Foundry Digital, the biggest Bitcoin hashrate mining pool, launched a Zcash (ZEC) mining pool that quickly grew to control about 30% of the network’s hashrate, according to company data and its new block explorer.
The New York-based company said several institutional miners joined the pool ahead of its public debut, following an initial announcement in March.
Alongside 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 using 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, relies 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 are produced approximately every 75 seconds, much faster than Bitcoin’s 10-minute cycle, although both networks cap supply at 21 million coins. Zcash uses the Equihash algorithm, which is designed to require large amounts of memory, unlike Bitcoin’s SHA-256 system.
Since the chances of solving a block alone are low, miners often form pools to combine computing power and share rewards. This structure has placed large pools at the heart of network performance, as they can control a significant portion of the total hashrate.
Foundry’s pool distributes rewards via transparent addresses and uses a Pay Per Last N Shares (PPLNS) model, which tracks miner contributions over time to calculate payouts.
The pool is open to new institutional participants, with onboarding focused on regulated entities.
