Q3 2026 Highlights
This report highlights Cashu's development during the third quarter of 2026, including new projects, protocol changes, and improvements to libraries and mints. It also covers updates to existing wallets and projects across the ecosystem.
New Projects
Cashu.me
Cashu.me, a new native wallet for iOS and Android, launched in July with v0.1.0 and reached v0.3.1 by September.
The apps are built on the CDK v0.18.0 bindings and include NUT-16 animated QR codes, BOLT12 receive on Android, NFC payments, NUT-18 payment requests over Nostr, mint discovery and preview during onboarding, a rebuilt seed-restore flow and App Lock.
A large part of the work was UI and reliability polish, with a stated requirement that iOS and Android stay at feature parity.
More new projects
The quarter also brought new wallets and projects that put ecash to new uses.
One of the new Cashu wallets is Cashr, which combines a macOS menu-bar wallet with a Nostr signer. It derives both the multi-mint wallet and the Nostr key from one seed and pairs with other apps over NIP-46. Another wallet is Bearlett, a web wallet for LNURLcash notes, Cashu ecash, and Cashu trading cards, built from sandboxed, single-file “napplets.”
To support development and testing, Proofstorm spins up disposable Bitcoin, Lightning and Cashu test networks from a coding agent over MCP. Turning to auctions, eGavel runs non-custodial auctions where every bid is a 2-of-3 P2PK ecash token. On the documentation side, Cashu Book of NUTs binds the specifications into a readable book. And BitcoinPIR issuer lets wallets pay for private UTXO lookups with ecash.
Libraries & Mints
Protocol
Work on the specifications also continued, with notable changes: NUT-06 gained an optional max_array_length field so mints can advertise the largest request array they accept. NUT-08 now requires blank change outputs to carry amount: 0, and a proposal standardized deterministic P2PK generation. A longer list of drafts is in review, including BLS12-381 v3 keysets, compact bloom filters for proof state, currency unit metadata, a Cashu-Signature response header, a batch transactions endpoint and bid/ask pricing for mint liquidity.
Cashu Development Kit (CDK)
CDK released updates from v0.17.3 through v0.17.7 during Q3, adding NIP-47 Nostr Wallet Connect support and tightening payment-status and recovery handling.
The main release, v0.18.0, moved cdk-mintd configuration into the mint's database, giving every replica one validated source of truth and adding commands to migrate, validate and roll back settings. Operators moving from v0.17 must follow the migration guide before they start v0.18.
On the protocol side, v0.18.0 added NUT-16 animated QR tokens with fountain-fragment decoding, deterministic NUT-12 DLEQ nonces, deterministic NUT-20 quote signing keys, and NUT-25 BOLT12 offer descriptions. Wallets gained persistent request pacing, resumable batch minting and a transaction lifecycle, while mints gained durable melt coordination that keeps concurrent replicas from dispatching the same payment.
v0.18.1 followed with reliability and security fixes. The language bindings kept pace throughout, with Go, Kotlin, Dart and Swift bindings tracking the core.
cashu-ts
cashu-ts shipped a series of v4 releases this quarter alongside release candidates for v5.0.0.
v4.7.0 aligned NUT-29 batch quote signatures with the amended spec, and v4.8.0 was a wide hardening pass, including bounded CBOR and witness parsing, safer keyset handling and tighter OIDC/auth handling.
v4.9.0 let wallets mint paid but expired quotes, matching the latest NUT spec, and made the internal keyset cache self-repair when a mint rotates keysets mid-session.
v4.10.0 added JSON-safe swap preview helpers so a crash between prepare and complete is more easily recoverable, and introduced LockBuilder and asLocked as forward-compatible names for the P2PK surface. v4.11.0 gave requests a five-minute default timeout, made NUT-17 subscriptions recoverable when a socket closes, and added mnemonicToSeedSync without new dependencies.
Coco
Coco v2.0.0 was the first major release of the modular TypeScript toolkit since its 1.0. It adds BOLT12 minting and melting, NUT-30 on-chain mint and melt with reusable deposit addresses, and NUT-18 P2PK payment requests over transports such as Nostr. Custom Cashu units are now supported throughout balances, proofs and history.
Nutshell
Nutshell released 0.20.3 and 0.21.0. 0.20.3 introduced NUT-28 Pay-to-Blinded-Key support for locking ecash without revealing the receiver's key to the mint. It also brought a Spark L2 wallet backend for Lightning payments and an interactive HTML landing page at the server root that displays mint info, limits and supported NUTs.
