Foundry Digital — the firm behind one of Bitcoin’s largest mining pools by hashrate — is expanding beyond BTC. The company announced plans to launch a U.S.-based Zcash (ZEC) mining pool within the next month, bringing an institutional operator and compliance-first infrastructure to the privacy-focused network.
Why it matters
- Foundry says Zcash has reached “institutional-grade” status, but its mining infrastructure hasn’t. The new pool is meant to fill that gap by offering the governance, reporting and controls typically required by public companies and large miners.
- The move comes as privacy coins regain market attention amid tighter EU crypto tax-reporting rules and advances in onchain analytics that have increased demand for financial privacy. ZEC has outperformed many peers over the past year, rising roughly 670% versus Monero’s ~72% and Dash’s ~51%.
What Foundry will offer
- U.S.-based operations and a dedicated support team, designed around KYC/AML checks, transparent payout calculations and institutional-grade reporting tools.
- The same operational framework that supported its Bitcoin pool, which has undergone SOC 1 Type 2 and SOC 2 Type 2 audits.
- Payments will be routed to transparent Zcash addresses (not shielded ones) and use a Pay Per Last N Shares (PPLNS) model Foundry says is “fully auditable,” with detailed daily reconciliation data for miners.
- No minimum hashrate to join; fees were not disclosed but will be “competitive,” the company said.
Technical and market context
- Zcash launched in 2016 using zk-SNARKs to allow optional shielded (private) transactions alongside transparent ones — a hybrid privacy model that supports selective disclosure for custody and exchanges. Blocks are produced roughly every 75 seconds, the network uses Equihash as its PoW algorithm, and it shares Bitcoin’s 21 million coin supply cap.
- As with other PoW chains, miners typically pool resources to reduce variance. Large pools wield influence over network hashrate, so the arrival of a major institutional player could reshape Zcash’s mining landscape.
- Foundry’s entry also reflects shifting mining economics: bitcoin mining profitability tightened after the 2024 halving, and hashprice — a measure of expected mining revenue — has fallen significantly (from over $60 to about $30 per petahash in recent months), prompting some operators to diversify into other PoW networks.
Foundry’s stance and outlook
- CEO Mike Colyer told CoinDesk that the decision is driven by where institutional infrastructure is needed, not solely by bitcoin margin pressure. He called Foundry’s bitcoin business “strong” and said the company’s focus is currently “squarely on bitcoin and zcash,” while remaining open to other opportunities that fit institutional demand.
- Foundry expects interest from regulated miners in North America and other firms that require formal compliance and reporting.
If the pool launches on schedule in 2026, it would be one of the largest institutional entries into Zcash mining to date, joining existing pools such as F2Pool, 2Miners and ViaBTC.
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