Foundry Digital, the largest Bitcoin mining pool by hashrate, launched a Zcash (ZEC) mining pool that quickly grew to control about 30% of the network’s hashrate, according to data from the company and its recently launched block explorer.
The New York-based firm said several institutional miners joined the group ahead of its public debut, following an initial announcement in March.
In addition to the pool, Foundry introduced Zcashinfo.com, a block explorer that tracks network activity. The site displays pool rankings, hashrate distribution, block data, and mining difficulty in real time.
Zcash, launched in 2016, allows users to send transactions on a public blockchain while keeping key details private through zero-knowledge proof technology. The network can verify that a transaction is valid without revealing the sender, recipient, or amount involved using a cryptographic method known as zk-SNARK.
The network, like Bitcoin, is based on proof-of-work mining, where specialized machines compete to solve cryptographic puzzles in exchange for rewards paid in newly issued ZEC tokens and transaction fees.
Blocks on Zcash occur approximately every 75 seconds, much faster than Bitcoin’s 10-minute cycle, although both networks limit supply to 21 million coins. Zcash uses the Equihash algorithm, which is designed to require large amounts of memory, unlike Bitcoin’s SHA-256 system.
Because the odds of solving a block alone are low, miners often group into pools to combine computing power and share rewards. That structure has made large pools critical to network performance, as they can control considerable portions of the total hashrate.
The Foundry pool distributes rewards through transparent addresses and uses a pay per last N shares (PPLNS) model, which tracks miners’ contributions over time to calculate payouts.
The group is open to new institutional participants, with incorporation focused on regulated entities.
