ZKas — zkas-rusty

Private-by-default money at Kaspa speed. A fork of rusty-kaspa where every balance and transfer is shielded by default (Zcash Orchard notes, Halo 2 proofs, no trusted setup), keeping Kaspa's BlockDAG confirmation and kHeavyHash proof-of-work.

This repo is the core node and tooling: the node, the miner, the wallet daemon, the explorer API.

What's different from Kaspa

	ZKas	Kaspa
Privacy	Shielded by default (Orchard)	Transparent
Consensus	GHOSTDAG BlockDAG, ~1 block/s	10 blocks/s
PoW	kHeavyHash (byte-identical to Kaspa)	kHeavyHash
Merged mining	Yes — AuxPoW dual-acceptance with Kaspa	—
Emission	60 ZKAS start, 3-month halving, two-step perpetual tail (6 → 0.6 ZKAS/block)	fixed cap

• Shielded state: coinbase rewards and transfers enter a mandatory Orchard pool; the only public quantity is the fee a spender exposes to the miner. A shielded state root (anchor + nullifier accumulator + turnstile) is committed in the coinbase.
• Merged mining (Option-2 dual acceptance): a block is valid if either its native kHeavyHash clears the target or it carries an AuxPoW proof — a parent kHeavyHash block (e.g. a Kaspa block) whose coinbase commits to the ZKas block hash. Native mining stays the backbone; merged mining adds security at zero marginal cost to Kaspa miners. See consensus/core/src/auxpow.rs and consensus/pow/src/auxpow.rs.
• Tokenomics: 60 ZKAS initial reward (at 1 BPS), halving every 3 months, settling on a two-step perpetual tail: 6 ZKAS/block from ~month 10 through month 24, then a permanent 0.6 ZKAS/block floor (~18.9M ZKAS/year, ~2.2% at onset decaying toward ~1%). No fixed supply cap.

Status & security

• Mainnet is live (since late July 2026). The genesis is anchored to Bitcoin block 959,713 (zkas-mainnet btc#959713 in the genesis coinbase) — see the no-premine proof. Earlier public test chains were wound down before this genesis was cut; the anchored genesis is the final one and there is no planned reset. (This README carried a TESTNET banner until 2026-07-27, during the pre-launch test phase — if a copy you are reading still shows one, it is a stale snapshot; check this file on main.)
• No external audit yet. The novel piece — Orchard shielded state (nullifier set, note-commitment tree, turnstile supply invariant) kept consistent under GHOSTDAG's out-of-order block acceptance — is specified in the whitepaper and exercised by the consensus test suite, but has not had an independent security review. Treat the software accordingly, and if you break an invariant we want to hear about it.
• Custody: end-user wallets (web, desktop, mobile, paper) are non-custodial — the seed stays on the user's device and a hosted daemon receives a viewing key only (docs/NON_CUSTODIAL_WALLET.md). Privacy: the desktop app, and the Android app in Run on this phone mode, embed zkas-walletd in-process, so no server holds even the viewing key; the node they sync from serves blocks and learns nothing about the wallet. zkas-walletd's custodial mode exists for operators (pools, payout services) that must sign server-side.

Run a node

Binaries: Releases · to compile instead, see docs/BUILDING.md.

./kaspad --appdir=./zkas-node --rpclisten=127.0.0.1:16110 --utxoindex

No peer list is needed: the node resolves the mainnet seeder seed.zkas.info, dials every address it returns on p2p port 16111, and discovers the rest of the network through gossip. (--connect=<ip>:16111 pins it to specific peers instead and skips the seeder.) Only outbound access to a peer's p2p 16111 is needed; keep the RPC on 16110 bound to loopback. Shielded note history is fetched and verified automatically after the first sync.

Node types — pruned (default), archival, and shielded-history — and every flag are documented in docs/NODE.md. Which one you want depends on whether the node just validates/mines, serves wallets complete balances, or backs an explorer.

Run a wallet

zkas-walletd is the shielded wallet daemon — REST, token-scoped, and what the web and mobile wallets talk to. It holds viewing keys only unless you tell it otherwise.

./zkas-walletd --network mainnet --rpc-server 127.0.0.1:16810 --listen 127.0.0.1:8501

docs/WALLETD.md is the full guide: endpoints, sizing, tuning, and integration playbooks for exchanges and mining pools. Read §0 first — payments are sized in notes, not coins, and that one fact explains most of the surprises.

Non-custodial signing (the seed never leaves the device): docs/NON_CUSTODIAL_WALLET.md.

Mine

• Pool (ASICs): point your miner at mining-pool.zkas.info. No node needed.
• Solo: with a synced node, mine to your zkas: address:

  ./zkas-miner -s 127.0.0.1:16810 -a zkas:<your-address> -t 4

Binaries

Crate	Binary	Role
kaspad	kaspad	the node (gRPC :16810, p2p :16111)
miner	zkas-miner	CPU miner (native + --merged AuxPoW)
zkas-walletd	zkas-walletd	shielded wallet daemon
zkas-api	zkas-api	explorer REST backend

Companion repos: zkas-pool (stratum bridge), zkas-explorer, zkas-wallet, zkas-website.

Docs

docs/BUILDING.md	prerequisites, compiling, tests
docs/WALLETD.md	wallet daemon: API, tuning, exchange & pool integration
docs/NODE.md	running a node: pruned vs archival, shielded history, ports, flags, recovery
docs/CLI-WALLET.md	shielded-pay command-line wallet
docs/archival.md	archival nodes and history retention

Explorer: https://explorer.zkas.info

Configuration

merged_mining_activation and every tokenomics constant live in consensus/core/src/config/params.rs. Genesis, address prefixes (zkas: / zkastest:) and BPS are compiled in — changing them requires a rebuild and a fresh chain.

License

Inherits rusty-kaspa's ISC license. See LICENSE.