Binary Tarball Download & Setup

The Zcash Open Development Lab (ZODL) provides a binary tarball for download.

As of v6.12.1, we are no longer supporting Debian 10 (Buster) packages in apt.

Warning

Signing key rotation (2026). Starting with v6.12.2, release artifacts (tarballs and the APT Release.gpg) are signed only with the ZODL key. The previous ECC key (B1C9 095E AA18 48DB B54D 9DDA 1D05 FDC6 6B37 2CFE, sysadmin@z.cash) is deprecated and its revocation is planned for 2026-06-23. If you verified earlier releases with the ECC key, make sure to also import the ZODL key before verifying v6.12.2+. See Rotation of the signing keys announcement on the Zcash Community Forum.

Importing the ZODL signing key

The ZODL key (sysadmin@zodl.com) is:

Key fingerprint = 0338 34DD 49DE CF9D BB99 34BC 6C93 CA8E 58E2 6AB1

Import it with:

wget -qO - https://apt.z.cash/zcash.asc | gpg --import

The combined keyring served at https://apt.z.cash/zcash.asc contains both the legacy ECC key (for verifying older releases) and the ZODL key (required for v6.12.2+).

Downloading and verifying the v6.12.2 tarball

Download Tarball for Debian Bullseye v6.12.2

After downloading but before extracting, verify that the checksum of the tarball matches the hash below for the version of the binary you downloaded:

Debian Bullseye:

sha256sum zcash-6.12.2-linux64-debian-bullseye.tar.gz

Result: c355250cba203835c58400821df7b2786d660affdf6a7a6d9070695c05002df2

Download Tarball for Debian Bookworm v6.12.2

After downloading but before extracting, verify that the checksum of the tarball matches the hash below for the version of the binary you downloaded:

Debian Bookworm:

sha256sum zcash-6.12.2-linux64-debian-bookworm.tar.gz

Result: 75947c7df86fb3b4e3d7ff268077806272b5da5742959e13c3d6995e5c2059e0

This checksum was generated from our gitian deterministic build process. View all gitian signatures.

Optionally, you can also verify the detached GPG signature published alongside each tarball (signed with the ZODL key):

wget https://download.z.cash/downloads/zcash-6.12.2-linux64-debian-bullseye.tar.gz.asc
gpg --verify zcash-6.12.2-linux64-debian-bullseye.tar.gz.asc \
             zcash-6.12.2-linux64-debian-bullseye.tar.gz

You should see Good signature from "Zcash Open Development Lab (ZODL) … <sysadmin@zodl.com>".

Once you’ve verified that it matches, extract the Bullseye or Bookworm files and move the binaries into your executables $PATH:

tar -xvf zcash-6.12.2-linux64-debian-bookworm.tar.gz

mv -t /usr/local/bin/ zcash-6.12.2/bin/*

Now that Zcash is installed, run this command to download the parameters used to create and verify shielded transactions:

zcash-fetch-params

Finally, set up a configuration file (~/.zcash/zcash.conf) before runnning zcashd. It can be completely empty; it will then run with the default parameters.