First published 27 April 2020. Expanded in October 2026 for the second halving, the way the subsidy is split, and the shielded-pool change. Zcash is a proof-of-work chain with a hard cap of 21 million coins, the same shape of scarcity as Bitcoin, and a second way of paying. A transparent payment is public, amounts and addresses and all. A shielded payment hides those details inside a pool. ZEC is the coin either way. Choosing the open lane does not make it Bitcoin. Choosing the shielded lane does not make it Monero.
What is Monero (XMR)? is private by default. What is Bitcoin, in plain language is the chain this one’s money supply was modelled on. This page is the optional shield, and who gets the new coins.
Where it came from
Zcash launched on 28 October 2016, built by the Electric Coin Company from the Zerocash research, with Zooko Wilcox as the public face and the Zcash Foundation as a separate organisation. Holders of bitcoin received nothing. For the first four years, 20 percent of each block’s subsidy went to founders and the company rather than to miners. That founders’ reward ended at the first halving, in November 2020. Later upgrades kept a smaller development slice and changed who receives it. The cap did not change. Who is paid out of the new coins did.
The subsidy now
Blocks are aimed at about 75 seconds. The proof of work is Equihash, not Bitcoin’s SHA-256, so the machines are not interchangeable with Bitcoin miners. The subsidy halves on a block-height schedule. At the second halving, block 2,726,400 on 23 November 2024, it became 1.5625 ZEC. Under the rules in force after the November 2025 upgrade, 80 percent of that goes to the miner, 8 percent to community grants, and 12 percent to a fund the protocol holds until a later vote releases it. Those shares are consensus parameters. They have changed before. A headline that says “the block reward is 1.5625 to miners” has skipped the split.
The project has talked about smoothing issuance instead of another sharp halving. That schedule is a proposal until the software you run has activated it. The next date on a countdown page is not a law.
Transparent, shielded, and a 2026 patch
Exchanges usually accept only transparent ZEC. A transparent address is public in the Bitcoin sense. A shielded pool is not. Unified addresses, added in 2022, can hide which pool you meant. If a deposit page says transparent, do not send from a shielded balance and hope. The coins can sit where the venue cannot credit them.
In June 2026 the project disclosed a soundness flaw in the Orchard shielded circuit, present since that pool launched in 2022, and shipped an emergency upgrade. In July 2026 a further upgrade opened a new shielded pool, Ironwood, and stopped new value from entering the old Orchard pool. Value can still leave Orchard. If a wallet offers you a choice of pools, read which one it is using. This page will not describe the flaw. A patched circuit is not a warranty, and a transparent send was never inside that circuit.
What to keep straight
ZEC is not BTC. It is not XMR. A shielded balance and a transparent balance are the same asset in different lanes, and a venue may only see one lane. There is no company that can reverse a confirmed transparent send, and the development fund is not a helpdesk. Nothing here is an instruction to buy, mine, shield, or move ZEC.
