Zcash Payment API

Overview

Zcash extends the Bitcoin Core API with new RPC calls to support private Zcash payments.

Important

Zcash payments make use of two address formats:

taddr - address for transparent funds (similar to a Bitcoin address, value stored in UTXOs)
zaddr - address for private funds (zcash-specific, value stored in objects called notes)

When a transaction only involves taddrs, you can use either the existing Bitcoin RPC calls or the Zcash RPC calls. When a transaction involves zaddrs, you must use the Zcash RPC calls.

Compatibility with Bitcoin Core

  • Zcash supports all commands in the Bitcoin Core API (as of version 0.11.2).

  • Zcash tries to maintain backwards-compatibility as best as it can.

  • We do not recommend use of accounts, which are also deprecated in Bitcoin Core. Where the account parameter exists in the API, please use "" as its value, otherwise an error will be returned.

  • To support multiple users in a single node’s wallet, consider using getnewaddress or z_getnewaddress to obtain a new address for each user. Also consider mapping multiple addresses to each user.

Auto-updating API documentation

We recommend this community-maintained Zcash Payment API documentation, which is automatically generated with a go script, and is updated with each major release.

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