The Zebra Book

• Getting Started
  • Docker
  • Manual Install
• CI/CD Architecture
• Documentation
• User support
• Security
• License

Zebra is a Zcash full node written in Rust.

Getting Started

You can run Zebra using our Docker image or you can install it manually.

Docker

This command will run our latest release, and sync it to the tip:

docker run zfnd/zebra:latest

For more information, read our Docker documentation.

Manual Install

Building Zebra requires Rust, libclang, and a C++ compiler. Below are quick summaries for installing these dependencies.

sudo pacman -S rust clang protobuf

export CXXFLAGS="$CXXFLAGS -include cstdint"

Once you have the dependencies in place, you can install Zebra with:

cargo install --locked zebrad

Alternatively, you can install it from GitHub:

cargo install --git https://github.com/ZcashFoundation/zebra --tag v2.5.0 zebrad

You can start Zebra by running

zebrad start

Refer to the Building and Installing Zebra and Running Zebra sections in the book for enabling optional features, detailed configuration and further details.

CI/CD Architecture

Zebra uses a comprehensive CI/CD system built on GitHub Actions to ensure code quality, maintain stability, and automate routine tasks. Our CI/CD infrastructure:

• Runs automated tests on every PR and commit.
• Manages deployments to various environments.
• Handles cross-platform compatibility checks.
• Automates release processes.

For a detailed understanding of our CI/CD system, including workflow diagrams, infrastructure details, and best practices, see our CI/CD Architecture Documentation.

Documentation

The Zcash Foundation maintains the following resources documenting Zebra:

• The Zebra Book:

  • General Introduction,

  • User Documentation,

  • Developer Documentation.

  • User guides of note:

    • Zebra Health Endpoints — liveness/readiness checks for Kubernetes and load balancers

• The documentation of the public APIs for the latest releases of the individual Zebra crates.

• The documentation of the internal APIs for the main branch of the whole Zebra monorepo.

User support

If Zebra doesn't behave the way you expected, open an issue. We regularly triage new issues and we will respond. We maintain a list of known issues in the Troubleshooting section of the book.

If you want to chat with us, Join the Zcash Foundation Discord Server and find the "zebra-support" channel.

Security

Zebra has a responsible disclosure policy, which we encourage security researchers to follow.

License

Zebra is distributed under the terms of both the MIT license and the Apache License (Version 2.0). Some Zebra crates are distributed under the MIT license only, because some of their code was originally from MIT-licensed projects. See each crate's directory for details.

See LICENSE-APACHE and LICENSE-MIT.