Zcash Community Explores 'Ztarknet' Proposal to Merge Private Transactions with Starknet's Scalable DeFi

A new concept dubbed "Ztarknet," aiming to fuse the privacy features of Zcash with the scalability and programmability of Starknet, is currently under discussion within the Zcash community. This initiative, initially highlighted on social media by user Brother Odin, gained formal traction with a technical proposal submitted to the Zcash community forum on October 14, 2025. The proposal outlines a mechanism for Zcash to act as a private vault, with Starknet providing a fast, programmable layer for decentralized finance (DeFi) applications.

Brother Odin, in a recent social media post, enthusiastically described the vision: > "Ztarknet = connect Zcash and Starknet so they work like one system. Zcash already has shielded (private) coins. Starknet can verify Zcash’s zero-knowledge proofs directly onchain. That means you could move Zcash into Starknet and use it privately in DeFi, perps, games, agents.......minblowin everythiiinng." The post further elaborated that Zcash would maintain its role as the private vault, while Starknet would handle the scaling, creating a combined ecosystem.

The technical foundation for this vision was laid out in a proposal by Abdel, a member of StarkWare, on the Zcash community forum. Titled "STARK verification as a Transparent Zcash Extension (TZE), i.e enabler for a Starknet-style L2 on Zcash," it suggests implementing a TZE to verify STARK proofs within Zcash consensus. This would enable a Starknet-style Layer 2 (L2) on Zcash, offering account abstraction and a Cairo VM execution environment for high throughput and low transaction fees, while ensuring Zcash's L1 privacy remains intact.

The proposal emphasizes that programmability and scale would reside on the L2, while privacy would be preserved on the Zcash L1. While Starknet does not currently offer native privacy, the proof verification mechanism is designed to be agnostic, potentially allowing for future integration of privacy-preserving zero-knowledge proofs on the L2. However, community feedback has raised concerns regarding the significant increase in proof data size, with estimates suggesting a 12-16x increase over existing Zcash memo bundles, which could impact network costs and fee structures.

This "Ztarknet" concept aligns with StarkWare's broader ambitions to scale blockchain ecosystems, as evidenced by their focus on integrating with Bitcoin for DeFi and their vision for Starknet to settle on both Bitcoin and Ethereum simultaneously. While Abdel's proposal is an individual initiative, it leverages StarkWare's technology to explore a compelling path for Zcash to expand its utility while maintaining its core privacy ethos. The Zcash community continues to evaluate the technical feasibility and long-term implications of such an integration.