Cake wallet adds Zcash support as it expands beyond its Monero roots

The privacy-preserving Cake Wallet, often associated with the Monero privacy coin, is integrating Zcash, adding to its suite of onchain privacy tools. 

According to the announcement on Thursday, Cake has enabled shielded transactions on Zcash by default, meaning ZEC transaction details are concealed unless users choose to toggle them. 

Zcash offers two types of transactions, "transparent” or “shielded.” Transparent addresses are as traceable as on any other blockchain, while “z addresses” encrypt sender and receiver details and transaction amounts with zero-knowledge proofs.

“Privacy should not be an advanced setting,” Cake Labs CEO Vikrant Sharma said. “By enforcing shielded transactions by default, we’re making strong privacy protections the standard experience, not an optional extra.”

Cake’s move represents not only the growing interest in blockchain privacy broadly, but also the increasing adoption of Zcash — including its somewhat controversial privacy features. 

New York-regulated exchange Gemini, for instance, added support for shielded Zcash withdrawals late last year. Around that time, Zcash had seen a spike in trading volumes, price, and adoption as the blockchain privacy trend captured crypto mindshare. 

Zcash’s share of shielded transactions has surged to over 23%, symbolizing not only growing trust in its supported cryptography but also the diminishing perception that using anonymizing blockchain tools could cause legal trouble. 

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“The attention on privacy coins will come and go, but the underlying demand is clearly growing,” Seth For Privacy, COO of Cake Labs and noted Monero supporter, said. “What the recent cycle showed is that users increasingly care about who can see their financial activity, and that demand isn’t going away in 2026 or beyond.”

Critics speak up

Not all Cake users appear to support the new integration, with some commentators on X rehashing long-standing (and often unsubstantiated) claims that Zcash is less secure or potentially compromised. 

Arkham, for one, says it has deanonymized a significant portion of Zcash transactions, a claim that has been disputed. 

On Wednesday, the Zcash Foundation said the Securities and Exchange Commission has closed a years-long probe into the nonprofit. 

Cake noted it added support for Zcash following “repeated community requests.” On X, the team noted that even transparent Zcash transfers will “always originate from a shielded source” and that the wallet will automatically rotate receiving addresses while autoshielding funds, helping to bolster privacy for non-shielded users.

The wallet also supports other privacy options for Bitcoin, including Silent Payments and PayJoin transactions, a method of collaborating on privacy-preserving onchain transfers, and MWEB for Litecoin.

As part of the wallet upgrade on Thursday, Cake also introduced NEAR Intents, a popular method for cross-chain swaps, particularly among Zcash users. 

Last week, the entire Electric Coin Company staff quit to start a rival Zcash wallet, codenamed Cashz, following a dispute with its governing nonprofit parent organization, Bootstrap, former ECC CEO Josh Swihart told The Block.