Vitalik Buterin Donates to Shielded Labs to Fund Zcash 'Crosslink' Finality Upgrade

Vitalik Buterin has donated to Shielded Labs to support the development of Zcash’s Crosslink upgrade, the independent team announced. Shielded Labs, which works with Zcash founder Zooko Wilcox‑O’Hearn, will use the funding to advance Crosslink from prototype toward an incentivized testnet and production phases ^[3][2][1].

Crosslink is designed to add a parallel finality layer to Zcash’s existing Proof‑of‑Work chain, intended to prevent chain reversals and strengthen settlement guarantees without replacing PoW. The upgrade is reported to enable shorter exchange confirmation requirements and improve reliability for cross‑chain integrations ^[2][3].

Observers said Buterin’s support underscores ongoing attention to privacy and finality in the crypto ecosystem, placing Zcash’s technical evolution into broader discussions about how blockchains defend user privacy and transaction finality at scale ^[4][1].

The donation advances Crosslink’s development timeline and signals continued developer interest in privacy‑focused protocol improvements, while preserving Zcash’s existing consensus model as the project pursues stronger settlement guarantees ^[2][3][4].