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About

Zebra is the Zcash Foundation's independent, consensus-compatible implementation of a Zcash node.

Zebra's network stack is interoperable with zcashd, and Zebra implements all the features required to reach Zcash network consensus, including the validation of all the consensus rules for the NU5 network upgrade. Here are some benefits of Zebra.

Zebra validates blocks and transactions, but needs extra software to generate them:

  • To generate transactions, run Zebra with lightwalletd.
  • To generate blocks, use a mining pool or miner with Zebra's mining JSON-RPCs. Currently Zebra can only send mining rewards to a single fixed address. To distribute rewards, use mining software that creates its own distribution transactions, a light wallet or the zcashd wallet.

Please join us on Discord if you'd like to find out more or get involved!

Getting Started

You can run Zebra using our Docker image or you can build it manually. Please see the System Requirements section in the Zebra book for system requirements.

Docker

This command will run our latest release, and sync it to the tip:

docker run zfnd/zebra:latest

For more information, read our Docker documentation.

Building Zebra

Building Zebra requires Rust, libclang, and a C++ compiler.

Zebra is tested with the latest stable Rust version. Earlier versions are not supported or tested. Any Zebra release can start depending on new features in the latest stable Rust.

Around every 6 weeks, we release a new Zebra version.

Below are quick summaries for installing the dependencies on your machine.

General instructions for installing dependencies

  1. Install cargo and rustc.

  2. Install Zebra's build dependencies:

    • libclang is a library that might have different names depending on your package manager. Typical names are libclang, libclang-dev, llvm, or llvm-dev.
    • clang or another C++ compiler: g++ (all platforms) or Xcode (macOS).
    • protoc

[!NOTE] Zebra uses the --experimental_allow_proto3_optional flag with protoc during compilation. This flag was introduced in Protocol Buffers v3.12.0 released in May 16, 2020, so make sure you're not using a version of protoc older than 3.12.

Dependencies on Arch

 
sudo pacman -S rust clang protobuf

Note that the package clang includes libclang as well as the C++ compiler.

Once the dependencies are in place, you can build and install Zebra:

cargo install --locked zebrad

You can start Zebra by

zebrad start

Refer to the Installing Zebra and Running Zebra sections in the book for enabling optional features, detailed configuration and further details.

Documentation

The Zcash Foundation maintains the following resources documenting Zebra:

User support

For bug reports please open a bug report ticket in the Zebra repository.

Alternatively by chat, Join the Zcash Foundation Discord Server and find the #zebra-support channel.

We maintain a list of known issues in the Troubleshooting section of the book.

Security

Zebra has a responsible disclosure policy, which we encourage security researchers to follow.

License

Zebra is distributed under the terms of both the MIT license and the Apache License (Version 2.0).

See LICENSE-APACHE and LICENSE-MIT.

Some Zebra crates are distributed under the MIT license only, because some of their code was originally from MIT-licensed projects. See each crate's directory for details.