Ironwood would close the old Orchard pool to new activity and route funds through a turnstile before they enter a new shielded pool. Zcash developers are proposing a new shielded pool called Ironwood after a recently patched bug raised concerns about whether counterfeit ZEC could have entered circulation unnoticed. The Zcash Open Development Lab (ZODL) said Saturday that it is working with Tachyon, Valar Group, the Zcash Foundation and Shielded Labs on the proposed network upgrade, which would add formal verification and independent audits to the Orchard protocol, a privacy system that lets users move ZEC without revealing transaction details. The proposal would close the current Orchard pool to new deposits and internal transactions, requiring funds to pass through a “turnstile,” which serves as an accounting checkpoint, before entering Ironwood. Read more
ETH price crashed below $1,600 as a vulnerability in Zcash emerged and Bitcoin sold off below $60,000 for the first time in months. Key takeaways: Ether (ETH) plummeted to a 13-month low of $1,540 on Friday, following the bearish trend across the broader cryptocurrency market. Traders now fear a deeper price correction, given weakness in ETH derivatives metrics and heightened risk after a bug was found in the Zcash blockchain. Read more
Zcash developers are weighing a new shielded pool and turnstile accounting after the Orchard bug raised supply verification questions. Zcash developers and researchers are discussing whether a new shielded pool could help restore supply verification confidence after a recently patched Orchard vulnerability. Shielded Labs, an independent Swiss-based Zcash support organization, said in a security update on Friday that it is exploring a proposed network upgrade that would deploy a new shielded pool and enforce “turnstile accounting” on coins moving from Orchard, giving users a clearer way to verify the integrity of funds moving out of the pool. The group said the proposal is still subject to further explanation and community review. Shielded Labs said it plans to publish a follow-up post next week explaining how the upgrade would work and what tradeoffs it could involve. Read more
Zcash Open Development Lab said the network briefly became unstable as miners upgraded, while the Zcash Foundation said there was no evidence of an exploit. Zcash developers temporarily suspended Orchard transactions after discovering a critical vulnerability in the privacy-focused blockchain’s latest shielded pool, then restored functionality through an emergency network upgrade. On Wednesday, the Zcash Foundation said the vulnerability affected Orchard’s zero-knowledge proof circuit and could have allowed invalid state transitions within the pool. However, the Foundation said there was no evidence that the bug was exploited, no unauthorized value creation was detected, and user privacy was not affected. The fix was carried out through a two-step emergency upgrade. Zebra 4.5.3 temporarily disabled Orchard actions, while Zebra 5.0.0 activated the NU6.2 upgrade to re-enable Orchard with a corrected circuit, according to the Foundation. Read more
ZEC has jumped 18% in three days as privacy coins rally, defying a 3.45% drop across the wider crypto market. Privacy coin Zcash (ZEC) is flashing a classic bullish reversal pattern that could push its price above $1,000 in the coming weeks. Key takeaways: The ZEC/USD pair appears to have formed a cup-and-handle (C&H) pattern, marked by a rounded recovery phase followed by a downward-sloping consolidation. Read more
Swyftx’s Pav Hundal says Zcash is surging amid concerns about artificial intelligence, quantum computing and financial surveillance. Privacy-focused cryptocurrency Zcash (ZEC) has spiked by more than 70% over the past week as crypto traders have been paying closer attention to privacy-focused projects. Zcash traded at about $346 on Friday, May 1, before hitting a seven-day peak of $593.86 on Wednesday. It has since settled at around $570 as of Friday, according to CoinGecko. Pav Hundal, lead market analyst at crypto exchange Swyftx, told Cointelegraph that traders have begun paying closer attention to privacy projects “amid broader concerns about the impact of AI, quantum computing and financial surveillance on crypto.” Read more
Robinhood’s ZEC listing, easing US–Iran tensions and a shrinking liquid supply of tokens are further strengthening the bullish outlook for Zcash in the coming weeks. Zcash (ZEC) has outperformed the broader crypto market over the past month, rising by over 125% compared to an average 15% gain for most coins. ZEC/USD versus TOTAL crypto market cap 3o-day performance chart. Source: TradingView Read more
The launch of Foundry Zcash Pool has cut ViaBTC’s mining pool hashrate dominance from around 65% to 37%. Crypto mining pool operator Foundry Digital has launched a pool for the privacy-focused cryptocurrency Zcash, which the company says has secured nearly 30% of the Zcash network hashrate through partnerships with multiple institutional mining clients. “Institutional and public miners are seeking a compliant, purpose-built Zcash mining solution,” Foundry said on Monday, a month after announcing its plan to create the Foundry Zcash Pool. Foundry, which is also the largest mining pool on the Bitcoin blockchain, did not disclose which institutional miners it had onboarded to reach a 29.2% hashrate share. Read more
ZEC's latest rebound resembled bounces witnessed during the 2021 bear market, raising the odds of a 40% correction in the coming weeks. Zcash (ZEC) rallied after President Donald Trump announced a two-week ceasefire deal with Iran, leading gains in a broader relief rally across global risk markets. Key takeaways: A 2021-style fractal warns ZEC price could fall 40% toward in the coming weeks. Read more
The digital asset infrastructure company plans to launch the pool in April as it expands beyond Bitcoin mining services. Digital asset infrastructure company Foundry Digital plans to launch a mining pool for Zcash in April 2026, expanding beyond Bitcoin mining infrastructure. The company said the pool will be designed for institutional and publicly traded miners seeking compliance-focused mining services. The new pool will be based in the United States and built on the same infrastructure used by Foundry USA Pool, which is operated by the company. Foundry said the service will include reporting tools and payout systems intended to meet the operational requirements of institutional miners. Zcash is a privacy-focused cryptocurrency which features an encrypted ledger using zero-knowledge proofs. A mining pool is a service that allows multiple miners to combine computing power and share block rewards, increasing the chances of earning consistent payouts. Read more
The Zcash token rose 4.1% to $217.80 on news of the $25 million funding round and is now up 9.8% over the last 24 hours. The development team that left Electric Coin Company in January to launch Zcash Open Development Lab (ZODL) has raised over $25 million from the likes of a16z Crypto and Coinbase Ventures to continue building the privacy-focused, self-custodial Zodl wallet. ZODL was founded by former ECC CEO Josh Swihart and includes the entire engineering and product team that previously worked on the Zodl wallet at ECC. They resigned due to disputes with Bootstrap, the nonprofit that oversees ECC, over how Zcash should function as a privacy protocol. ZODL said in an X post on Monday that crypto-focused investment firms Paradigm, Winklevoss Capital, Cypherpunk Technologies, Maelstrom, and Chapter One were among the other participants in the $25 million funding round. Read more
Dubai’s ban on privacy coins highlights how regulators are prioritizing transparency over anonymity in institutional crypto and regulated exchanges. Dubai does not criminalize privacy coins yet has ordered them to be removed from regulated financial channels. This means licensed firms in the DIFC can no longer trade, promote or package them into investment products. From a compliance perspective, privacy-by-default features conflict with AML and sanctions frameworks that require transaction visibility, making certain tokens structurally incompatible with regulated intermediaries. The policy reflects a broader global trend, as regulators in Europe, the US and parts of Asia are also restricting privacy-focused assets on licensed crypto platforms and within financial institutions. Read more