zcashd Release Support

Release cadence and support window

zcashd releases happen approximately every six weeks, although this may change if a particular release is delayed, or if a hotfix release occurs.

Each zcashd release is generally supported for 16 weeks. Occasionally this changes for individual releases (for example, near to a Network Upgrade activation).

These two policies mean that there are generally at least two separate zcashd versions currently supported at any given time.

End-of-Support halt

Every zcashd version released by ECC has an End-of-Support height. When the Zcash chain reaches this height, zcashd will automatically shut down, and the binary will refuse to restart. This is for several reasons:

• The zcashd maintainers do not have the resources to maintain old versions of zcashd indefinitely.
• Each time a user upgrades their zcashd node, they are re-confirming that they are happy to run the Zcash consensus rules encoded in the version of zcashd they are running. This is an important part of the overall strategy for changes to the node and consensus rules; users who want to follow different rules (or even just have a different End-of-Support halt policy) will obtain a zcashd binary from some other source, with its own support policies.
• Knowing that old versions will shut down is useful for planning backwards-incompatible changes in Network Upgrades. A Network Upgrade activation can be targeted for a height where we know that all released zcashd versions which did not support the Network Upgrade will have shut down by the time the Network Upgrade activates.

End-of-Support heights

The End-of-Support height for a running zcashd can be queried over JSON-RPC using the getdeprecationinfo method.

The following table shows End-of-Support information for recent zcashd releases. It is automatically updated during each release. "End of Support" dates are estimated at that time, and may shift due to changes in network solution power.