What ZEC is
Zcash launched on October 28, 2016, built on the Zerocash research into zero-knowledge proofs and led by Zooko Wilcox-O'Hearn and the Electric Coin Company. It keeps Bitcoin's monetary design, a 21 million cap with regular halvings, and adds optional privacy: funds can sit at transparent addresses, visible on-chain like Bitcoin, or in shielded pools where zk-SNARK proofs hide who paid whom and how much.
Because privacy is optional, how much supply is shielded matters. That share rose from around 8% in early 2024 to roughly 30% in 2026, with trackers ranging from about 26% to 31%. In January 2026 the entire Electric Coin Company team resigned after a governance clash with the board of Bootstrap, its nonprofit parent, and continued work in a new company. Grayscale's spot Zcash ETF began trading on August 25, 2026.
How it works
Zcash is mined with Equihash proof-of-work, with a block about every 75 seconds. The block reward has been 1.5625 ZEC since the November 2024 halving. Twenty percent of issuance funds development: 8% to Zcash Community Grants and 12% to a fund directed by coinholders, under the NU6.1 upgrade of November 24, 2025. The newest shielded pool, Orchard, uses Halo 2 proofs, which removed the trusted setup earlier pools depended on.
2026 tested that design. On May 29, 2026 researchers disclosed a bug that could have allowed counterfeit ZEC to be created inside Orchard; there was no evidence it had been exploited. An emergency NU6.2 patch followed in June, and the Ironwood upgrade (NU6.3), activated on July 28, 2026, sealed Orchard's roughly 3.66 million ZEC behind a "turnstile" that blocks withdrawals beyond what was verifiably deposited. The next upgrade, NU7, is tentatively targeted for November 5, 2026: 25-second blocks with per-block rewards cut to a third so total issuance stays on schedule, plus a reserve that holds back 60% of fees and pays them to miners from 2031.
Use cases
Private payments are the main use, along with selective disclosure: viewing keys let a holder show specific transactions to an auditor or tax authority without revealing everything. The Zashi wallet added private cross-chain swaps through NEAR Intents in October 2025. With a regulated ETF now listed, ZEC is also one of the few privacy assets with a mainstream brokerage wrapper.
Tradeoffs and criticism
Privacy is opt-in, so most supply is still transparent and a shielded user's anonymity set is only as large as the pool. The Orchard counterfeiting bug went undetected for about four years, a reminder that complex cryptography carries hidden risk, though the Ironwood turnstile now caps the damage any such bug could do. Development funding and governance have been contested, culminating in the ECC team's January 2026 departure. A proof-of-stake transition called Crosslink is still on test networks and is not scheduled. Privacy coins also face exchange delisting pressure.
Where to track ZEC
Compare with Monero, which makes privacy mandatory. See encryption for background on the cryptography.