3.0 KiB
(note: this is a temporary file, to be added-to by anybody, and moved to release-notes at release time)
Notable changes
Fake chain detection during initial block download
One of the mechanisms that zcashd
uses to detect whether it is in "initial
block download" (IBD) mode is to compare the active chain's cumulative work
against a hard-coded "minimum chain work" value. This mechanism (inherited from
Bitcoin Core) means that once a node exits IBD mode, it is either on the main
chain, or a fake alternate chain with similar amounts of work. In the latter
case, the node has most likely become the victim of a 50% + 1 adversary.
Starting from this release, zcashd
additionally hard-codes the block hashes
for the activation blocks of each past network upgrade (NU). During initial
chain synchronization, and after the active chain has reached "minimum chain
work", the node checks the blocks at each NU activation height against the
hard-coded hashes. If any of them do not match, the node will immediately alert
the user and shut down for safety.
Disabling old Sprout proofs
As part of our ongoing work to clean up the codebase and minimise the security
surface of zcashd
, we are removing libsnark
from the codebase, and dropping
support for creating and verifying old Sprout proofs. Funds stored in Sprout
addresses are not affected, as they are spent using the hybrid Sprout circuit
(built using bellman
) that was deployed during the Sapling network upgrade.
This change has several implications:
-
zcashd
no longer verifies old Sprout proofs, and will instead assume they are valid. This has a minor implication for nodes: during initial block download, an adversary could feed the node fake blocks containing invalid old Sprout proofs, and the node would accept the fake chain as valid. However, as soon as the active chain contains at least as much work as the hard-coded "minimum chain work" value, the node will detect this situation and shut down. -
Shielded transactions can no longer be created before Sapling has activated. This does not affect Zcash itself, but will affect downstream codebases that have not yet activated Sapling (or that start a new chain after this point and do not activate Sapling from launch). Note that the old Sprout circuit is vulnerable to counterfeiting and should not be used in current deployments.
-
Starting from this release, the circuit parameters from the original Sprout MPC are no longer required to start
zcashd
, and will not be downloaded byfetch-params.sh
. They are not being automatically deleted at this time.
We would like to take a moment to thank the libsnark
authors and contributors.
It was vital to the success of Zcash, and the development of zero-knowledge
proofs in general, to have this code available and usable.