[Zcash Development Team Plans to Introduce Post-Quantum Signature Mechanism in January Next Year, Approximately 70% of ZEC Still in Transparent Address Pool] BlockBeats News, October 9: The privacy-focused blockchain Zcash's development team plans to introduce post-quantum signature-related opcodes in January 2027. These will support transaction verification through hash-based signatures to mitigate the potential threat posed by future breakthroughs in quantum computing to wallet key security. However, the exact activation date for this feature has not yet been determined. Zakura engineer Roman Akhtariev stated that the team plans to incorporate post-quantum signature opcodes into Zcash in January next year. This mechanism aims to prevent attackers from deriving private keys from public keys and forging transaction authorizations. The upgrade primarily targets Zcash's transparent transaction system. Data shows that as of Thursday, approximately 11.96 million ZEC are stored in the transparent address pool, accounting for about 70% of the 16.98 million ZEC issued. Transparent transactions expose addresses and transaction amounts, while shielded transactions can hide information such as the sender, receiver, and amount. Additionally, Zakura has launched a wallet balance query tool based on Private Information Retrieval (PIR), allowing users to check address balances without exposing the queried address list to the server. An experimental version of this tool is now available through the "Private queries" setting in the Zcash wallet Vizor. Previously, Ethereum researcher Justin Drake warned that AI-assisted attacks could accelerate the risk of breaking existing cryptographic systems and suggested that token holders prepare for extreme scenarios with a "Bunker Mode." However, no practical quantum attacks targeting mainstream crypto wallet keys have been confirmed to date. [Original Link]