the company has appointed Dev Ojha, founder of Valar Group, as an advisor. Valar Group focuses on Zcash network development and research, and has led the development of the high-performance full node software Zakura and the Ironwood shielded pool. The company's subsidiary, Leap Therapeutics, has reached an agreement with the U.S. FDA on the Phase III clinical trial design for sirexatamab (anti-DKK1 monoclonal antibody), and received FDA Fast Track designation in May 2026 for the treatment of patients with second-line metastatic colorectal cancer with high DKK1 expression. The company has also initiated a strategic process to evaluate pathways for advancing sirexatamab development through independent financing or collaboration with partners.
Odaily News – Grayscale withdrew three ETF registration applications for Cardano (ADA), Hedera (HBAR), and Polkadot (DOT) in succession on August 7, with the three withdrawal filings submitted approximately 190 seconds apart.All three withdrawal filings indicate that Grayscale no longer plans to proceed with the issuance of shares for the related ETFs. The filings also note that the registration statements had not yet taken effect, no securities were issued or sold, and no preliminary prospectus was published. These withdrawals do not represent rejections by the SEC of the related ETF applications, and the filings do not disclose the reasons behind them.As of August 8, Grayscale's altcoin ETF applications for Bittensor, Aave, BNB, NEAR, and Zcash remain in the preliminary stage. Previously, Grayscale's Avalanche Staking ETF and Hyperliquid Staking ETF registration statements took effect in March and June of this year, respectively. However, the effectiveness of a registration statement does not mean the product has begun trading. (cryptoslate)
Valar Group 与 Project Tachyon 宣布，计划于 2026 年 8 月 25 日 发起为期约 18 天 的 Zcash NU7 持币人投票，以确定 NU7 升级范围。此次投票将在专用投票链上进行，采用经审计的隐私投票技术，符合条件的投票者需在 8 月 24 日 19:00 UTC 快照时持有可支配的 Ironwood 屏蔽资金。
Odaily News: Zcash founder Zooko Wilcox stated on platform X that he supports the new slogan proposed by community member Jeremiah Rogers: “Zcash is not cryptocurrency; it is money.”
According to official sources, a total of 129,396 ZEC were migrated to the Ironwood shielded pool today, worth over $60 million at current value. Officials stated that Ironwood, as Zcash's latest shielded pool, has completed formal verification, supports independent audits, and is currently holding an increasing proportion of shielded funds within the network.
According to official announcements, Zcash has officially activated the Ironwood NU6.3 network upgrade at mainnet block height 3,428,143 and launched the new shielded pool Ironwood. This upgrade aims to address the previously discovered Orchard soundness vulnerability, improve protocol security, and enhance the independent verifiability of ZEC circulating supply integrity.
: Zcash mining company Fortitude has launched its 12 MW facility in Grand Island, Nebraska, completing its first greenfield data center construction and expanding its self-owned power portfolio to over 60 MW across seven sites. Fortitude stated that the facility has completed construction and electrical testing and is ready for commercial operations. This milestone comes ahead of Fortitude's planned public listing through a business combination with HeartSciences (Nasdaq: HSCS), a listed medical technology company. Fortitude expects that, with successful miner deployment and stable power, network, and market conditions, the facility will reduce the direct cash cost of mining Zcash from approximately $70 per coin to around $40 per coin. The company attributes the cost reduction to lower-cost self-owned power and more efficient next-generation mining hardware. The facility is expected to procure power at approximately $0.045 per kilowatt-hour. It is located between two solar power generation facilities and adjacent to a substation with spare capacity. Fortitude was spun off from the Foundry mining division of Digital Currency Group in January 2025, with operations including mining Bitcoin and other proof-of-work cryptocurrencies.
MoonPay announces a partnership with Discover Network, enabling US Discover credit cardholders to now purchase thousands of supported crypto assets via MoonPay, including BTC, ETH, BNB, XRP, SOL, TRX, HYPE, and ZEC. This partnership integrates Discover card payment channels into MoonPay's crypto asset purchase service, providing US users with a new fiat on-ramp method.
