The next major Zcash protocol upgrade, called Sapling, has been delayed by six weeks (one release cycle). Sapling introduces significant efficiency improvements for shielded transactions that will pave the way for broad mobile, exchange and vendor adoption of Zcash shielded addresses.

The Zcash Company is committed to supporting safe protocol upgrades and providing third-parties sufficient time to implement and test releases. Given the scope and significance of Sapling, we believe additional testing time is needed for all parties to ensure its safe activation. We have decided to insert a new release 1.1.2 to the schedule and delay the activation of Sapling. The schedule has been updated on the Zcash website and Github.

We encourage all third parties to use release 1.1.2 to test Sapling. This release is scheduled for July 1, 2018 with support ending on October 21, 2018.

The specific Block Height for the Sapling activation and parameters will be set with the release of version 2.0.0 on August 12th. Activation is anticipated to be October 28th, 2018 — Zcash’s second birthday!

The Overwinter activation will not be affected and is scheduled to activate at block height 347500 which will occur around June 25, 2018. All other activities including third party security audits also remain on schedule.

Please refer to the Network Activation Guide for more guidance on upgrading 3rd party software.