Zooko Wilcox, founder of privacy coin Zcash, is looking to accelerate the protocol's upgrade to a hybrid proof-of-stake system after joining Shielded Labs as a product lead. Shielded Labs is an independent Swiss-based organization dedicated to supporting Zcash. Wilcox recently said that after eight years of using PoW mining, Zcash needs to upgrade to a hybrid PoS system. He pointed out that the PoW consensus and the issuance of new coins have put downward pressure on its price, "but this pressure is expected to ease as the pace of new coin issuance decreases." The two major upcoming improvements mentioned by Wilcox include the deployment of the Zcash Sustainability Fund and the upgrade to "Crosslink," a hybrid PoW and PoS protocol. "We want to deploy this technology as quickly as possible while maintaining Zcash's strong security record," he said. The benefits of the upgrade include allowing ZEC holders to pledge, providing finality to protect users from rollback attacks, reducing transaction times and allowing for more secure two-way bridging to other networks. However, Wilcox did not provide detailed technical details or a timeline for the upgrade.