Zcash price, chart and history
About Zcash
Zcash is a cryptocurrency focused on financial privacy. Its coin, ZEC, can be sent openly, much like Bitcoin, or through shielded transactions that hide the sender, receiver and amount using cryptography known as zero-knowledge proofs. The network can still check that shielded payments are valid without seeing their details. People use it as digital cash when they want payment information kept confidential.
Zcash grew out of academic work that began in 2013 with Zerocoin, a privacy add-on for Bitcoin developed by researchers from Johns Hopkins, MIT, Tel Aviv University and elsewhere. The Electric Coin Company, led by security specialist and cypherpunk Zooko Wilcox, launched the network on October 28, 2016. The Zcash Foundation followed in 2017, and development is now spread across several groups, especially after ECC's staff quit in early 2026.
Zcash is secured by proof-of-work mining and, like Bitcoin, has a 21 million coin cap with halvings about every four years; part of each block reward funds development. Critics note that many wallets and exchanges have supported only transparent addresses, weakening privacy in practice, and that early versions depended on a trusted setup ceremony. Serious flaws have also surfaced, including a counterfeiting bug fixed in 2018 and another found in its Orchard pool in 2026.
- Created by
- Electric Coin Company, led by Zooko Wilcox
- Launched
- October 28, 2016
- How it's secured
- Proof of work (Equihash mining)
- Supply
- Capped at 21 million ZEC