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For the complete documentation index, see llms.txt. This page is also available as Markdown.

Zcash

Official Website: z.cash

Zcash (ZEC) is a privacy-focused cryptocurrency that lets you send shielded (encrypted) transactions. Shielded transactions hide the sender, receiver, and amount on-chain, giving you strong financial privacy by default. Cake Wallet shields your funds automatically, so you get that privacy without extra steps.

Migrating from Zashi? Follow our Migrate from Zashi guide. We recommend creating a new Zcash wallet in Cake and sending your balance over, rather than restoring your Zashi seed.

Seed Format

Cake Wallet uses a 12-word BIP39 seed for new Zcash wallets by default. Under Advanced Settings on the wallet creation screen you can choose a 24-word BIP39 seed instead, and you can add a seed passphrase. When creating or restoring a wallet, you can use this seed phrase.

Your BIP39 seed can be shared with your other Cake Wallet currencies as part of a wallet group.

Restoring a Zashi seed in Cake Wallet will not show all of your funds, because Zashi handles change addresses differently. This is about how Zashi derives addresses, not about seed length — 24-word seeds created in Cake Wallet work normally. Create a new wallet in Cake and transfer your balance instead. See the Zashi migration guide.

Addresses

Zcash has both transparent (public, like Bitcoin) and shielded (private, encrypted) address types. Cake Wallet supports several, which you can switch between on the Receive screen:

  • Shielded (Ironwood) — the default. A private, encrypted address. We recommend this for most uses.

  • Unified — a shielded address compatible with wallets that expect a combined address format.

  • Legacy Shielded (Sapling) — an older shielded address type for compatibility with wallets that do not support Orchard.

  • Transparent (Disposable) — a public address that automatically rotates. Cake generates a new transparent address after each use for better privacy. Previous addresses continue to work.

  • Public (Static & Transparent) — a public address that does not change. Use this only when you need a fixed transparent address.

Transparent addresses are public, so anyone can see their balance and history on-chain. For maximum privacy, receive to a shielded address.

Zcash receive screen showing the default shielded address in Cake Wallet
Switching between Zcash address types in Cake Wallet

Autoshielding

Cake Wallet automatically shields funds that arrive at your transparent addresses. When you receive to a transparent (public) address, the wallet moves those funds into the shielded pool for you, without any taps required.

This means you get the privacy of shielded Zcash even when a sender can only pay a transparent address.

Autoshielding has a minimum amount. If the total shieldable balance sitting in your transparent addresses is 500,000 zatoshi (0.005 ZEC) or less, the wallet skips shielding. Very small transparent receipts stay transparent until enough accumulates.

Fees

Zcash network fees are paid in ZEC. Fees on Zcash are very low and are largely set by the network protocol.

You can still choose a fee priority. Under Advanced Settings → Fees on the send screen, Zcash offers five levels, in this order:

  • Slow

  • Automatic — the default, and what we recommend

  • Medium

  • Fast

  • Fastest

Zcash uses the same five-level priority list as Monero. Because Zcash fees are already very low, leaving this on Automatic is almost always the right choice.

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