Zcash · ZEC
The privacy coin with shielded transactions
Mild miner issuance and a genuine base-layer must-hold — you need ZEC to transact — but the chain is quiet, private usage is not growing, and privacy is a narrative VCs cap on regulatory and delisting risk.
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ZEC · a capped miner mint that locks an eighth of itself away.
ZEC is the native coin of Zcash, a proof-of-work privacy chain with optional shielded transactions — ~16.9M circulating against a fixed 21M cap, about 80% already mined.
Sell pressure. New coins come only from mining. Counting real blocks rather than the 75-second target, the chain minted 162.3K ZEC over the last 90 days at 1.5625 ZEC a block.
Buy pressure. 19.5K ZEC — no buyback and no fee burn, but consensus routes 12% of every block into a development fund that holds no keys and cannot move without a network upgrade.
Net. About 0.85% of supply reached the market over 90 days and 0.84% is projected for the next 90 — mild, steady and fixed until the next halving in Nov 2028.
Mining is the only source of new ZEC. Counting real blocks instead of the 75-second target, the chain produced 103,868 blocks over the last 90 days and every one of them created 1.5625 ZEC — 162.3K in total, matching the chain's own supply meter at both ends of the window to the coin. Of that, 129.8K went to miners, 13.0K to the community grants stream, and 19.5K straight into a locked development fund, which is counted on the buy side. The rate holds until the next halving in Nov 2028, though a coinholder vote closing Sep 14 2026 asks whether to replace halvings with a smoother curve.
No investor or team vesting. The original founders' allocation was a slice of the block reward that ran from 2016 and expired for good at the first halving in Nov 2020, and the later company and foundation streams ended at the second halving in Nov 2024. Nothing remains on any schedule.
Nothing was released to the market in the window. Four team-controlled pools are watched. The deferred development fund holds 59.5K ZEC and grew 19.5K over the window, with no outflow since Nov 24 2025 and no way to move without a network upgrade. The fund payout from that date sits in a 2-of-3 multisig holding 78.2K ZEC, which has released 566.6 ZEC in the nine months since. The community grants stream address is a pass-through holding 170.8 ZEC. The foundation last published 85.4K ZEC on Mar 31 2026 and its newer report could not be read. If any of these balances falls between refreshes, that outflow lands here.
No bankruptcy estate and no long-term locked seller distributing ZEC. About 4.81M ZEC sits in the shielded pools, and 3.78M of it moved into the new pool opened on Jul 28 2026, but shielded coins are ordinary spendable supply rather than locked supply and the move was pool to pool, so none of it counts here.
No buyback. Zcash has no protocol revenue and no contract that buys ZEC back off the market. A listed company has accumulated 323.4K ZEC on exchanges and now runs about 18% of network hashrate, but third-party buying is demand rather than a project mechanism, so it does not belong here.
No fee burn, confirmed two ways: the chain's supply meter rose by exactly the block subsidy across the window, and there is no burn address and no burn programme on this chain — fees are paid to miners. A proposal to take a share of fees out of circulation sits on the coinholder ballot closing Sep 14 2026, but it is still a draft and nothing is being removed today.
No accumulation programme. The grants committee and the development fund are paid out of the block reward itself, so nothing on the project side buys ZEC on the open market.
Every block routes 12% of its reward — 0.1875 ZEC — into a deferred development fund that consensus enforces, which came to 19.5K ZEC over the window. These coins are created but hold no keys: they cannot move until a network upgrade authorises a payout. The fund's balance was read at both ends of the window, 40.0K then 59.5K, and the last payout was 78.8K ZEC on Nov 24 2025.
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