Zcash Sets Stage for 'Sapling' Upgrade With New Software Release

Privacy coin zcash is gearing up for a major upgrade with the first release of network software compatible with its upcoming Sapling hard fork.

Zcash version 2.0.0 was released Thursday, according to a blog post penned by Sean Bowe, an engineer with the Zerocoin Electric Coin Company, which develops the zcash cryptocurrency.

The hard fork itself is expected to occur on October 28, when the first Sapling block will be mined at block 419,200.

Prior to the live launch, Sapling will run on a test network from block 280,000 - an event Bowe said should occur sometime next Thursday.

"Sapling had previously activated on testnet, but because changes were made to the consensus rules your node will automatically roll back and proceed on the Overwinter testnet branch until Sapling activates again at the new height."

The v2.0.0 software upgrade includes experimental support for remote procedure calls - by which code can execute on a remote computer as if it was called locally - although full support will not be available until the 2.0.1 release.

The new software instead just ignores invalid transactions.

The Sapling upgrade is intended to significantly reduce the storage requirements for private transactions and update the blockchain's zk-snarks cryptography to make it more secure, as previously reported by CoinDesk.

The zcash team began releasing software patches for Sapling earlier this year.

Zcash's previous Overwinter hard fork, executed in June, was expected to be a sort of trial run for Sapling, and included a number of software improvements.