What are ZIPs?

Zcash Improvement Proposals (ZIPs) are the way to:

• propose new features for the Zcash cryptocurrency and their rationale,
• specify the implementation details of the feature,
• collect community input on the proposal, and
• document design decisions.

Contributing

The authors of a ZIP are responsible for building consensus within the community and documenting / addressing dissenting opinions.

Anyone can write a ZIP! We encourage community contributions and decentralization of work on the Zcash protocol. If you’d like to bounce ideas off people before formally writing a ZIP, we encourage it! Visit the ZcashCommunity Discord chat to talk about your idea.

Participation in the Zcash project is subject to a Code of Conduct.

The Zcash protocol is documented in its Protocol Specification.

To start contributing, first read ZIP 0 which documents the ZIP process. Then clone this repo from GitHub, and start adding your draft ZIP, formatted either as reStructuredText or as Markdown, into the zips/ directory.

For example, if using reStructuredText, use a filename matching zips/draft-*.rst. Use make to check that you are using correct reStructuredText or Markdown syntax, and double-check the generated rendered/draft-*.html file before filing a Pull Request. See here for the project dependencies.

License

Unless otherwise stated in this repository’s individual files, the contents of this repository are released under the terms of the MIT license. See COPYING for more information or see https://opensource.org/licenses/MIT .

Released ZIPs

ZIP	Title	Status
0	ZIP Process	Active
32	Shielded Hierarchical Deterministic Wallets	Final
143	Transaction Signature Validation for Overwinter	Final
155	addrv2 message	Proposed
173	Bech32 Format	Final
200	Network Upgrade Mechanism	Final
201	Network Peer Management for Overwinter	Final
202	Version 3 Transaction Format for Overwinter	Final
203	Transaction Expiry	Final
205	Deployment of the Sapling Network Upgrade	Final
206	Deployment of the Blossom Network Upgrade	Final
207	Funding Streams	Final
208	Shorter Block Target Spacing	Final
209	Prohibit Negative Shielded Chain Value Pool Balances	Final
211	Disabling Addition of New Value to the Sprout Chain Value Pool	Final
212	Allow Recipient to Derive Ephemeral Secret from Note Plaintext	Final
213	Shielded Coinbase	Final
214	Consensus rules for a Zcash Development Fund	Revision 0: Final, Revision 1: Draft
215	Explicitly Defining and Modifying Ed25519 Validation Rules	Final
216	Require Canonical Jubjub Point Encodings	Final
221	FlyClient - Consensus-Layer Changes	Final
224	Orchard Shielded Protocol	Final
225	Version 5 Transaction Format	Final
239	Relay of Version 5 Transactions	Final
243	Transaction Signature Validation for Sapling	Final
244	Transaction Identifier Non-Malleability	Final
250	Deployment of the Heartwood Network Upgrade	Final
251	Deployment of the Canopy Network Upgrade	Final
252	Deployment of the NU5 Network Upgrade	Final
253	Deployment of the NU6 Network Upgrade	Proposed
300	Cross-chain Atomic Transactions	Proposed
301	Zcash Stratum Protocol	Final
308	Sprout to Sapling Migration	Final
316	Unified Addresses and Unified Viewing Keys	Revision 0: Final, Revision 1: Proposed
317	Proportional Transfer Fee Mechanism	Active
320	Defining an Address Type to which funds can only be sent from Transparent Addresses	Proposed
321	Payment Request URIs	Proposed
401	Addressing Mempool Denial-of-Service	Active
1014	Establishing a Dev Fund for ECC, ZF, and Major Grants	Active
1015	Block Reward Allocation for Non-Direct Development Funding	Proposed
2001	Lockbox Funding Streams	Proposed

Draft ZIPs

These are works-in-progress that have been assigned ZIP numbers. These will eventually become either Proposed (and thus Released), or one of Withdrawn, Rejected, or Obsolete.

In some cases a ZIP number is reserved by the ZIP Editors before a draft is written.

