Gemini Migrates Zcash Infrastructure to Zakura Node Ahead of NU7 Upgrade

Cryptocurrency exchange Gemini has migrated its backend Zcash infrastructure to Zakura, an open-source full-node client written in Rust ¹. The transition replaces Zebra with a consensus-compatible fork designed to improve data pruning, chain synchronization, and node recovery times ¹. Gemini stated that user deposits and withdrawals remain unaffected by the backend migration ¹. At the time of writing, $ZEC was trading around $1,395.

The infrastructure overhaul responds directly to network parameters approved by the Zcash community ¹. On Sept. 14, coinholders voted to reduce Zcash's block generation time from 75 seconds to 25 seconds under the upcoming NU7 network upgrade targeted for November ¹. This tripling of block generation frequency requires node operators to process three times as many blocks over equivalent intervals, significantly increasing hardware performance and storage overhead demands ¹.

Performance Benchmarks and Recovery Metrics

Gemini reported substantial operational improvements during its internal node testing ¹. While Zebra took close to 24 hours to sync to the chain tip in Gemini's environment, Zakura reached the chain tip in just over six hours ¹. Published benchmarks for Zakura showed full sync times dropping to roughly four hours and 20 minutes from approximately 21 hours on Zebra ¹.

Additionally, Zakura leverages 12 GB pruned snapshots that bootstrap nodes roughly 680 times faster than standard peer-to-peer synchronization, allowing node rebuilds within minutes ¹. Zakura manages consensus and peer-to-peer networking while retaining standard Zcash RPC interfaces, enabling Gemini's payout systems to operate without interface changes ¹. The upgrade follows Gemini's previous implementations of Zcash upgrades, including shielded withdrawals in 2020, unified addresses and Orchard in 2025, and support for Orchard's replacement, Ironwood, earlier this summer ¹.