Zcash Next Generation Network Upgrade: Improve Interoperability, Add Hidden Coinbase Rewards Distribution Address Function

According to BlockBeats, Zcash development company Electric Coin Company released a message yesterday, introducing the current status of Zcash's next-generation network upgrade Heartwood. After the upgrade, the Zcash network has improved interoperability through Flyclient support, and allows miners to choose to immediately "hide the mining rewards in Coinbase (Shielded Coinbase)" transactions, which means that the address where the miners receive the block rewards from the Coinbase transaction can be hidden.

The community chose to use the name "Heartwood" as the name of the next upgrade, implying that the network can grow rapidly, be more widely adopted, and increase network scalability. The two packages (ZIPs) of Heartwood are ZIP 221 (FlyClient) and ZIP 213 (Shielded Coinbase). The block height of the Heartwood upgrade will be announced in the second quarter.

Dubbed ZIP 211, Flyclient will support interoperability, cross-chain integration, and lightweight client use cases. ZIP could pave the way for Zcash SPV proofs to be verified in blockchains such as Ethereum, enabling efficient cross-chain communication.

“Hidden Coinbase,” known as ZIP 213, will modify the Zcash consensus rules so that miners’ reward funds from Coinbase can be transferred directly to Sapling addresses. Prior to the Sapling upgrade, “Hidden Coinbase” was not feasible because hidden transactions required a lot of memory and CPU resources to create. Coinbase transactions are a unique type of transaction created by miners that includes block rewards. Before Heartwood, Zcash miners could only send rewards to a transparent address, which could easily expose privacy. This ZIP file defines modifications to the Zcash consensus rules that allow coinbase funds to be transferred to protected Sapling addresses.