Zcash developers will add post-quantum signature opcodes by January, according to Roman Akhtariev of client software Zakura, targeting transparent transactions that hold roughly 70% of the 16.98 million ZEC in circulation.

"Our team plans for post-quantum signature opcodes to land in Zcash in January," Akhtariev wrote in an engineering post for the client, one of several programs used to run the network and validate its transactions. No activation date has been confirmed.

What do the new opcodes change?

The instructions would let Zcash verify hash-based signatures. That scheme replaces the elliptic-curve approvals used by most networks, including bitcoin and ether, with approvals tied to secret data the network checks against a published digital fingerprint.

Forging a payment would mean breaking that hash, a separate mathematical problem from the one protecting today's wallet keys. A quantum attack that broke elliptic-curve cryptography would not automatically defeat the replacement.

Which payments get covered first?

Zcash splits traffic between two pools. Transparent transactions record addresses and amounts on-chain. Shielded payments hide sender, recipient and amount using zero-knowledge proofs.

The January rollout focuses on the transparent side. About 11.96 million of the 16.98 million ZEC issued sat in transparent addresses on Thursday, roughly seven in 10 coins, according to CoinDesk's calculation from ZecStats data.

What is the urgency?

Zakura's roadmap follows a Thursday warning by Ethereum researcher Justin Drake, who urged holders to prepare a "bunker mode" against possible quantum attacks. Drake said AI-assisted research could find a shortcut through the mathematics protecting bitcoin and ether wallets "in months, not years" in the worst case.

No practical attack on wallet cryptography has been demonstrated. Ethereum's broader migration to quantum-resistant cryptography carries a December 2029 target.

ZEC traded near $1,185 on Thursday, down about 11% on the week as Drake's post circulated on X.

What about shielded transactions?

Shielded payments face a different exposure. An attacker who records a shielded recipient's address today can store the encrypted memo and attempt decryption after a future mathematical breakthrough.

Zakura did not include shielded coverage in the January timeline. Recovery design documents warn that separate safeguards are required for that pool.

Can wallets check balances without leaking?

A wallet that spreads funds across ten addresses still needs to query a server for each balance. The server sees the full address list, which can link addresses that look unrelated on-chain.

Zakura has built a private information retrieval tool that lets the database return a record without learning which one the wallet requested. The wallet verifies holdings without disclosing its address set, while the transactions themselves remain public.

An experimental version ships through the "Private queries" setting in Vizor, a Zcash wallet. The lookup tool releases independently of the January signature upgrade.

The January release secures Zcash's public pool. Shielded users will require separate migration work, and Zakura has not published a timeline for that step.