Zcash
The chain the basket is about: what it pays, how it is upgraded, and the three things that will cost you an afternoon.
Network
# mainnet
Consensus: proof of work, Equihash
Block time: 75 s (Blossom, ZIP-208)
Height: 3,491,394
Subsidy: 1.5625 ZEC per block → 1.2500 ZEC miner · 0.1250 ZEC ZCG · 0.1875 ZEC lockbox
Next halving: block 4,406,400
Supply cap: 21,000,000 ZEC
Explorers: https://blockchair.com/zcash · https://mainnet.zcashexplorer.app
lightwalletd: zec.rocks:443 · lightwalletd.electriccoin.co:9067The pools
Zcash has one transparent pool that works like Bitcoin and, over its history, four shielded ones. Sprout is the original and is exit-only. Sapling came in 2018 and is still open. Orchard, the NU5 pool built on Halo 2, was sealed on 28 July 2026 after a soundness bug in its circuit was found and patched by the NU6.2 emergency upgrade. Ironwood, opened by NU6.3 in the same upgrade, is the new primary pool, formally verified. Value moves between pools through a turnstile that bounds each pool's outflow to what verifiably went in.
A unified address bundles receivers for several pools into one string, so a sender's wallet picks the best pool both sides support.
Upgrades
| Upgrade | Height | What it did |
|---|---|---|
| Blossom | 653,600 | 75-second blocks (ZIP-208) |
| Heartwood | 903,000 | shielded coinbase (ZIP-213) |
| Canopy | 1,046,400 | first halving, dev fund (ZIP-1014) |
| NU5 | 1,687,104 | Orchard pool, unified addresses, Halo 2 |
| NU6 | 2,726,400 | second halving, 80/8/12 split (ZIP-1015) |
| NU6.1 | 3,146,400 | coinholder-controlled fund (ZIP-1016) |
| NU6.2 | 3,364,600 | Orchard circuit fix (ZIP-257) |
| NU6.3 | 3,428,143 | Ironwood pool, Orchard sealed (ZIP-258) |
| NU7 | pending | Zcash Shielded Assets (ZIP-226/227), memo bundles, 25-second blocks proposed; targeted 5 Nov 2026 |
Quirks
- Fees are per action, not per byte. ZIP-317 charges 5000 zatoshi per logical action with a grace of 2, so a minimal shielded transaction costs 10000 zatoshi and a wallet that pays a flat legacy fee gets stuck in the mempool.
- The coinbase can be shielded. Since Heartwood a miner may pay itself straight into a shielded pool, so a block whose transparent generation shows only the 0.125 ZEC ZCG output is not a broken block; the miner took its 1.25 ZEC privately. The ledger computes the miner's take from the subsidy rule for that reason.
- zcashd is on a clock. It halts sixteen weeks after each release without an upgrade and will not follow NU7. Read the chain through zebrad, or through lightwalletd and Zaino, and never build on a zcashd-only RPC.