//Top Stories
Foundry Services Launches Zcash Mining Pool in April
The biggest institutional signal of the week: Foundry Services, the largest Bitcoin mining pool (31% of BTC hashrate), announced it will launch a Zcash mining pool in April. This is the first institutional-grade mining pool dedicated to ZEC. The news coincides with ZEC hitting an all-time high hashrate. As one analyst noted: "Record network security + muted sentiment = textbook accumulation zone."
Zodl CrossPay Goes Live via NEAR Intents
Zodl wallet shipped CrossPay, enabling shielded cross-chain payments. Send ZEC privately, recipient gets BTC, stablecoins, or any supported asset — powered by NEAR Intents. Users are already using it daily. This is a major UX milestone: Zcash privacy extending beyond the Zcash network for the first time in a consumer wallet.
Delphi Digital: 30% of ZEC Now Shielded
Research firm Delphi Digital published analysis showing ~30% of all circulating ZEC is now held in shielded pools — growth continuing despite tough market conditions. Will McEvoy's framing resonated: "Zcash is the most mispriced asset in crypto because privacy is the most mispriced asset in society", and his AI angle: "Artificial intelligence is the attack. Zcash is the defense."
//Ecosystem
Backpack Exchange Lists ZEC
Backpack Exchange listed ZEC for spot + collateral trading with USD on/off ramp — a new institutional on-ramp for Zcash.Cypherpunk ($CYPH) Expanding Strategy
The ZEC treasury company (think MicroStrategy for Zcash) is evolving beyond simple accumulation. Their latest positioning — "holding $CYPH gives you exposure to a constellation of complementary technologies" — signals they're building a portfolio thesis around the Zcash ecosystem. Their "privacymaxxing" thread has become a rallying cry for the community.
Zcomm 2026 — This Tuesday
The Zcash community event is Tuesday, March 24. Virtual. Free. Register here. Highlights:
- PG (Web3Privacy Now): Building Strong Partnerships with Aligned Communities
- Harsh Bajpai (Aztec): How they ran the world's biggest privacy hackathon
- mai ishikawa sutton (DWeb): Designing Engaging Workshops & Roundtables
- Naomi Brockwell (NBTV): Building Online Communities Around Privacy
Zingo-PC Nearing Release
Zingo Labs reports their desktop wallet is in final testing — if no new blocking issues are found, release is imminent.
//Governance & Grants
Coinholder-Directed Grants Q1 — Voting Open Now
Voting is live through March 30. If you registered Orchard notes during the eligibility window (Sep 2025 – Mar 17, 2026), you can vote on retroactive grants. Notable proposals:- Zchat — shielded messenger
- NEAR Intents integration
- Maya Protocol — shielded ZEC support
Grant Decisions & New Applications
Approved:
- OneKey Hardware Wallet (#228) — Shielded + transparent ZEC support coming to OneKey hardware wallets. This is the second hardware wallet to support shielded Zcash (after Keystone).
- weave-zec (#233), Shielded Micropayments SDK (#236), QSTN V2 (#235) — all declined by ZCG.
- Zecret Ballots by Gnosis Guild (#240) — Shielded voting infrastructure from a well-known Ethereum governance team. GitHub
- Rhea Zcash Gateway (#239) — Cross-chain DeFi access for ZEC with WASM wallet backend. GitHub
- Zebra Fuzzing Infrastructure (#234) — Coverage-guided fuzzing for Zebra's critical components + OSS-Fuzz integration. GitHub
- Hera's Ledger (#238) — Privacy-first financial tools for vulnerable populations
- Zcash Web Gateway (#237) — gRPC-web proxy for browser wallets
- PEER28 PEERPORTAL (#242) — Decentralized social network (170K users) seeking Zcash payment integration
- ACCUM (#241) — Fair Proof-of-Contribution blockchain protocol (Rust, 60% complete)
//Protocol & Development
Zebra 4.2.0 Released
The Zcash Foundation shipped Zebra 4.2.0 with significant improvements:
gettxoutRPC — enables wallet devs to query unspent transparent outputs directly- OpenRPC spec — replaces legacy OpenAPI docs, enabling programmatic RPC discovery
- Stronger mempool policy — improved transaction handling
- DDoS fix — patched vulnerability in proof verifiers
Zaino 0.2.0-rc.5
ZingoLabs' Zcash indexer released rc.5 — now supports Zebra 4, fixes zero-value shielded transaction database writes, and adds time-based sync logging to prevent stalls.
