Digital asset infrastructure company Foundry Digital plans to launch a Zcash mining pool in April 2026, expanding beyond Bitcoin mining infrastructure. The company said the pool will be designed for institutional and public miners looking for targeted mining services.
The new pool will be located in the United States and will be built on the same infrastructure used by the Foundry USA Pool, which is managed by the company. Foundry said the service will include reporting tools and payment systems designed to meet the operational needs of institutional miners.
Zcash is a privacy-focused cryptocurrency that has an encrypted ledger using zero-knowledge proofs. A mining pool is a service that allows multiple miners to pool computing power and share block rewards, increasing their chances of receiving consistent payouts.
A spokesperson for Foundry told Cointelegraph that the company decided to create a new mining pool because “Zcash addresses something that we really care about: the idea that financial privacy is fundamental to economic freedom, and that privacy and compliance can coexist.” They added:
When institutional and public miners can mine Zcash through infrastructure built to their standards, it brings a new hashrate to the network and strengthens its security.
Founded in 2019, Foundry Digital provides mining infrastructure and related services for digital asset companies. Foundry USA Pool is one of the largest Bitcoin mining pools by hashrate share. The Foundry said it expects the Zcash pool to start operating in April 2026.
The announcement comes just days after developers formerly of Electric Coin raised more than $25 million to continue development of a privacy-focused wallet for Zcash.
related to: The Dash Evolution chain integrates the Zcash Orchard privacy pool
Zcash is gaining attention amid price volatility
Launched in 2016, Zcash allows users to send transactions without revealing details such as wallet addresses or transaction amounts. The network is based on the Bitcoin codebase, but uses zero-knowledge proofs, known as zk-SNARKs, to enable voluntary “secured” transactions alongside standard transparent transactions.
In 2025, Zcash became one of the most widely discussed and privacy-focused crypto assets, with comments from industry figures including Arthur Hayes, Naval Ravikant and Mert Mumtaz helping to increase interest in the network and its underlying token, ZEC (ZEC).
According to CoinGecko, the rally has driven Zcash up nearly 600% over the past year, rising from $35 in March 2025 to $698.87 on November 16, 2025. The token has since retreated, falling 58.7% year-to-date from around $512 on January 1 to around $212 at the time of writing.
Even with the new focus, network mining activity remains concentrated among a small number of pools.
Data from Poolbay shows that ViaBTC controls about 31.7% of the total hashrate, followed by F2Pool at about 15.8%, with smaller shares distributed among pools such as 2Miners and Antpool.
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