Foundry Digital, the largest Bitcoin hashrate mining pool, launched a Zcash (ZEC) mining pool that quickly grew to control about 30% of the network’s hashrate, according to company data and its newly released block explorer.
The New York-based firm said more institutional miners joined the pool ahead of its public debut, following an initial announcement in March.
Alongside the pool, Foundry introduced Zcashinfo.com, a block explorer that tracks network activity. The page displays pool rankings, hash rate distribution, block data and mining problems in real time.
Launched in 2016, Zcash lets users post transactions on a public blockchain while keeping key details private through zero-knowledge proof technology. The network can verify that a transaction is valid without revealing the sender, receiver or amount involved using a cryptographic method known as zk-SNARKs.
The network, like Bitcoin, relies on proof-of-work mining, where specialized machines compete to solve cryptographic puzzles in exchange for rewards paid in newly issued ZEC tokens and transaction fees.
Blocks on Zcash are produced approximately every 75 seconds, far faster than Bitcoin’s 10-minute cycle, although both networks limit supply to 21 million coins. Zcash uses the Equihash algorithm, which is designed to require large amounts of memory, unlike Bitcoin’s SHA-256 system.
Because the odds of solving a block alone are low, miners often group into pools to combine computing power and share rewards. That structure has made large pools central to the network’s performance, as they can control significant portions of the overall hash rate.
Foundry’s pool distributes rewards through transparent addresses and uses a pay-per-last-N-share (PPLNS) model, which tracks miner contributions over time to calculate payouts.
The pool is open to new institutional participants, with onboarding focused on regulated entities.
