THORChain Completes Native Zcash Integration for Cross-Chain Swaps

THORChain has completed support for native Zcash (ZEC) swaps, allowing users to exchange ZEC with native assets on other supported chains without wrapped tokens, bridges or centralized exchanges.

The integration adds chain-specific handling for Zcash’s unspent transaction output (UTXO) model, dedicated remote procedure call logic and safeguards designed to prevent UTXO reuse. It also supports ZIP-317 fees, ZEC price-oracle tracking and the NU6.3 Ironwood consensus branch.

ZEC is the first privacy-focused asset available for permissionless cross-chain swaps on THORChain. The integration expands the protocol’s native-asset coverage while preserving its decentralized vault model, in which nodes observe the Zcash network, track vault balances, construct outbound transactions and coordinate signing.

The cross-chain support does not extend Zcash’s shielded privacy features to swaps. THORChain currently uses Zcash’s transparent transaction infrastructure, where wallet addresses, transaction amounts and transaction histories are publicly visible.

Zcash supports both transparent and shielded transactions. Its NU6.3 upgrade went live on July 28, 2026, at block height 3,428,143, adding the Ironwood shielded pool and restricting the original Orchard pool.

Zcash uses a Bitcoin-style UTXO architecture and has a maximum supply of 21 million ZEC. In this model, individual transaction outputs are tracked and later spent as inputs, creating a different operational requirement from account-based blockchains such as Ethereum.

The completed integration follows several earlier development steps. THORChain’s v3.16 upgrade listed Zcash support and ZEC oracle work as development tasks. Its v3.20 update later described ZEC as one step closer to launch after a client update related to Ironwood.

The launch follows THORChain’s earlier activation of a Zcash pool as groundwork for native cross-chain swaps. That activation established infrastructure for the integration but did not confirm that live ZEC trading was available.

The current implementation therefore combines native ZEC access with transparent transaction visibility. Shielded functionality is not part of the cross-chain launch described here.