A full node is the program that keeps a complete copy of a blockchain, the Zcash ledger, in this case, and independently checks every transaction against the network’s rules. Zakura is a fork of Zebra, the Zcash Foundation’s node software – meaning it started from the Foundation’s official code and was rebuilt from there.
Consensus rules are the shared rulebook every node enforces, the thing that decides which blocks and transactions the whole network accepts as valid. If a node applies different rules, it forks off and stops following the same chain as everyone else.
Pruning, snapshots and compatibility
Zakura can also prune, a term for deleting old blockchain data a node no longer needs, and cut disk usage substantially. That shrinks the chain enough that the team publishes ready-made copies of it, about 11 gigabytes with the old data stripped, which a new node can download instead of pulling the whole history from other nodes one block at a time.
That takes a node from nothing to running in under two minutes, which the team says is “680 times faster.”
A compatibility mode further reproduces the interface of zcashd, the original client that reaches end of life on July 18, so wallets and exchange integrations built against it will keep working as is.
