Zcash (ZEC)
Zcash ranks #7 of 484 cryptocurrencies. On a list that also counts tokens, memecoins, wrapped coins, staked derivatives and stablecoins it appears at #10: 3 of the 9 assets ahead of it are not native coins but tokens or claims. A token is issued on a host blockchain rather than running its own; a claim stands for an asset already counted. Of the 4 non-native assets CoinSpectrum lists above it by market cap, all are claims on other assets.
| CoinSpectrum Grade | A+ · 82/100 · provisional |
|---|---|
| Rank among cryptocurrencies | #7 |
| Rank counting claims | #10 |
| Market capitalisation | $17.5B |
| Price | $1,026 |
| Circulating supply | 17,033,180 ZEC |
| Maximum supply | 21,000,000 ZEC |
| Consensus family | Proof of Work |
| Consensus mechanism | Equihash (200,9) |
| Own hashrate | 32 GH/s |
| Active addresses a day | 6,232 October 2026 median, Coin Metrics |
| Network purpose | Private payments |
| Ledger type | Single-asset ledger |
| Launch distribution | Presale |
Market figures from the 10 November 2026 build. Open the live view for every exchange's price, and charts.
CoinSpectrum Grade (Source)
A+ — 82 out of 100, provisional (from 10 of 10 sections, 10 November 2026 build). With what is not yet measured anywhere from nothing to full marks, the score would be 78 to 83 (A+ to A+).
| Section and criteria | Score | Basis |
|---|---|---|
| Consensus | 10 | average of 2 criteria |
| By leader (its largest chain's market cap) (Source) | 10 | Proof of work: 10 of 10 on the ladder of consensus families ranked by their largest chain's market cap |
| By family (all its chains' market cap) (Source) | 10 | Proof of work: 10 of 10 on the ladder of families ranked by the combined market cap of their chains |
| Supply | 10 | fixed maximum supply of 21 million |
| Distribution | 8.2 | average of 4 parts |
| Holder concentration (Source) | – | Not yet measured |
| Active addresses | 4.9 | 6,232 addresses active a day, the median of October 2026's 31 days (Coin Metrics community data) source |
| Premine (allocated at launch) | 10 | 0% of today's supply allocated at launch to founders, a company, a foundation or investors. No genesis allocation, no sale of the coin and no later mint: every ZEC is issued per block. The founders' reward and the development funds that followed are a cut of block issuance, scored under the block-reward cut. source |
| Fundraising (share sold) (Source) | 9.8 | Sold by its issuer or insiders: 2% of supply sold. No coin sale. The Zcash Company (later Electric Coin Co.) raised over $3M from venture investors by Oct 2016 (Pantera Capital, DCG and others); investors were paid 1.65% of the 21M supply from the Founders' Reward, about 2% of today's supply. source |
| Developer share (after launch) | 8 | Developer share: about 20% of today's supply received so far; 20% of each new block reward goes to them today. 20% of every block subsidy has gone to non-miners since launch: the Founders' Reward (to the first halving, Nov 2020, ~2.09M ZEC to founders, investors, staff and the Zcash Foundation), the Dev Fund (ZIP 1014: ECC, Zcash Foundation and Major Grants, Nov 2020 to Nov 2024: 1,680,000 blocks x 3.125 x 20% = 1.05M), and since NU6 (block 2,726,400, Nov 2024) 8% to Zcash Community Grants plus 12% to the lockbox, continued by NU6.1 (Nov 2025) as a coinholder-controlled fund (802,497 blocks x 1.5625 x 20% = 0.25M). Total ~3.39M of 17,003,461 ZEC = 20.0%. source |
| Decentralisation | 10 | average of 3 parts |
| Governance (Source) | 10 | No authority can halt the chain or freeze funds: No party can freeze, blacklist or claw back coins; no halts on record. source |
| No central team (Source) | 10 | No central team: Two independent organisations ship nodes (Electric Coin Company's zcashd and the Zcash Foundation's Zebra), with Shielded Labs and other teams contributing to ZIPs. source |
