From Decrypt · By Decrypt Staff
In brief
Zakura said its team expects post-quantum signature opcodes to land in Zcash in January, enabling hash-based signatures for the network’s transparent payments.
Its approach pairs address rotation with private information retrieval, a feature arriving this week in the Vizor wallet, so servers can’t link a user’s addresses.
The plan follows Ethereum researcher Justin Drake’s “bunker mode” warning. It covers only transparent payments, and no network activation date has been confirmed.
While much of crypto is still debating “bunker mode,” one team of Zcash developers says it already has a plan.
Zakura, which builds a Zcash full node, said its team expects post-quantum signature opcodes to land in Zcash in January. Opcodes are low-level instructions that would let the network verify a new type of signature.
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The goal, according to an engineering post by Roman Akhtariev, is “full post-quantum safe transparent pools with hash based signatures.”
Zcash supports two kinds of payments: shielded ones that hide the sender, recipient and amount, and transparent ones that are publicly visible, much as they are on Bitcoin. A transparent address contains a hash of a public key, which stays hidden until the owner spends from it and reveals the key onchain.
Here's our plan for quantum-safe, unlinkable, rotating taddrs. Possible with Zcash, today.
While others are worrying about the viability of rotating transparent addresses, we're already solving linkability.https://t.co/LE0OOKUKgA
— Zakura (@ZakuraZcash) October 8, 2026
Zakura’s approach combines two defenses. Wallets would rotate to a fresh address after every transaction, keeping public keys out of view, and add a hash-based backup signature known as WOTS. Hash-based schemes avoid the elliptic-curve math that researchers fear AI or quantum computers could eventually crack.
BitcoinBTC · USD$83,090−2.52%Oct 4Oct 6Oct 8Oct 9Oct 11$86.7k$84.7k$82.7k$80.7k24h HighHigh$83,16724h LowLow$82,713VolVol$478.0MMarket projectionsOdds by MyriadToday$82,000 to $84,000$82k–$84k98% chance→Buy Bitcoin with USDTPowered by JupiterPrice data by CoinGeckoCoinGeckoMore Bitcoin news and projections →Rotation creates a privacy problem, though. When a wallet asks a server to check balances across many addresses, the server can tell they belong to the same user. Zakura says it addresses that with private information retrieval, or PIR, a cryptographic technique that lets a wallet fetch records without revealing which ones it’s requesting. The feature is rolling out this week in the Vizor wallet, where users can already test it by toggling “private queries” in the settings.