Foundry Digital, one of the largest Bitcoin mining pools by hash rate, said it plans to introduce a zcash (ZEC) mining pool next month, expanding beyond BTC and bringing a large institutional operator into the privacy-focused network.
With the new pool, Foundry aims to offer zcash miners a US-based platform designed around compliance checks, reporting standards and operational controls often required by public companies and large firms.
The move addresses what Foundry describes as a gap in the Zcash infrastructure. While the cryptocurrency has been around for nearly a decade, much of its mining ecosystem still consists of smaller global pools that often operate outside of formal compliance frameworks.
“Zcash has matured into an institutional-grade asset, but the mining infrastructure supporting it has not kept pace,” Foundry CEO Mike Colyer said in a statement shared with CoinDesk.
Bets on privacy
The expansion comes as privacy-focused cryptocurrencies regain traction across the market, as new crypto tax reporting rules, with the threat of asset seizure, are put in place across the EU at the turn of the year, and as onchain analytics continues to develop, leading to growing demand for financial anonymity.
Zcash, along with other privacy coins including monero (XMR) and dash (DASH), have seen renewed interest that has helped their prices rise. ZEC has seen significant outperformance, rising more than 670% in the last 12-month period, compared to XMR’s 72% increase over the same period, while DASH is up 51%.
ZEC’s outperformance can likely be attributed to its hybrid privacy model, which makes shielded – completely anonymous – transactions optional with selective disclosure. This means transactions can be transparent to custodians and exchanges, and attracted accumulation from a Winklevoss-backed financial company as well as in the Grayscale Zcash Trust.
Foundry’s move towards zcash likely also reflects broader changes in mining economics. Bitcoin mining profitability has tightened following the 2024 halving, which halved block rewards while mining problems increased.
Speaking to CoinDesk, Colyer pushed back on the idea that the move is primarily a response to shrinking bitcoin margins.
“We evaluate opportunities based on where institutional infrastructure is needed, not on bitcoin margins at any given time,” he said. “Foundry’s bitcoin mining business is strong and remains our core foundation.”
The expansion, Colyer said, was over an identified gap in compatible Zcash infrastructure. “Institutional and public miners wanting exposure to zcash have had no US-based, compliant, purpose-built infrastructure to do so through,” he added.
As for whether the move shows a broader multi-chain strategy, Colyer said the company’s focus is “squarely on bitcoin and zcash” for now, though he added that Foundry is “always evaluating options” that align with its mission and the demands of institutional miners.
While the price of bitcoin surged to nearly $125,000 at the end of last year, the price has since corrected to now stand at $69,500. This has caused the hash price, a measure of the expected value of 1TH/s of hash power per day, to drop from over $60 to $30 per hash. petahash.
As margins shrink, many major mining companies have begun exploring other proof-of-work networks to diversify revenue.
Zcash mining infrastructure
Zcash was launched in 2016 as a privacy-focused cryptocurrency built on zero-knowledge proof technology. The network allows users to post transactions on a public blockchain while keeping key details private. Using a cryptographic method known as zk-SNARKs, Zcash can verify that a transaction is valid without revealing the sender, receiver or amount involved.
Like Bitcoin, the Zcash network relies on proof-of-work mining to secure its blockchain, and miners use specialized hardware to solve complex mathematical puzzles to help secure the network. When a miner or mining pool solves one of these puzzles, it adds a new block of transactions to the chain and earns a reward in newly issued ZEC tokens along with transaction fees.
Zcash blocks are produced approximately every 75 seconds, faster than bitcoin’s blocks which are produced every 10 minutes. Still, both shared a supply cap of 21 million coins. The mining process uses an algorithm called Equihash, which differs from Bitcoin’s SHA-256 and is designed to require large amounts of memory during computation.
Network issues, which help the time between block production to remain consistent, mean that the probability of solving a block alone is low. As a result, miners gather in what are known as mining pools, where participants combine computing power and share rewards based on how much work they contribute. Large pools can affect the stability and decentralization of a network because they control significant portions of its overall hash rate.
The foundry’s zcash pool
Foundry said its zcash pool will include identity verification checks for participants through strict know-your-customer and anti-money laundering compliance, transparent payout calculations and reporting tools aimed at institutional users. It will feature a dedicated support team and its operations will be based in the United States.
The company plans to use the same operational framework as its bitcoin pool, which has undergone SOC 1 Type 2 and SOC 2 Type 2 compliance audits, it said.
Mining rewards will be distributed through transparent Zcash addresses, not shielded, the company said. The pool will pay miners on a Pay Per Last N Shares (PPLNS) model, which Colyer said is “fully auditable” and provides detailed data that supports daily payment reconciliation.
Foundry did not disclose the fee for miners, saying it will only offer “competitive pool fees.” There will be no minimum hashrate threshold to join the pool, Colyer said, noting that the Zcash mining ecosystem is still emerging.
The company expects demand from miners already operating in regulated environments such as North America. Many of these companies rely on formal reporting systems and compliance programs to meet corporate governance requirements.
If the zcash pool launches as planned in 2026, it will mark one of the largest institutional entries into the Zcash mining ecosystem to date. Other major mining pools operating within it include F2Pool, 2Miners and ViaBTC.
