Overwinter Ahead: What Should Happen When Zcash's First Hard Fork Hits

Privacy-oriented cryptocurrency zcash is about to undergo its first-ever hard fork.

That's because the next hard fork upgrade, called Sapling, is all about eliminating the weight of the protocol's private transaction types so that zcash can scale to more users.

According to the zcash website, a total of 12 exchanges, mining pools and startups have come forward to support Overwinter, while further parties - MinerGate, Bitfly and Huobi - have publicized support on Twitter.

D. Jane Mercer, the developer of the zcash Windows wallet, WinZEC, threatened to stop contributing to the wallet's code and a chain split on June 20 if he didn't get further funding to support his work.

At the same time, disenfranchisement within the zcash mining community, still grappling with the introduction of an ASIC for zcash mining has continued to build.

One of the reasons for zcash developer's optimism about the Overwinter hard fork is that those backing the protocol have taken various steps to make sure everything goes smoothly.

The upgrade is low on features, said zcash engineer Jack Grigg.

While formerly optional, zcash developers recently opted to remove the ability to disable auto-senescence code, which according to developer Jason Davies, ensures zcash users keep up with new releases.

"Permanent use of EOS is intended to simplify the relationship between zcash and its users," Davies said, "The default state of the zcash client is to require that you keep your software up-to-date."

These risk-mitigations aren't the only strategies the zcash team has deployed to make sure the Overwinter upgrade doesn't go awry.