OmniBridge Bridged Zcash (Solana) — Project Update

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Biggest Stories of 2025

• Zolana Bridge Launch (October 16, 2025): Zcash announced the launch of the Zolana bridge, a cross-chain bridge connecting the Zcash, Solana, and NEAR networks, enabling transfers of ZEC to Solana using NEAR's OmniBridge and Chain Signatures technology 7. This is the foundational event for the OmniBridge Bridged Zcash (Solana) asset, as it established the mechanism by which ZEC reaches Solana.
• Arkham Zcash Integration (December 8, 2025): Arkham added support for Zcash, with roughly half of all shielded and unshielded transactions labeled 8. This improved transparency and analytics coverage for Zcash activity, which is relevant to monitoring flows of bridged ZEC.
• Zebra 3.1.0 Release (December 18, 2025): The Zcash Foundation released Zebra 3.1.0, a maintenance and infrastructure update furthering the transition to the Rust-based Zcash node, adding multi-architecture Docker support, a mempool dust filter, and a configurable RPC response size 9. This strengthened the node infrastructure underpinning the Zcash network that bridged assets depend on.
• Zcash Foundation Q3 2025 Report (November 17, 2025): The Foundation reported total liquid assets of $15,866,134 in unrestricted funds as of September 30, 2025, with no liabilities 10. This demonstrated the financial stability of the ecosystem supporting Zcash.
• Zcash Foundation Leadership Appointments (November 11, 2025): The Foundation appointed Pili Guerra as Head of Engineering and Danika Delano as Chief Operating Officer, reflecting a commitment to internal talent development 11. These changes positioned the organization for continued protocol and operational growth.
• Zebra NU6.1 Audit (November 24, 2025): Least Authority conducted an audit of Zebra's updates for the NU6.1 network upgrade, with positive results incorporated into the 3.0.0 NU6.1 stable release 12. This reinforced the security posture of the Zcash network.
• ECC Roadmap: Q4 2025 (November 3, 2025): Electric Coin Company released its Q4 2025 roadmap, prioritizing reduced technical debt, improved Zashi wallet privacy and usability, and ephemeral transparent addresses that create a new address for each ZEC swap via NEAR Intents 13. The NEAR Intents integration is directly tied to the infrastructure that enables bridged ZEC flows.
• ECC Reorganizing Around Zcash User (December 1, 2025): ECC announced organizational changes to streamline operations, unifying engineering under Andrea Kob, consolidating marketing under Peacemonger, and expanding roles for Tony Margarit and Daira-Emma Hopwood 14. These changes aimed to capitalize on rising shielded ZEC usage and ecosystem activity.
• Zcash v6.1.0 Release (January 5, 2025): Zcash v6.1.0 was released as a maintenance update introducing a new end-of-service height to ensure continuity of services 15. This was an early-year maintenance release supporting network stability.
• ECC Protocol Engineering Roadmap: Q2 2025 (April 17, 2025): ECC announced its Q2 2025 engineering roadmap, emphasizing the deprecation of zcashd and the deployment of Zcash Shielded Assets, along with prospective items including Memo Bundles, Scalable Liberated Payments, Governance, Quantum Resilience, and support for a Proof-of-Stake transition 16. This roadmap set the direction for Zcash's technical evolution during the year.
• Omni Bridge Introduction (February 14, 2025): The Near Foundation introduced OmniBridge, a cross-chain infrastructure enabling interactions between NEAR and other blockchains through deterministic address derivation, a bridge smart contract, and an MPC service 17. This was the precursor infrastructure that later enabled the Zolana bridge.
• Omni Bridge Upgrade Announcement (April 4, 2025): The Near Protocol team announced an upgrade introducing Omni Bridge as a multi-chain asset bridge, with initial support for Ethereum, Bitcoin, Solana, Base, and Arbitrum, and migration of legacy Rainbow Bridge users 18. This expanded the bridge infrastructure that ultimately supports bridged ZEC on Solana.