According to CoinDesk, Zcash has released the full node software Zakura 1.0.0, a new client refactored based on Zebra that supports pruning, snapshot synchronization, and compatibility mode with the legacy zcashd, capable of reducing new node startup time to within two minutes. The project is maintained by Zcash zero-knowledge cryptography founding member Sean Bowe and Valar Group head Dev Ojha, aiming to lay the foundation for Zcash's subsequent scaling to throughput capabilities approaching those of Visa and Mastercard.
: Zcash has launched a new full node, Zakura, maintained by a team independent of the Zcash Foundation. It is released as a fast-sync branch that is a trimmed version of Zebra and is compatible with the legacy zcashd client, whose lifecycle will end on July 18th. Zakura is part of Zcash's scaling efforts, working in conjunction with Project Tachyon and private information retrieval research. The goal is to increase network throughput to the level of Visa and Mastercard by reducing verification data and eliminating wallet performance bottlenecks. Zakura also supports the Ironwood (NU6.3) upgrade, which will be activated on July 28th. This upgrade introduces a turnstile mechanism to limit withdrawals from the Orchard shielded pool and to control the creation of counterfeit ZEC that could be generated by potential long-term soundness bugs.
According to Livecoins, the U.S. Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) announced a new round of sanctions on July 13, freezing 13 cryptocurrency wallets and trust funds associated with the Cuban regime, involving addresses on multiple chains such as Tron (TRX), Litecoin (LTC), Dogecoin (DOGE), Solana (SOL), Dash (DASH), and Zcash (ZEC), as well as Bitcoin and Ethereum assets. Sanctioned targets include Ukrainian citizen Dmytro Rashevskyi, Belarusian resident Yevgeniy Vladimirovich Silayev, and several Cuban state-owned institutions such as the Association of Combatants of the Cuban Revolution and the Cuban Ministry of Tourism. OFAC simultaneously released FAQ 1262, advising all U.S. citizens to immediately cease all dealings with the entities on the aforementioned sanctions list.
According to Zcash developer Sean Bowe (@ebfull) in a tweet, the Zcash Ironwood network upgrade has made significant progress: all consensus rule changes have been implemented and entered the audit phase, and relevant specifications (ZIPs) have been published and are close to final status; testnet activation is scheduled for July 4, and mainnet activation is expected to be completed around July 21. The team is concurrently conducting formal verification work to eliminate potential risks regarding supply integrity, and relevant results will be announced before mainnet activation. The only impact on the client side after the upgrade is the migration process for the legacy pool. Currently, sufficient hashrate has expressed support for the mainnet upgrade; while some wallets may not complete adaptation in time, the team stated they will not delay activation due to this, and ample alternative solutions and testnet time will be provided at that time.
according to on-chain sleuth Specter's monitoring, Arthur Hayes once promoted what he called the "Holy Trinity"—HYPE, ZEC, and NEAR—predicting that HYPE would reach $150. He also published a Substack article promoting HYPE. A few days later, Arthur Hayes sold all three tokens.Subsequently, Arthur promoted WLD, posting "This shitcoin is going to moon." Three days later, Arthur Hayes announced "I'm out."After that, Arthur promoted CARDS with a target price of $4. One day later, a linked wallet deposited 1.9 million CARDS into an exchange.In 2024, Arthur promoted ENA and, approximately one hour later, deposited ENA worth $8.4 million into a CEX.
According to CoinDesk, Wall Street bank Cantor Fitzgerald issued a research report indicating that the crypto market is entering the final phase of the current bear cycle. As of June 10, Bitcoin has declined approximately 51% from its 2025 peak, with 252 days having passed since the peak. Synthesizing the past three market cycles, BTC bottoms on average 384 days after the peak; based on this, the low point of this cycle is projected to appear around the end of October. Analysts also noted that the model is not a precise timing tool, and macro, regulatory, and geopolitical risks remain. Regarding network value assessment, Cantor believes Hyperliquid is the prime example of fee-driven token economics, Bitcoin remains the benchmark monetary asset, and Ethereum serves as the primary collateral layer for on-chain finance; Solana, Sui, XRP, and Zcash each possess differentiated advantages, but still need to prove that their ecosystem growth can translate into sustained token demand.
According to The Block, Zcash-related non-profit organization Sovright has released the wallet recovery tool Argos to help early users who still hold old seed phrases recover funds in protected addresses affected by the discontinuation of maintenance for ZEC Wallet Lite in 2022. Sovright stated that the issue mainly affects early and long-term Zcash supporters, involving a "considerable" amount of funds, but the specific number of affected addresses cannot be confirmed at this time.