| Who can mint (Source) | 10 | Open to anyone with hardware: anyone can produce blocks by mining, no permission needed |
| Nodes (Source) | – | Not yet counted |
| Security | 7.6 | 6.1 of 8 points source |
| Pool diversity (Largest pool 50% 0 to 20% 10, largest three 90% 0 to 50% 10; 2 points) | 6.9 | largest 28.2%, largest three 64.1% |
| Network activity (Transactions a day, 250 0, 500,000 or more 10; 2 points) | 4.3 | about 6,626 transactions a day |
| Hashrate (Own work 5, its power 1 kW 0 to 10 GW 5; 1 point) | 8.6 | own work 5; about 106 MW, 3.6 of 5; the largest on its algorithm |
| Clients (Separate code and teams 10, separate code or teams 9, a fork by the same team or a stale second 8; one client: a new version within 12 months 7, 24 months 6, none in 24 months 5, none in 48 months 3; a second in development +0.5, a second seen running +1, 8 at most with one client; chain ended 0; 1 point) | 10 | zcashd (C++, from Bitcoin Core, Electric Coin Company, v6.20.0, Jun 2026) and Zebra (Rust, separate code by the Zcash Foundation, v7, Oct 2026) |
| Open source (Node software) | ✓ | |
| No 51% attack (Nor a deep reorganisation, five years) | ✓ | |
| Scalability | 5.4 | average of 5 parts source |
| Fees ($0.001 or less 10, $1 or more 0) | 3 | typical fee $0.13 |
| Throughput (2,478 a second, the busiest network's peak day, 10; 121, the median of the ten busiest, 5) | 4.9 | about 116 simple transactions a second |
| Block time (10 minutes 10, less either side) | 6.7 | a block every 1.3 minutes |
| Block space per 10 minutes (24 MB or more 10: the ten busiest networks' median demand, 16.4 MB, and half again for growth) | 9.3 | 2 MB limit, 16 MB per 10 minutes |
| Features (3 checks) | 3.3 | 1 of 3 passed |
| Fast payments (Safe to accept within seconds · Whitepaper abstract, §1, §2 and §11) | ✓ | zcashd (pre-BIP125 Bitcoin base) and Zebra both relay first-seen and implement no replace-by-fee, so a conflicting spend is not relayed; blocks alone (75 s) would not qualify. |
| Pruned nodes (Old history dropped, every rule checked · Whitepaper §7) | ✗ | zcashd, the node with -prune, reached end of support in July 2026; Zebra, the current node, keeps the full block history. |
| Light clients (Payments verified from headers · Whitepaper §8) | ✗ | Zcash light wallets follow ZIP 307, which checks only the previous-block hash and trusts lightwalletd for the best chain; no shipped wallet verifies Equihash headers. |
| Privacy | 8.7 | 8.7 of 10: whitepaper privacy 7 of 7, extra features 1.7 of 3 source |
| Protocol level privacy (Keys not tied to an identity · Whitepaper §10) | 10 | Anyone can generate keys and receive and send coins; the consensus rules carry no identity check. |
| UTXO ledger (Separate outputs, change to a new address · Whitepaper §2, §9) | 10 | Coins are separate unspent outputs: a payment spends whole outputs and sends the change to a new address, so the coins in one wallet need not share a history. |
| HD addresses (A new address for each payment, unlinked · Whitepaper §10) | 10 | BIP32 xpub for transparent addresses; ZIP 32 diversified shielded addresses from one incoming viewing key |
| Hidden amounts (Amounts confidential) | 5 | Sapling (2018) and Orchard (NU5, 2022) shielded pools hide amounts; optional. Optional: 5 of 10. |
| Hidden parties (Sender and receiver hidden) | 5 | Shielded zk-SNARK spends hide the sender and shielded addresses hide the receiver; optional. Optional: 5 of 10. |
| Network privacy (Origin hidden by default) | 0 | zcashd and Zebra relay transactions directly; Tor is optional configuration, no Dandelion. |
| Programmability | 4.4 | 4 of 9 points source |
| Token issuance | 0 | No token issuance on the chain itself |
| Smart contracts (Scripting for spending conditions) | 1 | Transparent outputs use the Script system inherited from Bitcoin; shielded pools carry no programmable conditions. |
