Zakura Node Implementation Released with Promised Speed Boosts

A new node implementation called Zakura has been released for Zcash, promising faster network setup and synchronization. According to benchmark results published by the developers, Zakura is capable of setting up a standard blockchain in just four hours and 20 minutes, compared to 20 hours and 46 minutes for Zebra.

The release also introduced an experimental peer-to-peer transport layer, which aims to reduce block propagation time to below 500 milliseconds. However, this component was disabled by default during the first release due to a lack of independent security assessment.

Zakura's developers claim that its pruned snapshot is 680 times faster than standard peer-to-peer synchronization, requiring only one minute and 50 seconds to complete. The team also stated that native pruning allows operators to configure retained blockchain history and reduce storage requirements, with the pruned version occupying about 11 gigabytes.

The Zcash Foundation welcomed Zakura in a statement, citing its faster initial synchronization, pruning, snapshots, and Zcashd compatibility as useful additions. However, the Foundation also recommended operating Zebra alongside Zakura for independent consensus checks due to software diversity being seen as a security mechanism.