Utility & control

Address validation, the fee-probe stubs (Zcash fees are ZIP-317, never client-settable), and the daemon control surface. Envelope, auth, and error conventions are on the RPC conventions page.

validateaddress

validateaddress "address"

Validates any Zcash address kind against the daemon's configured network: transparent P2PKH/P2SH (t1/t3, tm/t2 on testnet), Sapling (zs), and Unified Addresses (u1/utest1). An address encoded for a different network is reported invalid.

Parameters

Result (valid address)

{
  "isvalid": true,
  "address": "utest12r53eljnr7kev8ychw3ahzjgm6fwxm7fd8vfay7hn9uylj05x0pxxhze800h9dcgyr8hkc7kz3s2crnrhjcy2p90yfce2vl8mq667zw0",
  "scriptPubKey": "",
  "isscript": false,
  "iswitness": false,
  "isvalid_orchard": true,
  "receiver_types": ["orchard"]
}

Result (invalid address)

{
  "isvalid": false,
  "error_locations": [],
  "error": "Invalid or unsupported address format"
}

• scriptPubKey: the real hex output script for transparent addresses (76a914...88ac P2PKH, a914...87 P2SH). Shielded addresses have no script form, so the field is the empty string.
• isscript: true for P2SH. iswitness: always false (Zcash has no segwit).
• isvalid_orchard (zecd extension): whether the address can receive into the Orchard pool.
• receiver_types (zecd extension): the pools the address can receive into, in canonical order (transparent, sapling, orchard). For a Unified Address this enumerates its receivers, so a client can see what a u1... actually carries; a bare t-addr is ["transparent"].
• receivers_consistent (zecd extension, sometimes present): for a UA with at least two shielded receivers, whether all of them belong to the routed wallet's account at one diversifier index. true means a well-formed UA this wallet could have issued; false flags a hand-spliced UA (receivers stapled together from different indices, or one of the wallet's mixed with a stranger's). Absent when not computable: a foreign UA (the diversifier index is the owner's secret) or a single-receiver address.
• On invalid input, error_locations is always the empty array (no per-character diagnosis).

Ownership is not reported here; use getaddressinfo for ismine.

Errors

vs Bitcoin Core: same base shape, including the error/error_locations fields on invalid input. Core additionally emits witness_version/witness_program for segwit addresses (never applicable here) and populates scriptPubKey for every valid address (zecd leaves it empty for shielded). isvalid_orchard, receiver_types, and receivers_consistent are zecd extensions.

vs zcashd: zcashd splits validation in two: its validateaddress accepts only transparent addresses (and mixes in wallet fields like ismine/iswatchonly), while z_validateaddress handles shielded and Unified Addresses with an address_type field and per-pool key material. zecd's single validateaddress covers every kind, so a valid UA gets isvalid: true.

estimatesmartfee

estimatesmartfee conf_target ( estimate_mode )

An inert probe-compatibility stub. Zcash fees follow ZIP-317 and are computed at transaction-build time; there is no fee estimator. Returns a stable conventional rate so fee-probing clients succeed.

Parameters

Result

{
  "feerate": 0.00001000,
  "blocks": 2
}

feerate is always 0.00001 ZEC (the ZIP-317 marginal fee, as decimal ZEC per the Core convention); blocks echoes conf_target.

vs Bitcoin Core: Core runs a real estimator and may return an errors array with no feerate; zecd always returns feerate. Same success shape.

vs zcashd: no equivalent: current zcashd serves neither estimatesmartfee nor estimatefee.

estimatefee

estimatefee ( nblocks )

The legacy single-number fee probe; same inert stub as estimatesmartfee. The optional argument is ignored.

Result

0.00001000

vs Bitcoin Core: removed from Core master (only estimatesmartfee remains); zecd keeps it because old clients still call it.

vs zcashd: no equivalent in current zcashd.

settxfee

settxfee amount

Always fails. Fees follow ZIP-317 and are never client-settable; an explicit fee instruction gets a self-diagnosing -8 (the same treatment as fee_rate/subtractfeefromamount on the send RPCs) rather than a silently ignored true.

