Privacy projectZcash: Shielded-pool L1. Technology: zero-knowledge proofs.
Zcash invented shielded payments at scale and handed the rest of the field its foundations. zk-SNARK shielded transactions have been in production since 2016, the Sapling upgrade made them practical on ordinary hardware, and Halo 2 removed the trusted setup and is now used well beyond Zcash itself. It has run its security work in the open too, disclosing counterfeiting vulnerabilities in 2018 and again in June 2026 rather than quietly patching them, and the June 2026 disclosure moved the price by a third in a day. A January 2026 governance dispute saw the core company's staff depart, and shielded usage remains a minority of supply.
Key facts
- Entry type
- Privacy project
- Category
- Shielded-pool L1
- Technology
- Zero-knowledge proofs (ZK)
- Website
- z.cash
What is zero-knowledge proofs?
One party proves a statement about hidden data is true without revealing the data the statement is about.
How it compares with the other approaches on latency, trust assumptions and fit is set out, with sources, in the technology taxonomy.
Private by design.
See how confidential transactions work on the networks you already use.