Zcash ZEC
Rank #11 by market cap
Last 7 days
▲1.80%What Zcash is
Zcash launched in 2016 as a privacy-focused cryptocurrency built on Bitcoin's codebase, notable for being the first significant deployment of zero-knowledge proofs — cryptography that lets a transaction be verified as valid without revealing sender, recipient or amount.
It offers two address types. Transparent addresses behave like Bitcoin's and are fully public. Shielded addresses use the zero-knowledge system and reveal nothing.
That optionality is Zcash's central weakness, and it is worth understanding. Because most activity has historically used transparent addresses, the pool of shielded transactions is comparatively small — and privacy depends on crowd size. A shielded transaction in a thin anonymity set is less private than the same technology would be if everyone used it, which is the practical distinction between Zcash and Monero's mandatory approach. Zcash also drew early criticism for its founders' reward, which directed a share of block rewards to the company and investors during its first years.
About the asset
Zcash has no token contract — it is the native asset of its own chain, not a token issued on someone else's.
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Zcash data synced 8m ago from CoinGecko. Figures shown in USD. This page is market information, not financial advice — and nothing here is a recommendation to buy or sell ZEC.