diff --git a/doc/authors.md b/doc/authors.md
index 7f484b39ce..37fb8307b3 100644
--- a/doc/authors.md
+++ b/doc/authors.md
@@ -5,20 +5,22 @@ Jack Grigg (784)
 abi87 (686)
 Alberto Sala (597)
 Simon Liu (342)
-cronicc (315)
+cronicc (318)
 FranckDG (219)
+Paolo Tagliaferri (218)
 Sean Bowe (204)
-Paolo Tagliaferri (187)
 Daira Hopwood (142)
 Wladimir J. van der Laan (122)
 Nathan Wilcox (106)
 VolodymyrBabaiev (85)
+Alessandro Petrini (80)
 Taylor Hornby (75)
 Jay Graber (75)
 Jonas Schnelli (74)
 MarcoOl94 (55)
+Daniele Rogora (54)
+DanieleDiBenedetto (45)
 Cory Fields (45)
-DanieleDiBenedetto (41)
 pierstab (39)
 Kevin Gallagher (38)
 Oleksandr Iozhytsia (36)
@@ -28,7 +30,7 @@ Pieter Wuille (24)
 joshuayabut (20)
 nomnombtc (18)
 i-Alex (18)
-Alessandro Petrini (15)
+GiacomoPirinoli (16)
 Paige Peterson (13)
 luisantoniocrag (12)
 fanquake (12)
@@ -50,8 +52,6 @@ Philip Kaufmann (7)
 PeaStew (7)
 Phoinic (6)
 Pavel Janík (6)
-GiacomoPirinoli (6)
-Daniele Rogora (6)
 Patrick Strateman (5)
 Jonathan "Duke" Leto (5)
 Johnathan Corgan (5)
@@ -101,7 +101,6 @@ Robert C. Seacord (2)
 René Nyffenegger (2)
 Pavel Vasin (2)
 Paul Georgiou (2)
-Paolo (2)
 Nathaniel Mahieu (2)
 Murilo Santana (2)
 Matt Quinn (2)
@@ -122,6 +121,7 @@ Boris Hajduk (2)
 Bob McElrath (2)
 Ariel (2)
 Anthony Towns (2)
+Andrea Lanfranchi (2)
 Allan Niemerg (2)
 Alex van der Peet (2)
 Alberto Garoffolo (2)
diff --git a/doc/release-notes/release-notes-4.0.0-rc1.md b/doc/release-notes/release-notes-4.0.0-rc1.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000..84da42ef72
--- /dev/null
+++ b/doc/release-notes/release-notes-4.0.0-rc1.md
@@ -0,0 +1,28 @@
+zend v4.0.0-RC1
+=========
+
+This is a release candidate of `zend` meant to be used primarily on testnet.
+As the previous version of `zend` (3.2.1), this RC1 is expected to deprecate at block **#1328320**, which will occur on **April 7th, 2023 at approximately 12:00 PM UTC**. Please, update to `v4.0.0` before April 7th (the final release will be available soon).
+
+A **hard fork** is expected to activate on testnet at block **#1228700**, which will occur on **March 13th at approximately 4:00 PM**.
+
+## New Features and Improvements
+* Sidechains version 2 (introducing non-ceasable behavior and key rotation) [#512](https://github.com/HorizenOfficial/zen/pull/512)
+* Added some light pre-checks for the sidechain transaction commitment tree to improve performance [#515](https://github.com/HorizenOfficial/zen/pull/515)
+
+## Bugfixes and Minor Changes
+* Fixed an issue that was causing the build procedure to fail when the path of the project folder was too long [#470](https://github.com/HorizenOfficial/zen/pull/470)
+* Added on the Travis CI the possibility to dynamically enable/disable the MacOS build on some branches [#489](https://github.com/HorizenOfficial/zen/pull/489)
+* Fixed a bug affecting the z_mergetoaddress RPC command that was causing a wrong estimation of transaction size potentially leading to the creation of invalid transactions (rejected by the mempool for exceeding the max size) [#479](https://github.com/HorizenOfficial/zen/pull/479)
+* Added the usage of Travis cache for compiling zend dependencies in order to speed up the CI [#498](https://github.com/HorizenOfficial/zen/pull/498)
+* Minor fixes for help-documentation of some RPC methods [#501](https://github.com/HorizenOfficial/zen/pull/501)
+* Updated MC Crypto Lib dependency to version 0.3.0-rc1 [#506](https://github.com/HorizenOfficial/zen/pull/506)
+
+## Contributors
+* [@AndreaLanfranchi](https://github.com/AndreaLanfranchi)
+* [@a-petrini](https://github.com/a-petrini)
+* [@cronicc](https://github.com/cronicc)
+* [@DanieleDiBenedetto](https://github.com/DanieleDiBenedetto)
+* [@drgora](https://github.com/drgora)
+* [@JackPiri](https://github.com/JackPiri)
+* [@ptagl](https://github.com/ptagl)