# ZIP 402: New Wallet Database Format

Status: Reserved

Owners: 

Snapshot: a34cfc091434275120ff017c92c3b50d3cef623a

Source date: 2026-10-16T02:56:04+01:00

[Source revision](https://github.com/zcash/zips/commit/a34cfc091434275120ff017c92c3b50d3cef623a)

[Official source](https://zips.z.cash/zip-0402) · [Source file](https://github.com/zcash/zips/blob/a34cfc091434275120ff017c92c3b50d3cef623a/zips/zip-0402.rst) · [Discussion](https://github.com/zcash/zips/issues/365)

Consider saving witness related data to a file, e.g. witness.dat instead of storing it in wallet.dat.

- Separation of data, to isolate and only store keys in wallet.dat.

- Performance by avoiding contention between different subsystems trying to write to wallet.dat

- Avoid frequent writing of data to wallet.dat on block rescan and reindex.

- Reduce risk that when a system crash occurs, wallet.dat is being written to

Related, see zcash/zcash#1749

## Citation relationships

Cites: None

Cited by: None