Errors

vs Bitcoin Core: removed from Core master. Historic Core set a wallet-wide fee rate and returned true.

vs zcashd: zcashd still carries settxfee, deprecated but enabled by default (it is not in zcashd's default-deny deprecated set); it sets the legacy pre-ZIP-317 paytxfee.

getmempoolinfo

getmempoolinfo

Returns a fixed empty-mempool shape. zecd keeps no mempool of its own (it is a wallet server, not a relay node); mempool visibility for the wallet's transactions comes from the Zebra mempool poller and surfaces through the wallet RPCs instead. This stub satisfies client preflight checks.

Result

{
  "loaded": true,
  "size": 0,
  "bytes": 0,
  "usage": 0,
  "total_fee": 0.00000000,
  "maxmempool": 300000000,
  "mempoolminfee": 0.00001000,
  "minrelaytxfee": 0.00001000
}

Every value is constant: an empty but "loaded" pool with the conventional ZIP-317 fee floors and Core's default 300 MB maxmempool.

vs Bitcoin Core: same first eight fields; Core master adds more (incrementalrelayfee, unbroadcastcount, and newer policy/cluster fields) and reports live numbers.

vs zcashd: zcashd's getmempoolinfo reports its real mempool with only size/bytes/usage (plus a regtest-only fullyNotified). Query the Zebra node directly for actual Zcash mempool contents.

stop

stop

Requests graceful shutdown: in-flight requests finish, new ones get HTTP 503, and the reply reaches the client before exit. Regtest only. On mainnet and testnet the method reports method-not-found (-32601), so a stray stop cannot take down a production daemon over RPC. Stop a live node with a signal instead (SIGINT/SIGTERM; the systemd unit from the .deb does this).

Result

"zecd stopping"

Errors

vs Bitcoin Core: Core's stop works on every network, returns "Bitcoin Core stopping", and accepts a hidden wait (milliseconds) test argument; zecd takes no arguments and restricts the method to regtest.

vs zcashd: available on every network, returns "Zcash server stopping".

uptime

uptime

Seconds since the daemon started.

Result

86400

vs Bitcoin Core: identical.

vs zcashd: no equivalent (zcashd does not implement uptime).

help

help ( "command" )

Returns a static one-line orientation string naming a handful of methods and pointing at the reference documentation. The command argument is accepted but ignored: there are no per-method help pages, so help getbalance returns the same generic blurb as help. Tooling that introspects the RPC surface via help (as some Bitcoin libraries do) learns nothing useful from zecd; use the method index instead.

Result

"zecd: a Bitcoin-Core-style JSON-RPC server for Orchard-only Zcash. Supported methods include getblockchaininfo, getnetworkinfo, getwalletinfo, getnewaddress, z_getaddressforaccount, getbalance, sendtoaddress, sendmany, listtransactions, gettransaction, validateaddress. See the README for the full list and limits."

vs Bitcoin Core: Core's help lists every registered command grouped by category, and help <command> returns that method's full usage text. This is the one deliberately weak point in zecd's conformance surface.

vs zcashd: same behavior as Core (full listing plus per-method help).

getrpcinfo

getrpcinfo

Reports the currently-executing RPC commands, Core's load-visibility RPC. Useful for spotting what is holding the work queue during an overload.

Result

{
  "active_commands": [
    {
      "method": "sendtoaddress",
      "duration": 2417093
    },
    {
      "method": "getrpcinfo",
      "duration": 12
    }
  ],
  "logpath": ""
}

• active_commands: one entry per in-flight command; duration is the elapsed running time in microseconds (Core's unit; easy to misread as milliseconds). The call always lists itself.
• logpath: always empty. zecd logs to stderr via tracing, not to a debug.log file.

vs Bitcoin Core: identical shape and semantics; Core's logpath is the absolute path to debug.log.

vs zcashd: no equivalent.