Cake Wallet, the long-time sanctuary for Monero loyalists, is now casting a much wider privacy net by rolling out full Zcash support. In a Thursday announcement, the wallet declared it's turning on shielded ZEC transactions by default—meaning your transaction details stay cloaked unless you deliberately opt to make them transparent. Zcash offers two distinct paths: transparent addresses (traceable like any other chain) or z-addresses, which utilize zero-knowledge proofs to encrypt sender, receiver, and amount data.
Cake Labs CEO Vikrant Sharma didn't mince words: “Privacy should not be an advanced setting.” By making shielded transactions the default, the wallet is baking strong privacy directly into the base experience, rather than burying it behind a complicated toggle switch.
This pivot signals both rising interest in blockchain privacy and growing adoption of Zcash, even as its privacy features remain a hot topic of debate. “The spotlight on privacy coins will shift, but the underlying demand is clearly expanding,” noted Cake Labs COO and prominent Monero advocate Seth For Privacy. “What the recent cycle demonstrated is that users are increasingly concerned about who can monitor their financial activity, and that demand isn’t vanishing in 2026 or beyond.”
Not everyone is raising a glass. Some on X have dusted off old, often unsubstantiated claims that Zcash is less secure or potentially compromised. One notable critic, Arkham, asserts they have deanonymized a significant portion of Zcash transactions—a disputed claim at best. Meanwhile, the Zcash Foundation recently caught a break: the SEC has officially closed its years-long probe into the nonprofit.
Beyond Zcash, Cake Wallet continues to support other privacy tools for Bitcoin, including Silent Payments and PayJoin transactions, as well as MWEB for Litecoin. The latest update also introduces NEAR Intents, a popular method for cross-chain swaps, particularly among Zcash users aiming to move between chains without leaving a digital footprint.
