ChainThink report: The Zcash development team plans to integrate quantum-resistant signature opcodes into the network in January 2027, supporting hash-based signature verification to mitigate potential threats posed by breakthroughs in quantum computing to wallet key security;

The official activation timeline for this feature remains undetermined. Roman Akhtariev, an engineer at Zakura, stated that the mechanism aims to prevent attackers from deriving private keys from public keys and forging transaction authorizations.

This upgrade primarily targets Zcash's transparent transaction system. As of Thursday, approximately 11.96 million ZEC are held in transparent address pools, representing about 70% of the total 16.98 million ZEC in circulation.

Transparent transactions expose addresses and transaction amounts, whereas shielded transactions conceal sender, receiver, and amount information. Zakura has also introduced a wallet balance query tool based on Private Information Retrieval (PIR), enabling users to check address balances without disclosing their address lists to servers.

The experimental version of this tool is currently accessible via the "Private queries" setting in the Zcash wallet Vizor. At present, no practical quantum attacks against mainstream cryptocurrency key systems have been verified.