Foundry Services launches ZEC mining pool in April. Zodl ships CrossPay via NEAR Intents. Delphi Digital confirms 30% of ZEC now shielded. ZEC hashrate hits ATH. Coinholder voting live through March 30. Zcomm 2026 is Tuesday.
Top Stories
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 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.
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 listed ZEC for spot + collateral trading with USD on/off ramp — a new institutional on-ramp for Zcash.
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.
The Zcash community event is Tuesday, March 24. Virtual. Free. Register here. Highlights:
Zingo Labs reports their desktop wallet is in final testing — if no new blocking issues are found, release is imminent.
Governance & Grants
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:
Vote with your shielded ZEC — the requirement to move ZEC into Orchard for voting is itself driving shielded adoption.
Approved:
Declined this week:
Under review:
New this week:
Have an idea for the Zcash ecosystem? Learn how to submit a grant proposal →
Protocol & Development
The Zcash Foundation shipped Zebra 4.2.0 with significant improvements:
gettxout RPC — enables wallet devs to query unspent transparent outputs directlyZingoLabs' 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.
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).
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.
| 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 |
The CodeZ mirror shows continued activity across the ecosystem:
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
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.
Better approach: Shield round amounts (1, 5, 10 ZEC). These common values have hundreds of matching transactions. More matches = stronger privacy.
Best approach: Don't move funds unless you need to. Every transaction is a data point. The strongest privacy comes from keeping your ZEC shielded and still — zodl.
CipherScan's Blend Check shows you which amounts blend in before you send. Check it →
Network Snapshot
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.
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
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)
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
Orchard continues absorbing the ecosystem — now holding 87.6% of all shielded ZEC, with steady migration from Sapling. The shielded pool grew by +4,725 ZEC this week even as ZEC price pulled back ~20%. Conviction is staying, even when price isn't.
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