Zcash Unveils High-Throughput Node Aiming for Visa-Level Privacy at 50,000 TPS

Throughput Targets and Tachyon’s Role

The motivation behind the new architecture is straightforward math.

Networks like Mastercard and Visa handle over 50,000 transactions per second, a figure the Zcash team describes as a baseline rather than a goal. Zcash’s existing cryptographic design would force a node to ingest and validate more than 500 megabytes of data each second, since every shielded transaction includes a sizable proof.

That is equivalent to a full DVD of data arriving every ten seconds, indefinitely—far beyond the capacity of any current Zcash client. This data burden explains why each performance bottleneck emerges.

To address this, Bowe’s Project Tachyon employs recursive proofs, where a single proof confirms the integrity of thousands of others, sharply cutting the data needed for consensus verification.

With Tachyon, a node checks one proof instead of many, lowering consensus data demands to a level the team says is realistically achievable through optimized engineering.

Wallet Bottlenecks and Valar’s PIR Solution

Wallets face a separate constraint. Because Zcash conceals transaction recipients, a wallet cannot query a server for its own transactions without leaking metadata. It must download all activity and scan locally, capping wallet performance near one transaction per second.

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