Lengthy-time holders of Zcash (ZEC), with cash from 2018 or earlier, are going through points transferring their asset from Ledger crypto wallets, leaving some early adopters unable to money out their ZEC as costs soar to multi-year highs.
In an X publish on Nov. 15, Bitcoin developer Jameson Lopp famous that he had run right into a shocking roadblock whereas making an attempt to maneuver some outdated ZEC. Lopp mentioned that he had tried to switch ZEC sitting in a pockets from 2017, solely to find that just about each software he examined had points, making it inconceivable to spend his ZEC.
Lopp defined that his Nano X and Ledger Dwell, a Ledger {hardware} pockets paired with its app, crashed in the course of the transaction signing. Nonetheless, it’s price noting that Ledger isn’t the one crypto pockets that was apparently unable to assist the older Zcash. Software program wallets like Edge and Zashi wouldn’t settle for his pockets’s start date both, whereas Electrum, a desktop pockets used for Zcash and Bitcoin, not has any functioning servers in any respect, Lopp famous.
In a follow-up X publish on Nov. 16, Lopp added that he had discovered why spending the 2017-era Zcash had change into so troublesome:
“Replace: if in case you have actually outdated ZEC UTXOs created earlier than 2018, they should be spent with a ‘model 1’ transaction… and Ledger eliminated assist for it. Ledger broke the flexibility for early adopters to spend ZEC. Wow. Dumbfounded.”
Ledger’s chief expertise officer, Charles Guillemet, replied quickly after, confirming in an X publish on Nov. 16 that the crypto pockets supplier doesn’t at the moment assist sure “(very) outdated” ZEC transactions.
“Shielded ZEC transactions and a few (very) outdated clear transactions should not supported in the mean time,” Guillemet wrote.
The Sapling Improve
The difficulty seems to return to Zcash’s Sapling improve, which went stay in October 2018. The replace introduced a brand new transaction format, and, per Zcash’s developer information, required that “all transactions should use the brand new transaction format” after the replace went stay.
“Earlier codecs is not going to be legitimate after the Sapling improve, so when you create transactions, the v4 format have to be used after the improve has activated (however not till then). {Hardware} wallets and SPV purchasers are significantly affected right here,” the Zcash developer information reads.
Whereas it’s unclear why Ledger stopped supporting that performance all collectively, Guillemet acknowledged in his response on X that the corporate is planning to reinstate assist by Q2 2026, and had not too long ago utilized for a grant with the ZCash Basis to take action.
Neighborhood Response
However customers didn’t appear to purchase the grant clarification. Many began questioning why a for-profit firm, whose CEO Pascal Gauthier not too long ago bragged that “revenues have hit triple-digit hundreds of thousands to this point in 2025,” and which is contemplating a U.S. IPO or personal funding subsequent yr, would want exterior money to revive a characteristic that not works on its units.
“So by your individual admission its a characteristic that was there however now is not, but you want a grant as an alternative of idk utilizing the income from the folks you bought a working product to and let fall into disarray,” wrote an X consumer who goes by Vince in response to Guillemet’s assertion.
The Defiant reached out to Ledger for feedback on the matter, however hasn’t heard again by press time.
In the meantime, ZEC is down over 10% on the day, buying and selling round $600, per The Defiant’s value monitoring web page. Even with the correction, the token remains to be up greater than 1,400% over the previous three months, after a pointy, prolonged rally that began in late September of this yr, and pushed the value from $55 to over $720, a degree ZEC holders haven’t seen since 2018.
ZEC 3-month value chart. Supply: CoinGecko
