+The Zcash Network Upgrade 5 (NU5) has been activated on the Zcash (ZEC) mainnet.

+On May 31, the Electric Coin Company – the developer behind Zcash, officially announced that the NU5 upgrade with the Halo Arc suite has been activated on the main network at block 1,687,104.

+NU5 is the first major upgrade since November 2020 for Zcash, including the launch of the Orchard shielded payment protocol and the Halo Arc suite to eliminate reliance on complex setups. Accordingly, NU5 not only improves future scalability for the platform but, more importantly, builds many optimal pathways to protect user privacy.

+Regarding Halo Arc, this is a tool invented and developed at Electric Coin with the support of the Ethereum Foundation, including updates for Zcashd (the consensus node software of Zcash), a prototype ECC wallet, and the ECC wallet software development kit (SDK).