Foundry Digital has secured roughly 30% of the Zcash network’s hashrate just days after launching its new mining pool. The New York-based company was already well known in Bitcoin mining, and it had announced plans for a Zcash pool back in March. Even before the pool officially went live, it had drawn interest from large institutional miners.
At the same time, Foundry rolled out Zcashinfo.com, a blockchain explorer built around real-time network visibility. The site tracks pool rankings, total hashrate distribution, block data, and mining difficulty, giving users a live view of activity across the Zcash network.
Faster block times set Zcash apart from Bitcoin
Zcash has operated as a public blockchain since 2016 and is known for privacy-focused transaction design. The network uses zero-knowledge proofs, specifically zk-SNARKs, to validate transactions without exposing the sender, the recipient, or the amount.
Like Bitcoin, Zcash runs on proof-of-work. Miners use specialized hardware to solve computational problems, and successful miners receive newly issued ZEC plus transaction fees included in the block. Both networks have a fixed maximum supply of 21 million coins. The block schedule is different, though: Zcash produces a block about every 75 seconds, while Bitcoin averages roughly 10 minutes per block.
The mining algorithms also diverge. Zcash uses Equihash, which requires substantially more memory, while Bitcoin relies on SHA-256. That difference affects hardware requirements and the operational profile for miners entering each network.
Pool payouts use PPLNS and focus on regulated firms
Because solo mining rarely delivers consistent block wins, many miners join pools to combine hashrate and split rewards. As pools grow larger, they can take control of a meaningful share of total network hashrate, concentrating mining activity in fewer hands.
Foundry said its Zcash pool pays miners through transparent addresses and uses a PPLNS model, or pay-per-last-N-shares, to calculate rewards based on recent contributions within a defined window. The company is aiming the pool primarily at institutional miners that meet regulatory requirements, with participation centered on regulated corporate clients rather than a broader mix of retail or unregulated miners.