| Multisig and time locks (Without a third party) | ✓ | Transparent P2SH multisig and CHECKLOCKTIMEVERIFY, inherited from Bitcoin. |
| Atomic swaps (With other chains) | ✓ | ZIP 300 (XCAT) HTLCs on transparent P2SH with a hashlock and CHECKLOCKTIMEVERIFY refund, demonstrated with Bitcoin in 2017. |
| Native DEX (Trades the coin itself, not a claim) | ✓ | Traded as itself, not as a wrapped token or a claim: THORChain; Maya Protocol; Komodo DeFi; Bisq. |
| Cross-chain messaging (Verified by the chain itself) | ✗ | No protocol messaging to other chains. |
| NFTs (Carried by the chain's rules) | ✗ | No asset feature on mainnet; Zcash Shielded Assets are specified but not activated. |
| Demand | 8.9 | average of 7 measures |
| Exchanges (10 or more: 10) | 10 | 34 exchanges |
| Daily volume ($10K 0, $1B or more 10) | 9.5 | $697,007,400 traded in 24 hours; #7 by volume on the exchanges the site reads (scored on the median day of the last 30, $547,606,717) |
| Turnover (volume ÷ market cap, 5% a day: 10) | 8.6 | 2.7% of its market cap a day, median of the last 30 days |
| Order-book depth (±2% of the price ÷ market cap, 1%: 10) | 7.4 | $29,369,331 within 2% of the price on 8 exchanges, 0.17% of its market cap, median of the last 15 days; a lower bound: the books returned by 2 of them stop short of 2% |
| Market cap ($1M 0, $10B or more 10) | 10 | $17B, at the top of the scale |
| Paper trading (futures, options and margin ÷ market cap, 0%: 10, 100%: 0) | 6.8 | futures, options and margin positions 10% of its market cap |
| Wallet support (wallets that hold it, 10 or more: 10) | 10 | 12 wallets in the site's wallet directory |
| Record | 9 | average of 3 criteria |
| Age (years since genesis) (Source) | 10 | 10 full years since genesis. Mainnet launched 28 October 2016. |
| Development (work, fixes, vulnerabilities) | 7 | 2 positive, 0 negative source |
| Positive | ||
| Steady work, 6 of 6 | ✓ | 278 commits in 8 of the last 12 months (github.com/zcash/zcash); zcashd v6.20.0, 2026-06-03 (11 releases in 24 months); Zebra v7.0.0, 2026-10-22 (38 stable releases in 24 months). |
| Shipped a security fix in two years, +1 | ✓ | Zebra 4.3.1 (Apr 2026, CVE-2026-40880), 4.4.0 (May 2026) and 4.5.1 (Jun 2026): consensus-split vulnerabilities fixed. |
| Conduct (origin, claims, halts) | 10 | 3 positive, 0 negative source |
| Positive record | ||
| Launched with a stated purpose, not as a joke | ✓ | |
| No claims by its founders that contradict its own design | ✓ | |
| No halt, freeze or reversal in five years | ✓ | |
Ten sections, weighted equally, each 0 to 10: consensus (the two ladders), supply (the supply scale and a fixed cap that holds), distribution (premine, fundraising, developer share, holders), decentralisation (governance, no central team, who can mint, nodes), security, scalability, privacy, programmability (what the scripting layer can do beyond the whitepaper's payment system), demand, and record (age, development, conduct). They are built from the criteria in the second table: privacy, scalability, security and decentralisation are the Cryptocurrency Standards among them, as follows: privacy (the whitepaper's three checks a base of 7 of 10, three extra features up to 3 more), scalability (four measures and three features), security (pool diversity, network activity, hashrate, clients and two checks) and decentralisation (governance, no central team, who can mint, nodes, holders, premine, fundraising and developer share); programmability (token issuance, smart contracts and five checks) follows them, and supply and demand are two: the supply, scored against 21 million, and demand, the average of seven measures of the market and the wallets. Provisional: parts marked — are not yet measured and are left out of the average. A rating of structure and market depth, not a price forecast or investment advice. How the grade is built · Highest-graded cryptocurrencies.
