The Foundry, the operator of the world’s largest Bitcoin mining pool, has announced plans for an institutional Zcash mining pool.
The Foundry aims to start mining Zcash in April 2026
As indicated in the press release, Foundry is expanding into Zcash with a new mining pool aimed at filling the gap in the ZEC mining infrastructure for institutional entities and public companies. Foundry is the operator of Foundry USA, the largest Bitcoin mining pool based on total computing power or Hashrate. A mining pool refers to the collaboration between miners spread over a decentralized network who combine their Hashrate to better compete with the wider network and increase their chances of earning block rewards.
With its latest move, Foundry now brings a mining pool to ZEC. “Zcash has become an institutional-grade asset, but the mining infrastructure that supports it is not keeping pace,” said Mike Koyler, CEO of Foundry.
Zcash is a privacy-focused token that was first launched in 2016. While cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum are “anonymous” in that they involve no verification of identity, their addresses and transactions are still available on a public ledger for all to see. Privacy coins like ZEC include truly anonymous blockchains that hide such information by default. The press release states:
By combining powerful and advanced privacy technology with transparent blockchain verification, Zcash demonstrates how financial privacy and a compatible digital infrastructure can coexist.
Zcash is essentially based on Bitcoin’s codebase, so its token economy works similarly; when miners add a new block to the chain and receive the corresponding block reward, the supply increases. There is also a supply cap of 21 million ZEC and the block reward is halved approximately every four years through Halving events.
Foundry’s ZEC mining pool will operate like Foundry USA’s US pool and is expected to be operational in April 2026. “We at Shielded Labs are thrilled that Foundry – the largest Bitcoin mining pool and one of the largest in North America – is launching a Zcash mining pool,” said Zooko Wilcox, founder of cryptocurrency Shief Labs. Shielded Labs is an independent ZEC support organization in Switzerland.
Foundry’s expansion to Zcash came after the privacy coin saw a peak in its Hashrate network. As data from BitInfoCharts shows, the computing power connected to the blockchain has grown significantly over the past few months. In October, ZEC Hashrate sat at less than 8 Ghash/s, but today, it is floating at more than 13 Ghash/s.
The trend in the ZEC Hashrate over the last three years | Source: BitInfoCharts
ZEC price
At the time of writing, Zcash is trading around $209, down more than 11% over the past week.
Looks like the price of the coin has retraced some of its recovery | Source: ZECUSDT on TradingView
Featured image from Dall-E, chart from TradingView.com
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