Fortitude Mining, a Zcash mining firm under Digital Currency Group, has announced the signing of a definitive merger agreement with HeartSciences Inc., a Nasdaq-listed small-cap medical technology company, to combine the two entities. Following the announcement, HeartSciences’ stock price rose approximately 60% during intraday trading on Tuesday, closing with a gain of about 55% at $2.70.Fortitude primarily engages in Zcash mining operations. Despite ZEC's recent weak performance, DCG founder and CEO Barry Silbert stated that Zcash remains one of the most attractive opportunities in the digital asset space.Fortitude CEO Andrea Childs noted that the merger is not based on business synergies, but rather aimed at gaining access to public capital markets, thereby securing more flexible financing channels to accelerate its core strategy. This includes a Zcash-focused "venture mining" platform and continued expansion into high-return opportunities within its power asset portfolio.Both parties expect the transaction to be completed in the second half of this year. The deal also indicates that some crypto mining firms are attempting to access capital markets through mergers with publicly listed companies to support their future expansion.
Odaily Zcash founder Zooko Wilcox posted on X stating that a security audit conducted by Anthropic's Claude Mythos AI model did not find any "more severe vulnerabilities" in the Zcash protocol. The audit was commissioned by Shielded Labs, a Swiss non-profit organization supporting Zcash development. On June 3, Zcash developers temporarily paused Orchard transactions after discovering a vulnerability in the shielded pool, restoring functionality through an emergency upgrade the same day. The issue stemmed from a four-year-old forging vulnerability in the Orchard shielded pool, identified by security researcher Taylor Hornby with the assistance of Anthropic's Claude Opus 4.8 model. The Zcash Foundation stated there is no evidence that the vulnerability was exploited, nor was any unauthorized value creation detected, and user privacy remained unaffected.Anthropic released the first public version of the Claude Mythos model, Fable 5, on Tuesday, and stated on Friday that it has suspended access to the Fable 5 and Mythos 5 AI models due to export control directives issued by the U.S. government citing national security concerns. (Cointelegraph)
Zcash core developer Sean Bowe posted an update on the progress of the Ironwood upgrade, stating that over the past 48 hours, protocol developers from various organizations have held two meetings and reached consensus on multiple specifications and implementation details for Ironwood. These include disabling Orchard pool bundles in Coinbase transactions, using anchors as authentication data for hardware wallet migrations, and the processing order of ZIPs and specifications.Currently, the Ironwood circuit and the ZIP 2005 integration draft are under review. Valar Group has completed testnet deployment and implemented some wallet-side changes. Meanwhile, formal verification work is progressing, and the development team plans to meet tomorrow to finalize the verification strategy. Additionally, at least three major audit firms are conducting security audits on Orchard, and multiple AI audit tools have been put into use simultaneously. Sean Bowe stated that the overall development progress is running smoothly.
Odaily Seer monitoring shows that Polymarket has launched a new prediction event titled "Was Zcash's Orchard privacy pool confirmed to have been exploited?"On June 4, Zcash's core development team revealed that they had deployed an emergency network upgrade to fix a critical cryptographic vulnerability in the Orchard privacy pool. This flaw could have potentially allowed a malicious attacker to arbitrarily forge unlimited amounts of ZEC. Due to the vulnerability's characteristic that "it is impossible to cryptographically prove whether it was exploited in the past," independent support organization Shielded Labs subsequently proposed on June 5 to deploy a new privacy pool during the NU7 upgrade at the end of July. They also suggested implementing strict "Turnstile-accounting" audits for tokens exiting Orchard to investigate whether any forged tokens exist. According to the settlement rules for this prediction event, if before December 31, 2026, official sources or mainstream credible media confirm that the vulnerability was effectively exploited on the mainnet before being patched, the event will settle as YES.Odaily Seer continues to monitor prediction markets, seeing changes before pricing.
Zcash ecosystem core contributor ZODL announced a new network upgrade proposal and privacy pool, Ironwood, in collaboration with Tachyon, Valar Group, the Zcash Foundation, and Shielded Labs. Ironwood will be built upon the existing Orchard protocol and further enhance security through formal verification and additional independent audits.