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- Zcash has surged more than 700% since September and is trading at $457, which is still 92% below its all-time high.
- Zcash’s privacy adoption is accelerating, with over 30% of its total supply now held in shielded pools, the highest level to date.
Zcash (ZEC) has always stood for one thing: Privacy. Launched in 2016 by the Electric Coin Company (ECC), founded by Zooko Wilcox-O’Hearn, Zcash was created as a fork of Bitcoin (BTC) with a mission to fix transactional privacy.
As Galaxy Digital put it in a recent report, “The goal was simple: preserve the monetary DNA of Bitcoin while fixing its most-cited design gap, the lack of transactional privacy.” And today, nearly a decade later, that mission seems to be resonating louder than ever.
A sharp correction at the beginning of the week left Bitcoin down nearly 15% in a month and 8% over three months. But Zcash has been on a different trajectory. Once reaching an all-time high of $5,941 in 2016 before crashing by over 80%, Zcash trades around $420, marking a 177% jump in the past month and a 1,043% surge in the last three months.
Its market capitalization has also broken new ground, soaring past $6 billion —more than its $3.6 billion peak during the 2021 bull market — to $7.49 billion, placing Zcash comfortably among the top 20 cryptocurrencies.
What’s Fueling Zcash’s Surge?
One of the developments behind this rally is happening quietly on-chain. The amount of ZEC held in shielded pools, the privacy-protected sections of the network, has hit 5.03 million coins, worth around $2 billion.
That’s over 30% of the total supply, an all-time high. This is a sign that users are moving their funds from exchanges into self-custody and shielding them for long-term holding.
In other words, this rally is being driven by high-conviction holders who believe deeply in Zcash’s privacy promise. Even more, over 86% of ZEC’s daily transaction volume now comes from shielded transactions.
The Shielded Zcash refers to ZEC coins stored or transacted privately via Zcash’s shielded pools, specifically the Orchard Pool, which is the most recent and advanced version of Zcash’s privacy technology. Zcash lets users protect their financial privacy by keeping their on-chain activity invisible to the public.
Galaxy Digital explained,
When a user sends ZEC from one shielded address to another, instead of inspecting transaction details, the network checks a cryptographic proof. The proof essentially shows “I have the right to spend these coins, and the math adds up,” but leaks no unnecessary information.
They also shared that developer Sean Bowe is currently leading work on “Project Tachyon,” a scaling initiative that will boost Zcash’s shielded transaction capacity. The project seeks to redesign how the network manages synchronization and nullifier storage, potentially unlocking major performance improvements.
According to Galaxy Digital, another sign that Zcash is regaining momentum is that Hyperliquid recently added ZEC perpetual futures, giving traders on the popular decentralized exchange the ability to take leveraged positions on the privacy coin.
This new derivatives market has enhanced ZEC’s liquidity, with open interest climbing to roughly $115 million as of October 30.
As highlighted in a recent update, the ECC unveiled its Q4 2025 roadmap, outlining several key initiatives. One of the most notable is the introduction of temporary transparent addresses for all NEAR Intents–based ZEC transactions, designed to enhance interoperability and transaction flexibility.
Additionally, ECC announced upcoming support for Pay-to-Script-Hash (P2SH) multisignature functionality on the Keystone hardware wallet, expanding secure storage and transaction options for ZEC users.
