Foundry’s U.S.‑based, compliance‑first Zcash pool has already grown to roughly one‑third of network hashrate, giving institutional miners a regulated way into privacy coins while stoking fresh centralisation fears.

Foundry Digital, operator of the Foundry USA Bitcoin mining pool, has officially launched an institutional‑grade Zcash (ZEC) mining pool that has quickly grown to around 30% of the network’s hashrate, consolidating a significant share of new ZEC issuance under a single U.S.‑regulated operator. The Rochester, New York‑based firm, which Fortune notes already commands about 31% of global Bitcoin production, is positioning its new pool as the default home for institutional miners seeking exposure to privacy‑focused assets without abandoning compliance.finance.

In a Business Wire release, Foundry said the Zcash pool has seen “rapid and sustained hashrate growth reaching ~30% of the current Zcash network hashrate” since it was first announced on March 11, with “multiple institutional mining customers already onboarded and contributing hashrate.” The company stressed that the pool is “designed for professional mining organizations and public companies that require a U.S.-based, compliance-ready partner, including KYC verification in line with Foundry’s institutional standards,” mirroring the governance of its Bitcoin operation.

Zcash’s privacy, Foundry’s pitch and centralisation worries

Foundry CEO Mike Colyer framed the move as both a bet on Zcash and a response to unmet institutional demand. “Zcash has matured into an institutional‑grade asset, but the mining infrastructure supporting it hasn’t kept pace,” he said, adding that the new pool is “purpose‑built for the operational and compliance requirements of institutional and public miners.”

A CoinMarketCap summary of the launch notes that the pool will offer know‑your‑customer and anti‑money‑laundering checks, transparent payout calculations, reporting tools and 24/7 technical support, with no minimum hashrate required to join.

Zcash, launched in 2016, relies on zero‑knowledge proofs (zk‑SNARKs) to enable shielded transactions that hide sender, receiver and amount while still allowing selective disclosure to auditors or regulators. Foundry and several commentators have argued that this “privacy with a view key” model is more compatible with institutional compliance than fully opaque systems like Monero, which lack native mechanisms for selective transparency.

At the same time, the arrival of a U.S. pool with roughly one‑third of Zcash’s hashrate raises familiar centralisation questions. Unfolded and other mining trackers have previously highlighted that Foundry USA already coordinates about 30% of Bitcoin’s global hashrate, and Mempool.space data shows the pool averaging more than 340 exahashes per second on Bitcoin alone. Adding a Zcash operation that quickly captures around one‑third of ZEC issuance further concentrates influence over block production in a single corporate group, albeit one that stresses its role in “contribut[ing] to the decentralization of Bitcoin’s hashrate” by anchoring North American capacity.

For Zcash, the trade‑off is stark: institutional capital and hashpower are flowing in through a U.S.‑regulated gateway that validates the project’s positioning as a compliant privacy coin, but at the cost of a more concentrated mining landscape. As regulators in the U.S., EU and Hong Kong tighten their grip on stablecoins, exchanges and tokenized assets — a trend explored in recent crypto.news coverage of HKDAP’s launch, MiCA implementation and the CLARITY Act — Zcash’s bet is that privacy with selective disclosure, plus a mining pool built for auditors rather than cypherpunks, is a price worth paying for long‑term relevance.