Foundry Digital, one of the largest Bitcoin mining pools by hash rate, said it plans to introduce a zcash (ZEC) mining pool next month, expanding beyond BTC and adding a large institutional operator to the privacy-focused network.
With the new group, Foundry aims to offer zcash miners a US-based platform designed around compliance controls, reporting standards and operational controls often required by public companies and large enterprises.
The move addresses what Foundry describes as a gap in Zcash’s infrastructure. While the cryptocurrency has been around for almost a decade, much of its mining ecosystem still consists of smaller global pools that often operate outside of formal compliance frameworks.
“Zcash has matured into an institutional-grade asset, but the mining infrastructure behind it has not kept pace,” Foundry CEO Mike Colyer said in a statement shared with CoinDesk.
Betting on privacy
The expansion comes as privacy-focused cryptocurrencies regain market-wide attention as new cryptocurrency tax reporting rules, with threat of asset seizure, are implemented across the European Union at the beginning of the year and as on-chain analytics continues to develop, leading to growing demand for financial anonymity.
Zcash, along with other privacy coins including monero (XMR) and dash (DASH), has seen renewed interest that has helped its prices rise. ZEC has seen significant outperformance, over 670% in the last 12-month period, compared to XMR’s 72% rise in the same period, while DASH is up 51%.
ZEC’s superior performance can likely be attributed to its hybrid privacy model, which makes protected (completely anonymous) transactions optional with selective disclosure. This means transactions can be transparent to custody and exchanges, and attract accumulation from a Winklevoss-backed treasury firm as well as the Grayscale Zcash Trust.
Foundry’s shift toward zcash also likely reflects broader changes in the mining economy. Bitcoin mining profitability has dropped after the 2024 halving, which halved block rewards while increasing mining difficulty.
Speaking to CoinDesk, Coyler rejected the idea that the move is primarily a response to shrinking bitcoin margins.
“We evaluate opportunities based on where institutional infrastructure is needed, not on bitcoin margins at any given time,” he said. “Foundry’s bitcoin mining business is strong and remains our fundamental foundation.”
The expansion, Coyler said, was due to an identified gap in the supported Zcash infrastructure. “Institutional and public miners who want to expose themselves to zcash have not had a purpose-built and supported US-based infrastructure to do so,” he added.
As to whether the move signals a broader multi-chain strategy, Coyler said the company’s focus is “squarely on bitcoin and zcash” for now, though he added that Foundry is “always evaluating opportunities” that align with its mission and the demands of institutional miners.
While the price of bitcoin saw a significant rise to around $125,000 late last year, its price has since corrected to now sit at $69,500. This has caused the hash price, a measure of the expected value of 1TH/s of hashing power per day, to fall from over $60 to $30 per petahash.
As margins tighten, many large mining companies have begun exploring other proof-of-work networks to diversify revenue.
Zcash mining infrastructure
Zcash was launched in 2016 as a privacy-focused cryptocurrency based on zero-knowledge proof technology. The network allows users to submit transactions on a public blockchain while keeping key details private. Using a cryptographic method known as zk-SNARK, Zcash can verify that a transaction is valid without revealing the sender, recipient, or the amount involved.
Like Bitcoin, the Zcash network relies on proof-of-work mining to secure its blockchain and miners use specialized hardware to solve complex mathematical puzzles to help secure the network. When a miner or mining pool solves one of these puzzles, they add a new transaction block to the chain and get a reward in newly issued ZEC tokens along with transaction fees.
Zcash blocks are produced approximately every 75 seconds, faster than bitcoin blocks, which are produced every 10 minutes. Still, both shared a supply limit of 21 million coins. The mining process uses an algorithm called Equihash, which differs from Bitcoin’s SHA-256 and was designed to require large amounts of memory during calculation.
The network’s difficulty, which helps keep the time between block production constant, means that the probability of solving a block on its own is low. As a result, miners are grouped into what are known as mining pools, in which participants pool computing power and share rewards based on the amount of work they contribute. Large pools can influence the stability and decentralization of a network because they control significant portions of its total hashrate.
foundry zcash group
Foundry said its zcash pool will include identity verification checks for participants through rigorous know-your-customer and anti-money laundering compliance, transparent payment calculations, and reporting tools aimed at institutional users. It will have a dedicated support team and its operations will be based in the United States.
The company plans to apply the same operating framework used by its bitcoin pool, which has undergone SOC 1 Type 2 and SOC 2 Type 2 compliance audits, it said.
Mining rewards will be distributed through transparent, unsecured Zcash addresses, the company said. The pool will pay miners based on a pay per last N shares (PPLNS) model, which Coyler says is “fully auditable” and provides detailed data supporting daily payment reconciliation.
Foundry did not reveal the fee for miners, saying only that it will offer “competitive pool fees.” There will be no minimum hashrate threshold to join the pool, Coyler said, noting that the Zcash mining ecosystem is still emerging.
The company expects demand from miners already operating in regulated environments such as North America. Many of those companies rely on formal reporting systems and compliance programs to meet corporate governance requirements.
If the zcash pool launches as planned in 2026, it would mark one of the largest institutional entries into the Zcash mining ecosystem to date. Other major mining pools operating within it include F2Pool, 2Miners, and ViaBTC.
