Zodl Vault plans beta access in groups of 100 for Zcash holders

Zodl has opened a waitlist for its macOS Vault app, with beta access planned in groups of 100 people for a product focused on long-term storage of shielded Zcash.

Zodl’s official signup page states that prospective testers can register with an email address and will receive access through a staged rollout.

“Beta access opens one hundred people at a time.”

In its Oct. 14 newsletter, ZecHub described Vault as a desktop application for long-term self-custody of shielded ZEC and dated its introduction to Oct. 7. The publication linked the announcement to Zodl’s official account.

Zodl Vault plans access in groups of 100

An Oct. 18 ZecHub ecosystem digest cited a Zodl update saying more than 4,100 people had signed up for the Vault beta. The figure represents registrations reported before that digest, rather than a current count of people using the application.

The official waitlist page gives the size of each admission group without specifying a public launch date or explaining how testers will be selected. Its macOS listing does not establish plans for Windows or Linux.

ZecHub’s Oct. 14 description referred to invitations being released in batches. The signup page itself describes how access will open, without confirming how many invitations have been sent.

Zodl’s mobile wallet already supports hardware signing

On its main website, Zodl describes its existing mobile wallet as a self-custody application whose users control their keys and funds. Its hardware-wallet instructions say users can connect a Keystone device, manage the associated funds through the app, and approve outgoing transactions on the hardware.

The mobile product accepts transparent ZEC and prompts users to shield an incoming transparent balance, according to the website. Once shielded, those funds can be used for private payments.

For cross-chain transfers, the company describes CrossPay as a way to send shielded ZEC while a recipient receives another asset, such as Bitcoin or a stablecoin. Its swaps use NEAR Intents to exchange between ZEC and supported cryptocurrencies.

Those descriptions concern the existing mobile app. The Vault registration page does not list equivalent payment, swap, or hardware-signing features.

As crypto.news previously reported on Feb. 17, the team announced the Zashi wallet’s rebrand to Zodl after leaving Electric Coin Company. Its Feb. 16 statement said the name change would arrive through an app update without changing wallet functionality, security, or user data.

Shielded ZEC balances provide separate network context

Zcash Stats recorded 4.96 million ZEC in shielded pools on Oct. 18, compared with 4.91 million ZEC 28 days earlier, according to Oct. 19 crypto.news coverage of shielded pool balances. The dashboard put the shielded share near 29.2% of circulating supply.

The tracker distinguishes coins held in shielded pools from transaction activity. Its aggregate figures do not identify individual holders or payment amounts.

Zakura has separately proposed a wallet feature that assigns a different incoming viewing key to each Zcash swap through NEAR Intents. In an Oct. 19 account of the wallet privacy proposal, developer Adam Tucker described the potential exposure of swap addresses permanently recorded on NEAR’s public blockchain.

According to Tucker, a sufficiently powerful future quantum computer could recover a viewing key from an exposed address and reveal payments associated with the account. His proposed design would limit the recovered information to a single swap while leaving the existing spending key unchanged.

Zakura said software wallets built with its libraries could begin integrating the feature in the coming weeks, with hardware-wallet support following later.