Retroactive Grant Application - zcash-payment-service

o November 2026 Applicant: Andrew Arnott ( @AArnott , nerdcash), no additional team members Hi everyone. I’ve submitted a retroactive grant application for zcash-payment-service, which lets any merchant accept shielded Zcash with no middlemen and no fees. It is a free, MIT-licensed, self-hosted service that holds only a viewing key, so payments go straight from payer to merchant. The full application is in the GitHub issue; here’s the short version. Why it exists Cryptocurrency promises payments with no middlemen and no fees, yet most payment processors are provider-hosted and charge fees, so merchants rarely get that benefit. zcash-payment-service removes every third party from the transaction. The payer sends shielded ZEC directly to the merchant’s own wallet, and the merchant’s own server confirms it using only a unified incoming viewing key (UIVK). The service can see payments but can never spend them. It complements hosted processors such as