ZIP	Title	Status
1	Network Upgrade Policy and Scheduling	Reserved
2	Design Considerations for Network Upgrades	Reserved
68	Relative lock-time using consensus-enforced sequence numbers	Draft
76	Transaction Signature Validation before Overwinter	Reserved
112	CHECKSEQUENCEVERIFY	Draft
113	Median Time Past as endpoint for lock-time calculations	Draft
204	Zcash P2P Network Protocol	Reserved
217	Aggregate Signatures	Reserved
219	Disabling Addition of New Value to the Sapling Chain Value Pool	Reserved
222	Transparent Zcash Extensions	Draft
226	Transfer and Burn of Zcash Shielded Assets	Draft
227	Issuance of Zcash Shielded Assets	Draft
228	Asset Swaps for Zcash Shielded Assets	Reserved
230	Version 6 Transaction Format	Draft
231	Decouple Memos from Transaction Outputs	Reserved
233	Establish the Zcash Sustainability Fund on the Protocol Level	Draft
234	Smooth Out The Block Subsidy Issuance	Draft
236	Blocks should balance exactly	Draft
245	Transaction Identifier Digests & Signature Validation for Transparent Zcash Extensions	Draft
302	Standardized Memo Field Format	Draft
303	Sprout Payment Disclosure	Reserved
304	Sapling Address Signatures	Draft
305	Best Practices for Hardware Wallets supporting Sapling	Reserved
306	Security Considerations for Anchor Selection	Reserved
307	Light Client Protocol for Payment Detection	Draft
309	Blind Off-chain Lightweight Transactions (BOLT)	Reserved
310	Security Properties of Sapling Viewing Keys	Draft
311	Zcash Payment Disclosures	Draft
312	FROST for Spend Authorization Multisignatures	Draft
314	Privacy upgrades to the Zcash light client protocol	Reserved
315	Best Practices for Wallet Implementations	Draft
318	Associated Payload Encryption	Reserved
319	Options for Shielded Pool Retirement	Reserved
322	Generic Signed Message Format	Reserved
323	Specification of getblocktemplate for Zcash	Reserved
324	URI-Encapsulated Payments	Draft
332	Wallet Recovery from zcashd HD Seeds	Reserved
339	Wallet Recovery Words	Reserved
400	Wallet.dat format	Draft
402	New Wallet Database Format	Reserved
403	Verification Behaviour of zcashd	Reserved
416	Support for Unified Addresses in zcashd	Reserved
guide-markdown	{Something Short and To the Point}	Draft
guide	{Something Short and To the Point}	Draft

Drafts without assigned ZIP numbers

These are works-in-progress, and may never be assigned ZIP numbers if their ideas become obsoleted or abandoned. Do not assume that these drafts will exist in perpetuity; instead assume that they will either move to a numbered ZIP, or be deleted.

Title
Manufacturing Consent; Re-Establishing a Dev Fund for ECC, ZF, ZCG, Qedit, FPF, and ZecHub
Block Reward Allocation for Non-Direct Development Funding
Establishing a Hybrid Dev Fund for ZF, ZCG and a Dev Fund Reserve

Withdrawn, Rejected, or Obsolete ZIPs

Click to show/hide

ZIP	Title	Status
210	Sapling Anchor Deduplication within Transactions	Withdrawn
220	Zcash Shielded Assets	Withdrawn
313	Reduce Conventional Transaction Fee to 1000 zatoshis	Obsolete
1001	Keep the Block Distribution as Initially Defined — 90% to Miners	Obsolete
1002	Opt-in Donation Feature	Obsolete
1003	20% Split Evenly Between the ECC and the Zcash Foundation, and a Voting System Mandate	Obsolete
1004	Miner-Directed Dev Fund	Obsolete
1005	Zcash Community Funding System	Obsolete
1006	Development Fund of 10% to a 2-of-3 Multisig with Community-Involved Third Entity	Obsolete
1007	Enforce Development Fund Commitments with a Legal Charter	Obsolete
1008	Fund ECC for Two More Years	Obsolete
1009	Five-Entity Strategic Council	Obsolete
1010	Compromise Dev Fund Proposal With Diverse Funding Streams	Obsolete
1011	Decentralize the Dev Fee	Obsolete
1012	Dev Fund to ECC + ZF + Major Grants	Obsolete
1013	Keep It Simple, Zcashers: 10% to ECC, 10% to ZF	Obsolete