0.21.0 focused on security and hygiene. It added optional LND self-payments, moved Core Lightning to xpay, standardized error codes and made /v1/info advertise its maximum request-array length. It also retired deprecated integrations: the Blink, LNbits and legacy Core Lightning REST backends were removed, along with old mint endpoints, so operators should check the compatibility notes before upgrading.
Pecan & CashuSwift
Pecan, a CDK-based payment processor for custom-unit mints, published its first tagged release, v0.3.0, which installs either alongside a new mint or as a processor for an existing one. v0.3.1 followed with support for installing and running Pecan as a non-root user.
CashuSwift, the Swift library behind Macadamia, added NUT-20 signing for BOLT12 mint requests and partial issuance support in v0.4.4, followed by payment-method display names in v0.4.5.
Project Updates
Numo
Numo, the Android point-of-sale app, shipped two releases. v1.8 introduced custom-unit support, allowing it to use units other than sats when supported by the selected mint. This release also added an opt-in encrypted backup of the wallet seed and mint list to Android's cloud, protected by a separate recovery password.
v1.9 was a design release. It refreshed the whole app with Material 3 styling, added searchable settings and redesigned detail screens, and introduced mint discovery through Nostr so merchants can find mints with profiles, community recommendations and ratings. Large withdrawal tokens now render as animated QR codes, and a new animated welcome flow introduces product checkout, tap-to-pay, automatic withdrawals and sales insights before setup. German joined the available languages.
Orchard
Orchard, the mint management dashboard, released three versions this quarter. v1.10.0 brought NUT-30 on-chain minting and melting to the dashboard, with dedicated config forms, amount bounds and confirmation tracking, plus a documentation and onboarding refresh and more than a thousand new tests.
v1.11.0 added two metrics dashboards: a Mint System page that scrapes a CDK mint's Prometheus exporter for traffic, latency, resources and activity, and a System page charting Orchard's own host and process health. Keyset tables also gained created, deactivated and final-expiry timestamps.
v1.12.0 added support for custom mint units across dashboards, charts and config, clearer error reporting, an improved AI assistant experience, and security hardening around refresh tokens. The server now runs as native ESM and supports CDK 0.18.x and Nutshell 0.21.x.
Wallet Updates
Sovran
Sovran v0.1.3 brought the wallet to Android, and turned its Nostr layer from read-only into a full client: posting notes, replies, quotes and polls, attaching media, deleting posts through NIP-09, and zapping posts with NIP-57 zap requests signed by the wallet.
Underneath, Sovran now runs on the Coco v2 engine and rebuilt its receive screen around four rails (Lightning, Unified, Onchain and Cashu), with a single BIP-321 QR that composes whatever rails are available. On-chain sending and receiving became a working feature, a full NIP-46 remote signer lets users log in to other Nostr apps with their Sovran identity, and Bluetooth mesh Nut Drops between Sovran peers became P2PK-locked to a specific person. Drops to stock bitchat peers remained bearer tokens.
Macadamia
Macadamia, a native Cashu wallet for iOS, released v0.11.0 adding support for all payment methods a mint advertises through generic mint and melt quotes. Additional changes included BOLT12 payments with a shared deposit-quote flow, receiving ecash over NFC from the payment-request screen, and ephemeral per-request Nostr receive keys.
Other Cashu Wallets
Zappi v0.4.4 improved GrapheneOS compatibility and added a hidden balance mode, and Zeus v13.2.0 upgraded its Cashu CDK dependency for Minibits compatibility.
Linky's September releases reworked its Cashu wallet engine and added animated QR token display and scanning.
Bey Wallet v0.2.0 added on-chain deposits into ecash and withdrawals to Bitcoin addresses, along with improved offline payments and encrypted ecash sharing over Nostr.
Wrap-up
Q3 2026 focused on hardening Cashu's core and extending it to new applications.
It was a strong quarter for Cashu wallets with the launch of cashu.me, Sovran for Android, Macadamia updates and several new wallets in development.
On the library side, CDK v0.18.0 moved mint configuration into the database, cashu-ts maintained its v4 line while publishing v5 release candidates, and Coco v2.0.0 added BOLT12 and on-chain payments. Nutshell gained P2BK and a Spark backend. For merchants, Numo introduced custom-unit payments and encrypted recovery backups, and Orchard shipped mint metrics dashboards.
Thanks to everyone who contributed code, filed issues, ran mints and tested payments in the wild this quarter.
