Zcash Launches Zakura Full Node Ahead of zcashd End of Life

Zcash has launched a new full node called Zakura, which is maintained by a team independent of the Zcash Foundation. According to Odaily, the client is a trimmed fast-sync fork of Zebra and remains compatible with the legacy zcashd client, which will reach end of life on July 18. Zakura is part of Zcash's scaling work alongside Project Tachyon and private information retrieval research. The project aims to increase network throughput by reducing validation data and removing wallet performance bottlenecks. Zakura also supports the Ironwood (NU6.3) upgrade, set to activate on July 28. The upgrade introduces a turnstile mechanism to limit withdrawals from the Orchard shielded pool and control counterfeit ZEC that may be generated by a long-standing soundness bug.