Zcash Integration Guide

Zcash is based on Bitcoin, and has a superset of functionality, both in the protocol and the RPC interface. This document describes Zcash integration into services and products.

Integration Path

There are two approaches to integrating a service or product with Zcash: the Bitcoin-compatible approach, and the Zcash API approach. The Bitcoin-compatible approach is convenient for deployments that already use Bitcoin Core, because the API is (almost) identical. Alternatively, if new integrations are being developed, using the Zcash API may be simpler for most use-cases.

Services that use the Zcash API can send to and receive from both z-addrs and t-addrs. One current drawback is that this API does not support multisig transactions. Services that use the Bitcoin-compatibility approach can only send or receive to/from t-addrs which do not provide the privacy features Zcash is known for.

A service that supports both z-addrs and multisig will use the Zcash API for all transactions except multisig, in which case it will use the Bitcoin API.

Designation Features to Support
Level Description Transparent Transactions Transparent Multisig Private Transactions Encrypted Memo
1 Bitcoin- compatible Bitcoin API Bitcoin API
2 Zcash API Zcash Payment API Bitcoin API Zcash Payment API Zcash Payment API

Bitcoin API

  • Backwards compatible with Bitcoin-Core 0.11.2 with minor modifications to JSON output.
  • Recommended for: time to market for existing Bitcoin applications, familiarity with Bitcoin and multi-sig.

The zcash daemon, zcashd, presents the same kind of RPC interface as Bitcoin Core, and this interface (see Bitcoin RPC reference) provides a very similar set of Bitcoin API calls, which we call the Bitcoin API. Transactions which only involve transparent addresses can be created with this API just as for Bitcoin.

This API can be used for advanced Bitcoin transactions, just as in Bitcoin Core, such as those involving multisig addresses. Multisig addresses begin with “t3” whereas standard transparent addresses begin with “t1”.

Zcash Payment API

  • For sending both transparent and private payments. Extends the existing Bitcoin API with new commands.
  • Recommended for: new applications looking to add private transactions and encrypted memo field support which do not need multisig.

In addition, zcashd adds the Payment API (see Zcash Payment API reference). This is a high-level API that simplifies the common use cases of transfers. This API can send from or to both z-addrs and t-addrs through the z_sendmany call.

Example of using curl to make a z_sendmany call:

curl --user "$USER:$PASSWORD" \
  -X POST \
  --data-binary "{ \"jsonrpc\": \"1.0\", \"id\":\"curltest\", \"method\": \"z_sendmany\", \"params\": [\"$FROM_ADDR\", [{\"address\": \"$TO_ADDR\" ,\"amount\": $AMOUNT}]] }" \
  -H "Content-Type: text/plain;" \
  http://127.0.0.1:8232

This API does not yet support advanced Bitcoin transaction types, such as those involving multisig addresses.

Contact Us

For assistance with integrating Zcash into your product, send us a message at ecosystem@z.cash.