Index of ZIPs

ZIP	Title	Status
0	ZIP Process	Active
1	Network Upgrade Policy and Scheduling	Reserved
2	Design Considerations for Network Upgrades	Reserved
32	Shielded Hierarchical Deterministic Wallets	Final
68	Relative lock-time using consensus-enforced sequence numbers	Draft
76	Transaction Signature Validation before Overwinter	Reserved
112	CHECKSEQUENCEVERIFY	Draft
113	Median Time Past as endpoint for lock-time calculations	Draft
143	Transaction Signature Validation for Overwinter	Final
155	addrv2 message	Proposed
173	Bech32 Format	Final
200	Network Upgrade Mechanism	Final
201	Network Peer Management for Overwinter	Final
202	Version 3 Transaction Format for Overwinter	Final
203	Transaction Expiry	Final
204	Zcash P2P Network Protocol	Reserved
205	Deployment of the Sapling Network Upgrade	Final
206	Deployment of the Blossom Network Upgrade	Final
207	Funding Streams	Final
208	Shorter Block Target Spacing	Final
209	Prohibit Negative Shielded Chain Value Pool Balances	Final
210	Sapling Anchor Deduplication within Transactions	Withdrawn
211	Disabling Addition of New Value to the Sprout Chain Value Pool	Final
212	Allow Recipient to Derive Ephemeral Secret from Note Plaintext	Final
213	Shielded Coinbase	Final
214	Consensus rules for a Zcash Development Fund	Revision 0: Final, Revision 1: Draft
215	Explicitly Defining and Modifying Ed25519 Validation Rules	Final
216	Require Canonical Jubjub Point Encodings	Final
217	Aggregate Signatures	Reserved
219	Disabling Addition of New Value to the Sapling Chain Value Pool	Reserved
220	Zcash Shielded Assets	Withdrawn
221	FlyClient - Consensus-Layer Changes	Final
222	Transparent Zcash Extensions	Draft
224	Orchard Shielded Protocol	Final
225	Version 5 Transaction Format	Final
226	Transfer and Burn of Zcash Shielded Assets	Draft
227	Issuance of Zcash Shielded Assets	Draft
228	Asset Swaps for Zcash Shielded Assets	Reserved
230	Version 6 Transaction Format	Draft
231	Decouple Memos from Transaction Outputs	Reserved
233	Establish the Zcash Sustainability Fund on the Protocol Level	Draft
234	Smooth Out The Block Subsidy Issuance	Draft
236	Blocks should balance exactly	Draft
239	Relay of Version 5 Transactions	Final
243	Transaction Signature Validation for Sapling	Final
244	Transaction Identifier Non-Malleability	Final
245	Transaction Identifier Digests & Signature Validation for Transparent Zcash Extensions	Draft
250	Deployment of the Heartwood Network Upgrade	Final
251	Deployment of the Canopy Network Upgrade	Final
252	Deployment of the NU5 Network Upgrade	Final
253	Deployment of the NU6 Network Upgrade	Proposed
300	Cross-chain Atomic Transactions	Proposed
301	Zcash Stratum Protocol	Final
302	Standardized Memo Field Format	Draft
303	Sprout Payment Disclosure	Reserved
304	Sapling Address Signatures	Draft
305	Best Practices for Hardware Wallets supporting Sapling	Reserved
306	Security Considerations for Anchor Selection	Reserved
307	Light Client Protocol for Payment Detection	Draft
308	Sprout to Sapling Migration	Final
309	Blind Off-chain Lightweight Transactions (BOLT)	Reserved
310	Security Properties of Sapling Viewing Keys	Draft
311	Zcash Payment Disclosures	Draft
312	FROST for Spend Authorization Multisignatures	Draft
313	Reduce Conventional Transaction Fee to 1000 zatoshis	Obsolete
314	Privacy upgrades to the Zcash light client protocol	Reserved
315	Best Practices for Wallet Implementations	Draft
316	Unified Addresses and Unified Viewing Keys	Revision 0: Final, Revision 1: Proposed
317	Proportional Transfer Fee Mechanism	Active
318	Associated Payload Encryption	Reserved
319	Options for Shielded Pool Retirement	Reserved
320	Defining an Address Type to which funds can only be sent from Transparent Addresses	Proposed
321	Payment Request URIs	Proposed
322	Generic Signed Message Format	Reserved
323	Specification of getblocktemplate for Zcash	Reserved
324	URI-Encapsulated Payments	Draft
332	Wallet Recovery from zcashd HD Seeds	Reserved
339	Wallet Recovery Words	Reserved
400	Wallet.dat format	Draft
401	Addressing Mempool Denial-of-Service	Active
402	New Wallet Database Format	Reserved
403	Verification Behaviour of zcashd	Reserved
416	Support for Unified Addresses in zcashd	Reserved
1001	Keep the Block Distribution as Initially Defined — 90% to Miners	Obsolete
1002	Opt-in Donation Feature	Obsolete
1003	20% Split Evenly Between the ECC and the Zcash Foundation, and a Voting System Mandate	Obsolete
1004	Miner-Directed Dev Fund	Obsolete
1005	Zcash Community Funding System	Obsolete
1006	Development Fund of 10% to a 2-of-3 Multisig with Community-Involved Third Entity	Obsolete
1007	Enforce Development Fund Commitments with a Legal Charter	Obsolete
1008	Fund ECC for Two More Years	Obsolete
1009	Five-Entity Strategic Council	Obsolete
1010	Compromise Dev Fund Proposal With Diverse Funding Streams	Obsolete
1011	Decentralize the Dev Fee	Obsolete
1012	Dev Fund to ECC + ZF + Major Grants	Obsolete
1013	Keep It Simple, Zcashers: 10% to ECC, 10% to ZF	Obsolete
1014	Establishing a Dev Fund for ECC, ZF, and Major Grants	Active
1015	Block Reward Allocation for Non-Direct Development Funding	Proposed
2001	Lockbox Funding Streams	Proposed
guide-markdown	{Something Short and To the Point}	Draft
guide	{Something Short and To the Point}	Draft