Proof of Work coins
Bitcoin BTCA+
Dogecoin DOGEA+
Monero XMRA+
Bitcoin Cash BCHA++
Litecoin LTCA+
Ethereum Classic ETCA
Kaspa KASA+All Proof of Work chains →Proof of Stake coins
Ethereum ETHA+
BNB BNBA
Solana SOLA+
TRON TRXA
Hyperliquid HYPEB
Cardano ADAA
NEAR Protocol NEARAAll Proof of Stake chains →Supply
17,033,180 of a maximum 21,000,000 ZEC are in circulation — 81.1% of the total that will ever exist.
Launch and allocation
| Premine (allocated at launch) | 0% of today's supply |
|---|---|
| Sold by the issuer or insiders | 2% of today's supply |
| Developer share received since launch | 20% of today's supply |
| Developer share of new coins today | 20% |
| Fundraising | Private or venture funding |
No genesis allocation, no sale of the coin and no later mint: every ZEC is issued per block. The founders' reward and the development funds that followed are a cut of block issuance, scored under the block-reward cut.
No coin sale. The Zcash Company (later Electric Coin Co.) raised over $3M from venture investors by Oct 2016 (Pantera Capital, DCG and others); investors were paid 1.65% of the 21M supply from the Founders' Reward, about 2% of today's supply.
20% of every block subsidy has gone to non-miners since launch: the Founders' Reward (to the first halving, Nov 2020, ~2.09M ZEC to founders, investors, staff and the Zcash Foundation), the Dev Fund (ZIP 1014: ECC, Zcash Foundation and Major Grants, Nov 2020 to Nov 2024: 1,680,000 blocks x 3.125 x 20% = 1.05M), and since NU6 (block 2,726,400, Nov 2024) 8% to Zcash Community Grants plus 12% to the lockbox, continued by NU6.1 (Nov 2025) as a coinholder-controlled fund (802,497 blocks x 1.5625 x 20% = 0.25M). Total ~3.39M of 17,003,461 ZEC = 20.0%.
Excluding the coinholder-controlled lockbox would give about 18.9%. The 20% development share runs to the 2028 halving under NU6.1 (ForkLog; not checked against ZIP 1016).
Sources: zips.z.cash · zips.z.cash · zips.z.cash · zechub.wiki · coindesk.com · blockworks.com. Researched 2026-10-24, high confidence.
The work behind it
Zcash is secured by 32 GH/s of its own work. Hashrate does not compare across algorithms — a SHA-256 hash and a Scrypt hash cost different amounts to produce.
What a regulator has said
No SEC/CFTC determination — unclassified.
The regulator's position, reported as stated, not CoinSpectrum's. Assets nobody has ruled on are left unclassified rather than sorted by a guess.
How CoinSpectrum ranks Zcash
Zcash is #7 among cryptocurrencies and #10 in the market ranking, which lists wrapped coins, staked derivatives, stablecoins and tokens alongside them. CoinSpectrum counts an asset once, and counts only cryptocurrencies: assets with their own blockchain and their own consensus. A wrapped coin, a staked derivative or a stablecoin is a claim on something already counted; a token, memecoin or otherwise, runs on another chain's blocks. All of them are listed, each in its own section, and none is added to the total. The 3 places between Zcash's two ranks are held by claims and tokens, not by other networks. The methodology sets out the rule and the counting rule argues for it.
The price above is the median of the exchanges the site reads live, checked every minute and cross-checked against a market snapshot (how market data is gathered). The grade is scored on published criteria, each with its source (the method). The site is independent, nothing on it is a paid placement, and its statements are signed (about CoinSpectrum, the manifesto).
See the 2 wrapped and staked claims on Zcash →
Wallets that hold Zcash
Read on the site
- Cryptocurrency privacy: the six qualities that make a coin private · blog
- Fair launch or pre-mined · blog
- Mining profitability and hashrate sites compared · blog
- Which cryptocurrencies have a fixed supply? Capped and uncapped coins · journal
- Does more trading make a coin less volatile? Turnover, futures and six months of prices · journal
- Movers: 20 days across the 171 cryptocurrencies · journal
- Movers: 69 days across the 247 cryptocurrencies · journal
- Where a DEX runs, and what it actually trades · journal