How Skyhook Compares

Several routes already move value between Zcash and other chains. They differ less in what they let users do than in whom users must trust while a transfer is in flight: a set of node operators, a bridge operator, or a group of key-holding guardians. This page compares the Skyhook Bridge, the swap protocol built on the Skyhook mechanism, with the four routes most used or planned for ZEC as of October 2026: THORChain and Maya Protocol, NEAR Intents, and red·bridge. It describes each as its own documentation and public reporting do; each claim is referenced below.

The Skyhook Bridge’s distinguishing property is that no party stands between a Zcash payment and the funds it unlocks. The contract on the other chain rebuilds the shielded transaction’s ID from the parts it needs (how that works) and checks Zcash’s proof-of-work itself (chain finality). The trade-offs of that design are set out in their own section.

At a glance

Trust paths

The widget below traces a transfer through each route, from the Zcash payment to the funds it buys, and shows what happens when the parties in between stop working, collude, or are watched.

THORChain and Maya

THORChain is a cross-chain exchange in which bonded node operators run the network and hold every pool’s funds in vaults controlled by threshold signatures.⁶ It completed a native ZEC integration in October 2026, covering transparent addresses only, so amounts and addresses in a ZEC swap are public on the Zcash chain.¹ Maya Protocol, a fork of THORChain, added ZEC in May 2025, also using transparent addresses at the protocol level; wallets such as Edge offer private swaps by shielding around it.²

Both trade without wrapping, which makes them practical today. Their trust model is the node set: operators can halt trading and signing by vote, and after an exploit in May 2026 THORChain’s nodes brought the whole network to a controlled halt within about two hours.⁹ Node bonds are designed to make stealing vault funds unprofitable, which is an economic guarantee rather than a cryptographic one.

NEAR Intents

NEAR Intents lets users state what they want, such as “swap this ZEC for USDC”, and lets independent market makers compete to fill it, with settlement enforced by a contract on NEAR.³ Assets from other chains, ZEC among them, enter and leave through the PoA bridge, which the system’s developers describe as fast but trusted.⁷ Its documentation lists Zcash support as transparent addresses only; wallets such as Zodl deliver the result to a fresh shielded address.⁵³

The operator can suspend deposits and withdrawals, and has done so, across 11 networks at once, after a $3.8 million loss.[^near-halt] It can also hold an individual user's funds. In July 2026 a user swapped 1,120 shielded ZEC through NEAR Intents into about$589,000 USDT; when the USDT was deposited back into NEAR Intents, it was held for a compliance review. According to the user’s account, NEAR Intents wrote on 23 July that the review had concluded and the funds would be released, then on 27 August called that an initial determination and returned the case to pending. As of 25 September the funds had been held for 67 days, with no refund made.¹¹ The official application also notes that NEAR Intents reserves the right to freeze withdrawals or deposits and put them on hold.¹³

red·bridge

red·bridge connects Zcash to Avalanche. Shielded ZEC deposited from the Ironwood shielded pool is represented on Avalanche by ZEC.rbr, an ordinary ERC-20 token, with a 1:1 path back to Zcash.⁴ Its design documents, as summarized by a prospective security reviewer, place custody with guardian nodes holding a FROST threshold key;⁸ partner organizations will run the guardian nodes for the first 24 months.⁴ It is funded by Zcash Community Grants and the Avalanche Foundation, with launch planned for the second half of 2026.⁴

Because the bridged ZEC sits under the guardians’ key, a deposit counts only once they recognize it, withdrawals need a threshold of their signatures, and a threshold of them acting together could move the pooled funds.¹³ Holders of ZEC.rbr are trusting that custody, and the token’s value rests on nothing else. Like any wrapped asset, it is worth what redeeming it is worth: if the guardians fail, collude, or simply lose the market’s confidence, nothing else backs the token, and it can become worthless.

Choosing what you hold

A bridge that issues its own wrapped token makes every user share one trust assumption. The Skyhook Bridge settles in whatever asset a request locks, so the user chooses it per swap: native ETH, which needs no trust beyond the chain itself; cbZEC, Coinbase’s wrapped ZEC on Base, backed 1:1 by ZEC in Coinbase custody;¹² or a wrapped ZEC token issued by someone else entirely.

That last option follows from how narrow the core check of Skyhook, the mechanism underneath the bridge, is. It proves that a shielded payment of a given value reached a given public key, and nothing more. Any contract can therefore name a public key of its own and accept ZEC sent to it, with no human counterparty and no one vouching for the deposit. This is Pay-to-Smart-Contract, and it already works. A contract could, for example, mint a fresh wrapped ZEC token for every verified payment to a guardian key it names. Recognizing deposits would then need no one’s cooperation; only redemption, which spends from that key, would depend on whoever controls it. The trust is confined to one step, and whoever deploys the token chooses whom it rests on.

The Skyhook Bridge’s trade-offs

Removing the intermediaries has costs, and reviewers should weigh them:

• Status. The Skyhook Bridge runs as a public testnet beta in one direction, ETH to TAZ. The reverse direction is Milestone 1, and an external security audit will follow development, funded separately.¹³
• Recipient privacy. The sender of the Zcash payment is private, but until Milestone 3 the recipient’s public key, that is, their address, is visible on Ethereum, which matches what NEAR Intents reveals today.¹³ No viewing key is ever exposed: an address cannot decrypt any transaction, unlike a leaked UFVK (details).
• Counterparties. Each swap needs someone willing to take the other side. Liquidity comes from anyone posting shielded ZEC, and Milestone 5 delivers the router and node standard that make this self-serve.
• Waiting for finality. A payment is final once its block and three more are mined and the rollup covering them is cemented, a few minutes at Zcash’s 75-second block target. A swap can also finalize itself in one shot, in a single transaction when oracles have stored the blocks, or over several transactions when they haven’t.
• Gas. Verification happens on-chain, so the bridge runs on Base, where gas is cheap, rather than on Ethereum mainnet.

See also

• Overview
• How It Works
• Chain Finality
• Reviewer FAQ