Shielded Voting PRs Opened
Developer Greg Nagy opened PRs to implement shielded voting directly in Zodl repos. Privacy-preserving on-chain governance — vote without revealing direction or weight. ZIPs forthcoming. Retweeted by Sean Bowe (@ebfull).
Engineering Office Hours #4: Memo Bundles
Recording available — @nuttycom explains memo bundles and on-chain storage. Could expand what structured data (receipts, messages, metadata) can be attached to Zcash transactions while preserving encryption.SDK Crate Updates
| Crate | Version | Updated |
|---|---|---|
zcash_client_backend | 0.21.2 | Mar 10 |
zcash_client_sqlite | 0.19.5 | Mar 10 |
orchard | 0.12.0 | Dec 2025 |
zcash_primitives | 0.26.4 | Dec 2025 |
Active Development on CodeZ Mirror
The CodeZ mirror shows continued activity across the ecosystem:
- Proof-carrying data framework (Tachyon-related) — updated daily
- Grand Unification repo (Zebra + Zaino + Zallet) — active
- Zcash ZIPs — updated March 21
//Tweets of the Week
"You need to be privacymaxxing. You need to be living off your shielded ZEC held on @zodl_app running on a private and secure OS routing through a noise-generating mixnet. In other words, it's time for plan Z"
"A diverse coalition of 19 smart, skilled, and powerful investors has come together to get behind one of the most consequential projects in the world..."
"If my children were still young, I would teach them how to protect themselves by, among other things, defeating 'age-verification' and other identification, tracking, and control systems."
//Privacy Corner: Why Amount Matters
The shielded pool is an anonymity set.When you shield ZEC, you join a crowd of other shielded transactions. The larger that crowd, the harder it is to link your deposit to any withdrawal.
But here's the catch: if you shield an unusual amount like 3.7142 ZEC, you might be the only transaction with that exact value. You're in the anonymity set — alone.
CipherScan's Blend Check shows you which amounts blend in before you send. Check it →
//Network Snapshot
| Metric | Value |
|---|---|
| ZEC Price | $221.07 (-5.6% 24h) |
| Market Cap | $3.67B |
| 24h Volume | $258.8M |
| Hashrate | All-time high (confirmed by Foundry) |
//Zcash Privacy Index
Powered by CipherScan — live data from the Zcash blockchain.| Metric | Value |
|---|---|
| Privacy Score | 31 / 100 |
| Shielded Pool | 5,154,080 ZEC (31.0% of supply) |
| Orchard Pool | 4,512,370 ZEC (87.6% of all shielded) |
| Sapling Pool | 616,286 ZEC |
| Avg Shielded TX/Day | 1,227 |
| Adoption Trend | Stable |
Cross-Chain Activity (7d)
| Metric | Value |
|---|---|
| Volume | $859,204 across 316 swaps |
| Top Inflows | Arbitrum ($104K), Solana ($84K), Bitcoin ($78K) |
| Top Outflows | Ethereum ($293K), Tron ($60K), NEAR ($16K) |
| All-Time Swaps | 102,494 ($1.36B total volume) |
Network Health
| Metric | Value |
|---|---|
| Active Nodes | 253 across 34 countries |
| Tor Nodes | 7 |
| Block Height | 3,280,932 |
| Network Upgrade | NU6.1 (Zebra 4.2.0) |
| Chain Size | 254.5 GB |
//Tool Updates
- CipherScan Blend Check — Full UX redesign. The split algorithm now maximizes privacy, ranks nearby amounts by blend score, and only suggests plans that actually improve your cover. Try it →
- CipherPay — Now live for ipecity ticket purchases with a 30% Zcash discount. cipherpay.app
//What's Ahead
- Mar 24 — Zcomm 2026 virtual event (register)
- Mar 30 — Coinholder-Directed Grants Q1 voting closes
- April — Foundry Services Zcash mining pool launch
- Upcoming — Shielded voting ZIPs expected
- Upcoming — Zaino 0.2.0 stable release
- Upcoming — Zingo-PC desktop wallet release