The compression algorithmzstd brings faster compression and decompression, while maintaining a compression ratio comparable withxz. This will speed up package installation withpacman, without further drawbacks.
The imminent release ofpacman 5.2 brings build tools with support for compressing packages withzstd. To install these packages you needlibarchive with support forzstd, which entered the repositories in September 2018. In order forzstd compressed packages to be distributed, we require all users to have updated to at leastlibarchive 3.3.3-1. You have had a year, so we expect you already did update. Hurry up if you have not.
If you use custom scripts make sure these do not rely on hardcoded file extensions. Thezstd package file extension will be.pkg.tar.zst.