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This responds to a post and related replies about Crosslink. Appreciation is expressed for sharing a personal view; constructive debate helps Zcash improve and engagement on the merits is valued

On Crosslink finality not being instant: as ZEC is used more across DEXs, bridges, L2s like Ztarknet, and other cross-chain applications, strong and predictable settlement guarantees become more important. This raises the risk and cost of any settlement violation. Given the growing number of high-value bridging transactions involving ZEC, it is timely and important to strengthen protections for users participating in these activities

Crosslink finality also has the potential to shorten CEX deposit times, which affect liquidity and user experience. For example, Coinbase currently requires 120 confirmations for ZEC deposits. While the first Crosslink release will not be fast, future upgrades aim to reduce the finality window and move toward faster settlement over time

Regarding the claim of "no evidence" that Crosslink improves security: independent design audits from respected firms and researchers are being arranged to evaluate security guarantees in detail, with the first report expected by mid-December. Additional scrutiny and analysis from engineering teams across the ecosystem are encouraged

Crosslink provides protections that are not present in current Zcash by making successful attacks significantly harder. An adversary would need to compromise both the PoW and PoS layers rather than just one. The PoS layer also enables identification of dishonest validators and coordinated community responses, including a community-activated fork to penalize bad behavior, which introduces consequences absent in pure PoW and strengthens network credibility

On concerns about added complexity: Zcash has a governance process for evaluating protocol changes with a high bar—proposals must be formally specified, publicly debated, independently audited, and demonstrate broad support from the community and coinholders before proceeding. Crosslink is being evaluated through that process, and the community and coinholders will be polled after the testnet prototype is completed. If broad consensus does not emerge, it will not move forward

A forthcoming workshop and testnet prototype will enable hands-on evaluation of Crosslink's staking lifecycle and finality, allowing wallet connections and basic staking actions to observe how finality works in practice